No sugar for a month

Some colleagues of mine had the wild idea to try saying no to any added sugar for a month.

Seeing my competitive nature, I ofcourse went for it as well.

No added sugar means you'll be checking the composition of everything you eat.

Withdrawal symptoms

These start already after a day, I felt an urge to just get something sweet to chew on.

I managed to plow through it by consuming an obscene amount of eggs. Luckily the urges subsided after about 3 days and it was relative smooth sailing from there.

Planning

If you are going to do this, think carefully in which month you want to do this.

I chose January, but in hindsight that was a bad idea because there were quite some family gatherings that month.

On each of those I needed to say no to most drinks and sugary foods.

It also happens to be my birthday month, which meant that the obligatory birthday carrot cake was made without sugar; since I was already banning sugar out of my life for a couple of weeks, the cake actually tasted quite sweet to me; for everyone else though, it was the most bland cake they ever tasted!

Benefits

No more sugar dips!

No more sugar dips!

No more sugar dips!

When I go for a run of about two hours, I usually have a dip after about an hour of running; I recover from it, but it was always there. With the sugar free diet, this completely dissapeared!

After a day in the office, I'm now much more lively in the evening, I can even manage to read a book before I go to bed, which usually was something I was always too tired for.

What I'll keep doing

Now that we are in February, I've rescinded my total abstinence of sugar, but I am keeping it balanced:

- No sugar in the morning (goodbye cereal!)

- Fruit as a replacement during the day

- Sugary stuff as an exceptional treat

You can get in touch through Mastodon:

@rxpz@social.linux.pizza

No sugar for a month was published on 2024-02-12

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