I Gave Up Sugar For Two Months And Here's What Happened. No doubt about it, I am a comfort eater, and the sweet stuff is my biggest weakness. Chocolate, biscuits, crisp and fruity cider, sugary, bready anything, and cinema pick 'n' mix are my Kryptonite, but god, I can never get enough of it. Don't even get me started on cheesecake. I know it's bad for me. I know I consume over the daily recommended 5. ![]() I know that can lead to health problems, tooth decay, and physical discomfort, among other issues. But sugar tastes like the ice cream van jingling down the street of my childhood home, cosying up with a cocoa in the winter, making brownies with old friends. It tastes like the 1. Ben & Jerry's that got my university flatmate and I through a heatwave with no air conditioner, and like the cocktails I was chugging (strike that, delicately sipping) the night I met my other half. It tastes like honest- to- god happiness, and I love it. It's a problem. Authors, health food gurus, and bloggers from across the globe have touted the benefits of a sugar- free lifestyle. Popular writer Ella Woodward has been designing recipes that fit a low- to- no- sugar diet for her blog, Deliciously Ella, for years, while TV personalities and foodies Davina Mc. Our Year of No Sugar. We’d cut out anything with an. Call and Sarah Wilson are two of the highest- profile proponents of incredibly low sugar diets, and each offers books designed to kill a sugar . If I know anything about myself, it's that it takes a deadline and other people's expectations and money to get me round to getting anything done. So if I was ever going to kick the sugar monkey off my back, committing to it for work was just about the only surefire way to make it happen. I decided to try my luck with the eight- week programme designed by Wilson, former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine and self- professed sugar addict. A seasoned food writer and experienced chef, Wilson is the author of 1. I Quit Sugar and its follow- ups, along with her online I Quit Sugar 8- Week Program have helped her grow a fledgling health food empire, turning over $1. AUD) annually. This all sounded legit enough to me, not to mention her programme was more focused on health and happiness than . She also has pretty good hair. Her plan is designed to wean dieters off sugar completely over eight weeks, and then to reintroduce naturally occurring sugars from fruits and veg as the programme comes to an end. The plan relies on cutting out sources of fructose and sucrose, and ensuring that dieters are consuming the lowest possible threshold of naturally occurring sugars, at 3- 6 grams per 1. That's relatively in keeping with the NHS's standards on what constitutes . Her book includes a page or two on how to move forward and what kinds of sugar to eliminate each week, and 1. ![]() The online programme offers exclusive recipes, more variety for vegetarians, vegans, and food allergies, plus helpful weekly shopping lists and meal plans. I opted out of the online programme, because part of my goal in cutting sugar was to see if it was realistic for my budget. Shelling out . I wanted to know if it was possible to make this life change without an unreasonable investment. Since Wilson's online programme is based on her book, I felt like I should be able to figure it out for myself and be more on target money- wise by doing so. These rules are pretty strict, and definitely not feasible or advisable for the long term. ![]() ![]()
![]() In fact, while Wilson suggests in I Quit Sugar that we greatly overconsume fruit and sugary veg, my sources from the NHS and British Dietetic Association (BDA) say the average person has no reason to be concerned over the natural sugar that occurs in fruit and veg. Rather, hitting your five a day and beyond is a good thing. The NHS guide to sugar in our diets goes on to note that . I Quit Sugar contains a number of Paleo recipes that cut down on carbohydrates that our bodies naturally convert to sugar; meat plays a big role in many of the suggested recipes, but to make matters more complicated for myself – I don't eat meat! As a vegetarian, I was going to have to get clever and make a few grain and legume substitutions for meat, not to mention get really cosy with eggs, to make the diet work. But since Wilson's diet never actually says you need to be cutting back on grains, and since I wasn't looking for a weight loss plan, this seemed well within the parameters. Besides, as BDA- registered nutritionist and dietician Anna Daniels of Honest Nutrition told me, cutting out the carbohydrates just isn't good for you. We use carbohydrates for energy and the sugars in fruits and vegetables also provide much- needed vitamins and minerals. I'm still baffled that I committed without realising I wouldn't be able to have a lolly on a hot day (so many things taste better than sugar- free feels, let me tell you that right now), and even more so that I didn't wonder in advance how I was supposed to endure a summer sans cider and Pimm's. The I Quit Sugar diet doesn't expressly forbid a pint now and then, but it does outlaw the sugary, properly thirst- quenching stuff. While it's not mentioned anywhere in her book, Wilson's website FAQ allows for some moderate drinking, as long as it's dry wine, spirits and soda water, or beer. That may sound almost too good to be true, but Daniels confirmed it for me, saying, . How to give up sugar in 11 easy steps. Just leave out the processed dressings, which derail your attempts to avoid added sugar. 