That Time I Quit Sugar
I love sugar. I am not exaggerating when I say I have dessert after every meal (yes, even breakfast). I don’t always eat a giant cupcake. Sometimes it’s half a donut, a small cookie, a couple of Peeps, or a piece of Dove chocolate, but it adds up throughout the day to a lot of crap. Of course, when I eat a lot of desserts, I “make up for it” by eating the lowest calorie, lowest carb, highest protein meal I can find. So the “real” food I eat can be minimal. (It can also be a lot, let’s get real. I’m no skinny minnie.)
I’ve been hearing a lot of stories lately of people quitting sugar and losing weight. Quitting sugar sounds terrible, but sheer morbid curiosity made me look up how much sugar I eat on a daily basis.
It was 400-500 calories a day. For those not counting, that is 1/3 of my daily food. I can’t decide if that’s sad or impressive.
I don’t talk about my weight a lot on the blog but I’ve been trying to lose 10 lbs…for three years. I’ve only gained weight so obviously I’ve been pretty committed to reaching that goal.
I love that that gif exists.
Besides being curious to see if I could last more than two days, I wanted to see what would happen other than my likelihood of committing murder increasing. The plan: cut all desserts (not all sugar) except for one a week. I still eat fruit, peanut butter, and sauces with sugar, like ketchup. Cutting 500 calories of sugar a day means I need to eat more regular food to make up for it, so I’m also eating bigger meals.
It’s been 18 days, so here’s how it’s going so far:
Day 1:
I didn’t want sugar all day until after dinner and then I wanted it like whoah. I ate half an apple. It was meh. Apples are not ice cream sandwiches, which is what I would have had.
Day 2:
I wanted something sweet all. damn. day. I went to the grocery store during my lunch break at work to buy some blueberries for something sweet. I ate them and pretended they were blueberry donuts. It didn’t work and the whole day sucked.
Day 3:
I didn’t crave anything all day at work. After dinner, I wanted something sweet. Hubs ate ice cream and I asked for a bite and then caught myself. He laughed because I couldn’t eat all his ice cream. (Psh, like I would do that.) After Crossfit, I made a chocolate protein smoothie with half a banana and that helped my sweet tooth.
Day 4:
Again, no cravings in the morning. Although, I have taken a liking to Diet Snapple and all its aspartamey goodness. It was Michelle‘s birthday, so we stopped for 4 Rivers gourmet cupcakes after her birthday lunch. I shared one. It was delicious, but I didn’t feel like I needed it and kinda wish I had waited till later in the week when I really wanted something. Later that night, I wanted something sweet again but watched hubs eat ice cream instead which was just as good. (No it wasn’t.)
Day 5:
Today I’m down 1.5 lbs. I’m not sure I attribute that to no sugar. Usually I gain weight on the weekend and lose it during the week, however I usually work out more so it was surprising. I skipped both my weekly runs and both of my Crossfit workouts were really easy in comparison to usual. Still craving sweets in the evening.
Day 6:
There are times throughout the day when I want sweets, but I usually ask myself if I’m hungry or if I just think it will taste good. Usually it’s the later which made me realize how much I eat when I’m not hungry. Went out for drinks which took my mind off sweets. Ahh booze. You do amazing things.
Day 7 – 10:
Again, I always want sweets in the evening. I tell myself that after my workout, I can have a chocolate/banana protein shake. When it comes time to actually have the shake, I usually don’t want it anymore or am too lazy to make it. Lazy finally pays off.
Day 11:
The first day I didn’t want dessert. All hail day 11!
Day 12:
That didn’t last long. I wanted dessert all day. Instead I had a sandwich.
Day 13 – 18: Ok, I got a little tired of writing down how I was feeling each day but during these days, I was finally noticing I wanted sweets less. I didn’t have my one dessert during week two because I didn’t feel like anything was worth it. I did have three sips of hub’s vanilla shake if you want to count that.
A few changes I’ve noticed:
- I eat what I want now. I order the cheeseburger or rice bowl on the menu (instead of the salad) and I’ve had pizza at midnight on both weekends.
- I don’t feel guilty about anything I eat.
- I stopped watching carbs but most days they are around the same grams per day as when I was watching them.
- I’m down about 5 lbs and I notice a few of my skirts fit more loosely.
- I’m in a better mood. It’s weird. I pride myself on being bitchy.
- I feel really good. I don’t want to kill kittens in the morning when I wake up and I don’t have those dips of being really tired at work.
My goal is to make it 30 days and see how I feel after that. I don’t plan to cut all sugar from my diet so maybe next I’ll work on that Diet Coke habit that just got worse when I quit sugar. Can’t win ‘em all.
Have you ever quit sugar? How long do you think I can last? (Don’t answer that.)
