A Strategy for Improving Your Relationship With Sugar
In November, Mike and I decided to challenge ourselves to eliminate added sugar from our diet for a month. For us that meant no granulated sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, honey, agave. It meant that we could still have natural sugars in whole ingredients like dates, raisins, bananas and other fruit.
We had 3 main goals:
to determine how much sugar we were typically consuming
to reset our palates (our perception of what tastes sweet)
to decrease or eliminate sugar cravings
The majority of the first week was challenging. We were accustomed to sweetening our morning coffees, having honey on toast, adding some sort of sweetener to our asian sauces for meals, having a spoonful of peanut butter with chocolate chips on top after dinner…even though we didn’t consume a ton of sugar on average, it showed us that it can definitely add up sneakily. After the first 5-6 days, it became much easier and cravings slowly disappeared. We definitely missed the sweet contributions of sugar but we did find a way to make our plain yogurt taste better. We puree’d dates and mixed in half a tablespoon with our yogurt. This was surprisingly good and something we’ll continue to do. We also still made banana bread, just without added sugar. As our palates changed, the ripe bananas became sweet enough.
Before we go any further, we should state that there is nothing inherently wrong with having sugar in our diet in small thoughtful amounts. The problem lies in consuming too much sugar over long periods of time, which is precisely sugar’s MO. Sugar’s addictive properties are not to be taken lightly, but are often joked about. Sugar can be just as harmful to your health as any drug but it’s legal and readily available. For this reason everyone will have a different level of challenge in decreasing sugar consumption depending on how much sugar is a part of your life already. But how much is too much?
According to the World Health Organization, Diabetes Canada and the Heart & Stroke Foundation, they recommend (based on an average person’s 2000 calorie diet) to have less than 10% of daily calories coming from added sugars. This equates to roughly 12 teaspoons. Chronic overconsumption of added sugar can lead to a spectrum of less than desirable effects such as intense cravings, inflammation which can manifest in a variety of ways, unstable blood sugar levels which affect mood and energy, non-lean tissue weight gain and blood pressure issues amongst others. These consequences can lead to more severe issues down the road like Type 2 diabetes and Heart Disease.
We found that planning our meals and grocery list ahead of time was helpful in this process, as well as having fruit readily available to grab in the times where we would normally reach for sweet treats. Telling people about what we were doing was also helpful. Support from the people around us can be one of the most important factors for many as the people we surround us with have such an influence on our mental and physical health. Telling our friends and family about our health goals in reducing our sugar consumption helped them support us in the way we truly needed. No sugary gifts!
The most valuable thing about a challenge like this is that it forces you to read ingredient labels for sauces and other processed foods. This is an amazing habit to get into. It’s amazing what you discover in reading food labels. The processed food industry is a beast of a machine and you may be surprised to hear that your health is not their main concern when designing their food for your consumption. Making informed decisions is very empowering, sometimes shocking, but ultimately a very good thing.
For some, remaining sugar-free as their diet of choice is entirely possible. For others, including ourselves, our preference is not to completely omit sugar altogether because let’s face it, pancakes are just not good without maple syrup ;) …but we were really happy with how we felt without it. We achieved our goals and energy levels were super stable.
On day 21, as we approached the end of the month, we began to discuss how we wanted to reintroduce sugar in a more mindful way. We wanted to implement some added structure around how we use sugar in our lives going forward. We started to brainstorm and finally landed on OK'ing a teaspoon of sweetener to coffee and teas; pancakes or other home-baked desserts on Saturdays; and special treats for birthdays and holidays. And, we’re happy to report, so far so good. December is a great month for treats in this household with Kate’s birthday and Christmas around the corner. But it feels really good to have a solid plan that we feel we can stick to so we don’t get derailed.
These short-term challenges can be useful for helping to reset our inclinations, but they are often extreme in nature and we have a tendency to go back to our default habits or even overdo it at their conclusion. If the whole point is to learn about ourselves and improve our health, then we recommend formulating a realistic plan to continue implementing those learnings in the other 300+ days of the year. This is the key to continued progress and allows you to practically apply the concept of moderation.
One of the most powerful things we can do in life is practice restraint. With how convenient things are nowadays, we forget what it’s like to go without. We can literally have ice cream delivered to our houses at any moment. If there is something about your lifestyle you are looking to change, we recommend committing to it for a minimum of 21 days to gain some perspective. During that time, think about what you want to take away from whatever your challenge is. Sugar is just one example but you could do this with anything. Habits are extremely hard to change but kickstarting it with some contrast perspective can be a great way to gain some momentum.