0 comments on “9 Ways to Cut Sugar Out of Your Diet and Be Healthier”. Get FREE instant. How To Cut Sugar Out Of Your Diet. This is probably the hugest change you can make in your diet when it comes to cutting out. Welcome to My Year Without. Though it was difficult to cut out white refined sugar and corn. I'm likely to talk myself out of washing and cutting and finding. Cutting sugar from your diet can result in major benefits to your health and. Blog; Support; Reviews;. Cutting sugar out of your diet visually improves your. Beer also contains very little sugar (2. At 2. 5, I'm quite healthy minus a twingy back, an occasional eczema flare- up (which, alas, I'm not relying on sugar's . So tracking many of these claims wasn't going to be in my scope and should be left up to medical professionals to decide anyway. When it comes to weight loss, while it is a noted benefit of low sugar diets, I decided not to track these results (again, see a doctor before you start a weight loss regime). I'm 5 foot 6 inches and 6. BMI parameters. I was more interested in seeing how my lifestyle would change, how that would make me feel, and how sustainable cutting sugar out really is. ![]() I decided to focus on tracking the benefits I felt the diet might conceivably have on my day- to- day lifestyle. In preparation for my sugar . I set up a consultation with Laura to go over my plan, and check in for any advice she had to keep me healthy during the two- month sugar- free stretch. She wasn't familiar with Wilson and her method, and she was skeptical. After I gave her the bullet points of the diet, the first thing she told me was that it's essentially impossible to cut out sugar in the way Wilson and other sugar- free proponents imply. What followed was a mini biology lesson, diagrams and all, to illustrate for me that even following Wilson's diet to the letter wouldn't necessarily mean that I would actually reduce the sugar in my system. When it comes down to it, Laura explained, . Laura's advice was that sugar is a fuel, and that the amount we consume should be relative to the amount of fuel our bodies need. Eating less added sugar is always a good rule of thumb, but a diet should focus less on exclusion and more on a balance of carbs, protein, veg, and fruits, which all include naturally occurring sugars that we shouldn't be afraid of including in a balanced diet. My chat with Laura gave me the chance to reevaluate my mindset and end goal. What I wanted was to work my way into a more balanced diet, and I needed to keep in mind that naturally occurring sugar is PART of that diet, Even while on a . Dairy and other perishables I would work into my weekly grocery budget as time went on. This little redesign was the most expensive bit of the whole process, setting me back . The expense was steep, and I was already worrying about how the diet might negatively affect my budget. My partner and I were typically spending a fairly frugal (for London) . She makes some simple suggestions about what to start swapping out right away (avocado for jam, popcorn for sweets at the cinema, halve the sugar in my coffee, replace sodas with the diet version), and I was pretty surprised to realise that I was already doing most of these things. I tried Wilson's suggestion to fry up apple slices and halloumi as a sweet snack alternative early on in the week. It was A+++, but didn't really fit into my hopes that the diet would be practical. Because let's face it, halloumi is expensive and it's not like you can whip out a frying pan in the office when you're craving a little something sweet. I did run into a little roadblock when I went to London's Field Day festival – I already know festival food is a picky eater's nightmare because you just NEVER know what's in there! So after moderately sipping beer throughout the afternoon, I went for a nice vegan rendang that turned out to taste like candy. I ended up trading with my boyfriend for his veggie poutine, but that had to be a counterproductive health move, right? It records your movements and sounds and gives you a basic overview of how your sleep went. I had a little bit of a cold, but according to the app I slept deeply for 8 hours and 1. I woke up feeling as rested as I could with a stuffy nose and sore throat, so to be honest, I wasn't looking for much improvement there. Still, I kind of secretly hoped that cutting sugar would bring me to a whole new level of awakeness and restfulness I could never even have imagined before. It seemed to work for Wilson, so I figured it was worth crossing my fingers for. In general, it was annoying, yet surprisingly easy to avoid the chocolate bar slump (I expect this has something to do with the sense of accountability I felt, since I was doing this For Journalism). I recorded some cravings, but nothing unmanageable. My skin remained in the same mild combination condition it always was over the course of the week, and everything stayed pretty much the same, except that now most of my conversations revolved around The Experiment, a trend which would keep up over the full eight weeks. Pasta, sweet potatoes, eggs, avocados, yoghurt, quinoa, and gnocchi, oh my. Week Two was delicious.
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