My next birthday goal (March 2010) is to kick my sugar habit. I've been slowly chipping away at it for the past 6 months by doing the following:
- Changing my relationship with food choices to something I do for my health rather than for my weight.
- Educating myself about sugar and what it does to my body.
- Being aware of how my body feels after I eat sugar.
- Finding healthy replacements, not artificial ones when I do feel like sweetness.
- Omitting foods that don't have healthy replacements (granola bars, sugar in my coffee, cereal)
- Reading labels to make sure there are no added sweeteners in the ingredient list.
These things have made a big dent in how much sugar I eat compared to six months ago. I have noticed a lot of differences since reducing my sugar. But now I am interested in what would change if I gave up all sugar for a month? So that is what I am doing, November of 2009 is going to be sugar free for me.
To me a No Sugar November means:
- No sugar.
- No corn syrup.
- No sweeteners, fake or real, of any kind in the ingredients list of anything I buy.
- Naturally occurring fruit and milk sugars are OK.
I think my biggest challenges are going to be:
- Giving up my baked good. I don't bake nearly as much as I used to, and what I do bake now, usually has raw honey or sucanat in it in place of sugar, but I think I will miss them.
- Giving up raw honey. I thought a long time to see what I was going to do about raw honey. I believe that raw honey can be a great sweetener with health benefits, but for this month I will give it up.
- Giving up my teaspoon of brown sugar in my morning oatmeal.
- Giving up my occasional treats with friends and the kids.
4 comments:
wow, julie...i give you a lot of credit for your will power. i will be anxious to see what you report back!
Good for you!!! I have taken on this challenge before and when I slowly introduced sugars back into my diet I really noticed a difference in how I felt.
You and I are like-minded, I always think about how "this or that" will make me feel before I eat it. Coming from a family with a history of digestive problems(TMI...I know),I have really become more aware of what I eat, how, and most importantly, how it will make me feel!
I do eat some sugar today, in fact there was some baked on the top of the scone that I had at the Give Thanks Bakery today:) However I monitor my intake and make better decision now than I did before.
Can't wait to hear how it goes for you!
Good job! I have wanted to do this for a long time. I just keep procrastinating. Its the breakfast thing that gets me everytime I think about trying it. You can only eat eggs so many days a week for breakfast....Are you allowing yourself Stevia?
No Stevia. Not because I think anything bad about it, but I just want to see what it is like to have no "sweetness" in my life for a month.
Tara - What you have achieved, is ultimately my end goal...to have the knowledge to know what sugar does to my body so I am able to make better decisions about it.
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