Three Days Without Sugar

Posted on Nov 18th 2009 10:00AM by Karla Carrington

Filed Under: The Good, The Fat and The Hungry

If sugar were crack I'd probably be street walking to get it. Hi, my name is Karla and I'm an addict -- sugar addict, that is. I am certain that I've lived mostly unaware of this addiction until now. Having been a consistent companion of mine for many years, I don't think I ever seriously considered giving sugar up until I began to read about its many adverse affects.

Now that I've started digging on my own to get the skinny on sugar, I know that the sweet stuff can sour my health. With this new-found revelation, I decided to try and lay off of added sugar for three days to start, in hopes of maybe saying goodbye forever.

My first shocker came at breakfast of the first day. My morning starter of Dannon Light n' Fit Yogurt only has 80 calories so surely it must be harmless. Upon closer inspection of the label, I saw that it contained 11 grams of sugar and fructose as the third ingredient. I decided it wasn't harmless after all. I opted for grapes instead and enjoyed them just as much. The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Late in the day when I usually stop by the office candy drawer, however, I began to salivate.

I paid close attention to all labels in order to avoid coming into contact at all with sugar. It has so many hidden and various names that it can be found in far more places than commonly thought. I went on a hunt to for these names and came across a list of 25 names for sugar that were listed on most of the items in my kitchen. With this in mind, I was forced to eat more fruits and vegetables. I found that I was fuller and ate less. I was also noticeably more irritable.

Giving up sugar for three days was far tougher than I ever imagined. As far as doing it forever, not so much. I have decided to cut back on my intake and continue to eat more fruits and vegetables. The benefits of limiting sugar in my diet are directly connected to one of my biggest concerns -- my weight. I plan to eliminate sugar altogether but cold turkey may not be the way for me. I'll do the step down method until poof, it's all gone.

2 Comment

Tags: sugar, sugar addiction, SugarAddiction, the-good-the-fat

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Tony 11-18-2009 @ 10:48AM

I stopped drinking soda well over a month ago, but that alone was killing me. I still had some other sweets, but I was going through some serious withdrawal symptoms. Keep it up and good luck.

u262f 11-18-2009 @ 1:35PM

The irritability has got to be just a psychological or emotional effect. I think it's useful to understand that, chemically and physically, your body didn't go without sugar at all: grapes (and fruit and vegetables in general) ARE sugar. If we can psych ourselves into such things, then it means that can psych ourselves out of it too. Grapes are 15.48% sugar (according to the database at www.nal.usda.gov). In contrast, Dannon Light and Fit is less than 10% sugar. Your body itself was not deprived of sugars; that part was only in your head.

I think it's useful to psychologically get over that all sugar is bad. These days, we understand that there are good fats and bad fats and good carbs and bad carbs. Sugar is a type of carb, so that means that there are good sugars and bad sugars too. Like carbs, it's mostly the processed and refined varieties of sugars that cause problems.

Refined white sugar is created by mutilating fruits and vegetables. Refined sugars are stripped of their nutrients and become "empty calories". For example, whole grapes are healthy. Turning those grapes into juice removes fiber, concentrates the sugar, destroys Vitamins A, C, E, potassium, beta carotene, etc. in the process. To make refined sugar, they would then evaporate out the water out of that nutrient-deprived juice. (In other words, fruit juice is just sugar before the water is removed. And people thought they were being so healthy by drinking fruit juice. That misconception probably went a long way to raising tons of kids on orange juice (creating a market for even more toxic things like Tang and "SunnyD") and making people fat.) Also, humans aren't the only creatures who know how to refine sugars. Bees and trees can refine sugar too - in the forms of honey and syrup.

So, the problem isn't so much sugar as it is the extraction of sugar from the fruits and vegetables they're wrapped up in. You weren't depriving your body of sugar at all. You were just taking your sugars in a more natural, non-"white" form. Any ill effects from supposedly going without sugar is all in your head. As long as you were eating fruit and vegetables, chemically, your body got all the sugars it could've wanted.

There's a reason why depictions of Greek gods in the lap of luxury were shown eating grapes. Fruits are delicious treats, scrumptious desserts -- and more sugary than your Dannon Light and Fit. Even though your mind might be insisting that you went without sugar, all the sugary goodness and wonderful sweetness was chemically and physically still there. The sugars still touched your tasted buds. Your mind just decided to not recognize all that sugar as sugar. I think it's time to rethink what we were taught about what is "sugar", what is "good", what is "healthy, and what is "delicious".