Forty days later

Counting back, I’ve now been sugar free for...40 days. Wow, that’s a long time. Well done me! Also, I just made the connection that I started at the beginning of Lent. Huh. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in giving up sugar at this time of the year. But anyway, here I am 40 days later, and I thought it was time for an update. You know, am I losing weight? Do I feel better? Do I miss sugar? Will I be desperately hoping the Easter bunny is real and has left me some chocolate eggs on Sunday?

Let’s start with weight. Sugar is an excess calorie, so I could lose weight just by cutting it out and therefore reducing my overall daily calories. On the other hand, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and am eating full fat dairy- you can read why, here. I’ve also been kind to myself while withdrawing from sugar and haven’t stinted on other (non sugar) treats like potato chips and nuts, both of which are fatty. Fat has more calories than sugar, so I may actually end up eating more calories this way. Hmm.

This is probably why I’ve been drawn in the past to low-fat, high carbohydrate approaches in preference to low-carb, high fat approaches. It’s rational to think that you should remove the food group with the highest calories (fat), but it’s also simplistic. The body doesn’t process everything we eat as energy in the same way. One of the really important things I learned about sugar in David Gillespie’s books and from my own forays into the research is that fructose in sugar interacts with our appetite controls in a very dangerous way. 

Now that I’m avoiding fructose like the plague, I’ve found that I’m eating way less in a day than I used to. I could do a side by side comparison of my food then and now but I’d be too embarrassed about the ‘before’ shots. I’ve already revealed what used to be in my snack cupboard as well as some of the stupid ‘diet’ foods I used to know and love. 

But as an example of how things have changed, I’m now almost snack free. I used to be a mid-morning, mid-afternoon and evening snacker. I think this was made worse by being an at-home mummy because I would be feeding my baby boy things at all hours (babies snack a LOT) and would just naturally have a little something myself as well. Now I don’t snack during the day at all- I’m just not hungry between meals, and even my meals are smaller. I’ll admit that the after-dinner snack habit has been harder to break. This is definitely a habit, not hunger, but I’m aiming to change this as well. I know I snack more after dinner if I’m just watching TV without anything else to do (I’m a chronic multi-tasker, I can’t just watch TV), so I’m trying to make sure I have things to do, like...writing this blog.

[This reminds me of a study I read when I was looking into the exercise question. These researchers looked at the energy consumed by teenagers when they did typical daily activities. They found that when teenagers watch tv, they eat. When they exercise, they eat (well, presumably after). And for both of those activities they consume more energy than they burn. In fact, the only activity where the teenagers didn’t eat more calories than they burned was doing homework.  Perhaps this is partly because homework is not traditionally a snacking activity (unlike watching tv). But I think it might also be because the brain is actively engaged in something, rather than free to ponder the snacking possibilities. So there you go, homework is good for you (and I’m sure that’s the line they used in the media release for that particular study). And you, dear blog, are like homework to me. In a good way.]

So, to answer your question (or the question which I posed on your behalf- you're welcome) is that yes, I have lost weight. I wish I could give a figure here because I’m all about the data, but I was determined when starting this whole sugar-free thing not to get caught up in weighing myself endlessly. With the result that I (perhaps stupidly) failed to get a baseline weight to go from. I know from weighings in the not too distant past that I was at least a certain weight, so I can say for almost certain that I’ve lost at least...

(drum roll please)

3.2 kg

Yesssssss. I need to lose more, but the best part is knowing that, however gradually things move, they are moving down, not up. I don’t need to watch my weight anymore. My body is doing that for me, because I stopped blindfolding it.  Er, with a blindfold made of sugar...Ok, I need to work on that metaphor, but hopefully you get the picture.

So, weight loss, check.

I’m feeling good too. My skin is great (I’ll have to look into that one sometime), I’m not as moody, I don’t get highs and lows throughout the day caused by what I eat. It wasn’t easy for about three weeks- I definitely wanted sugar. I wouldn’t have thought I could come out the other side and just feel completely uninterested in sugar, but...here I am.  I have a box of home-made fructose free chocolates in the fridge which I made last week, and I’ve eaten about three of them. They are delicious, I just don’t crave them. I forgot about them actually. I’ve also got some of the coconut bread I made a few weeks back sitting in the freezer, waiting for a time when I want it. I’ve asked myself today whether I really honestly would say no to an Easter egg if, say, I were to find one in the garden Sunday morning after the Easter bunny has been by. And totally honestly (but grammatically confusingly), yes, I would say no. I know I feel dreadful if I eat sugar now- I’ve done it a few times accidentally (canned corn, I’m looking at you!). It’s not worth it.

So, I don’t think I’ll go back. I can’t promise- it’s not easy to avoid sugar totally, and it’s an addictive substance. It’s definitely trickier when eating at other people’s houses even if they are trying to be sensitive to your sugar-free needs. Not because of obviously sugary treats which I don’t care about saying no to, but because of hidden sugars which they may inadvertently serve up. Like the time I was eating dad’s home-made spaghetti sauce and after a process of cross-examination to rival any court room managed to work out that the reason it tasted sweet despite being ‘sugar free’ was that dad had innocently added just a dash (or two) of barbecue sauce which on inspection had about 40% sugar. I may just have to take the sugar hit every now and then and put up with the consequences, because this stuff is everywhere. But I don’t want it, so I won’t seek it.

So, forty days in, here I am. If you want to ask questions or comment about any of this, the comment box below will be happy to oblige. And any suggestions about homework/blog topics I should tackle in the future are also welcome. That’s unless you have given up commenting on blogs for Lent- in which case, you must wait until Sunday.

Happy Easter everyone J