Sugar Free Week 1

Sorry I have been a bit scarce on here.  I have uni assignments to do so (unfortunately) those take precedent.

I thought I would share with you my experience of my first whole week sugar free.

Along with giving up sugar I have been trying to eat healthier and a slightly reduced calorie diet as I am heading to summer and bikini in a month and winter has not been kind to my waist.  Despite the reduced calories I haven’t felt as hungry inbetween meals and only had lighter snacks inbetween and no after dinner snacks.  I have been recording my calories, protein, fat and sugar intake.  Something that has really surprised me is how much protein I eat.  To all those who worry vegetarians don’t get enough protein, really you don’t have to worry – I have been eating around 50 g every day and one day even had about 70 g of protein!  And I haven’t even had any eggs this week.

Anyway back to the point.

I’ve found I haven’t really had any “actual” cravings.  Perhaps it was the total gorge on sweets and sugariness over Christmas and in the run up to new year that has made my body totally not want anything.  I admit that I had cravings for chocolate which was easily solved with some of my homemade “nutella”.  Easy as taking some hazelnut butter and mixing in some unsweetened cocoa powder.  A scraping on a rice cake or two fixes the problem easily.  I have had two instances of what I call “situational” craving.  One was walking past the poison counter (the baked goods section) at Marks and Spencers.  My favourite “treat” (which was basically every time I went to the store) was to get a chocolate chip cookie.  A quick glimpse made me think of it but renaming the area the poison section has made me feel stronger.  We also went to the movies and I had to ignore my usual pick ‘n mix bag.  By the time the movie started though I was fine (the bag has normally been stuffed into my mouth by this time anyway).  It made me realise when I return to my new normal that having a treat will need to involve more mindfulness.

I have made a few “miss steps” (some purposeful):

• day one I had a side salad at our local coffee shop which came with salad dressing.  I am just telling myself it was the full fat variety as that has less added sugar.
• this week I still bought bread from the supermarket which had sugar in (the one was shop “baked” rolls which didn’t have a list of ingredients but I will assume sugar went in).  I have bought ingredients to try to make my own this week.
• I still like my shop bought veggie burgers and sausages.  They just make life easy.  The variety I buy are Redwoods and have added sugar but the total per 100g is still around 1.2g of sugar so I figure they are fine.
• According to Sarah Wilson’s ebook wine doesn’t contain fructose so I had small glass on Saturday night with the Housemate for dinner.  I think I should still try to avoid it during the first few weeks though.
• Stock cubes: they put sugar in!  Low salt version strangely doesn’t have salt added so now using those.
• I had some coconut water but then it is a fruit … not a nut (dope).

What I have eaten:

• breakfast: oats with oat milk.  I thought I would have a problem with it not being sweet enough but my palate adjusted to sugar free within about two days.  It is a bit bland though and need to make a trip to the healthfood store for some more interesting combinations.
• green soup: just throw a bunch of green veggies (broccoli, peas, zucchini, spinach) into a pot, boil lightly and blend
• spelt, tomato and cannellini bean stew based on Martha’s soup recipe.
• roast tomato soup: 2 kgs of tomatoes quartered and roasted with a whole bulb of garlic and onion. Once cooked squeeze garlic out its wrapping” and blitz all ingredients together with a bit of extra water and a stock cube.  Season as desired.
• warm butternut quinoa salad: cooked cup of quinoa, small butternut cubed and roasted, cannellini beans, pumpkin seeds, peas and fried onion caramelised (without adding sugar off course).

I also made some zucchini muffins as a snack.  I am still working on the recipe so will share when it is better.