On January 30, 2012, my sister-in-law and I started three months of no sugar and no artificial sweeteners, though honey is okay in moderation. We both get what we call “sugar sickness,” which is where we physically feel ill when we eat too much sugar, and we have yet to find an artificial sweetener that doesn’t have some kind of ill effect on us as well. Basically we want to detox from eating too many sweets so that come May, we can start anew with the resolve to simply cut back on sugar.
This is a huge feat that we are trying to accomplish, so we decided to help each other out by doing it together. Also, we didn’t want to set ourselves up for failure, so we gave ourselves a few treats to help us stay strong in tempting situations when we are otherwise doing very well.
The first thing to address was cold treats, like ice cream. She loves Red Mango, so that is her cold treat and reward for avoiding everything else. I found plain frozen yogurt at Yogurt Bliss, so that is my cold treat and reward. Both of these are had in moderation, because eating them every day would basically defeat the purpose of even trying this.
She is allowing herself 70% cocoa to curb the chocolate cravings. There is some pretty amazing 70% cocoa out there, and she is finding it. I drink 100% juice, while she avoids it, because the natural sugars are too concentrated for her body. She eats Greek yogurt, because of its benefits and the great flavors, while I just eat plain yogurt, because I don’t really like the added sugar in flavored yogurts.
When family events come around where sugar will obviously be present, we try to bring fruit or some dessert without sugar so that we don’t slip up. I made a chocolate cake with applesauce as the sweetener when our aunt had a birthday. It wasn’t the most amazing cake, but it gave us something to eat while everyone else was eating some really awesome looking cake.
I hope this inspires others to give this a try. Don’t set yourself up for failure, and get a buddy to hold yourself accountable to.
Check out my sister-in-laws blog here.