Cutting Back On Sugar: Two Weeks In

It’s been almost two weeks since I started cutting back on sugar, which is one of my big goals for the end of 2018. So far it’s going… okay. I wanted to check in and share a little progress report.

Two Weeks Into Cutting Back On Sugar

First, it’d probably be helpful to explain what I mean by ‘cutting back.’

I’m not giving up sugar cold turkey like some articles recommend you do. I don’t do so well with hard-and-fast rules, so I think trying to give it up completely right off the bat would be a recipe for failure for me.

I am trying to cut way back on the amount of added sugar I consume—that is, foods where the sugar that’s in them wasn’t there naturally. This is things like candy bars, cereals, baked goods, dressings and sauces, drinks, etc.

This has been surprisingly easy. I think because basically, all you have to do to follow this plan is avoid processed foods. If you cook at home and keep sweets out of the house, it’s not that hard (except for the cravings, which I’ll talk about in a minute).

Here are some of the biggest changes I’ve made.

What I Cut

For at least the last ten years—what can I say, I’m a creature of habit—I’ve started the day with a bowl of Special K Red Berries cereal. It’s so yummy and seems healthy, but between the milk and the cereal it has at least 20 grams of sugar. That’s the equivalent of five teaspoons. When I learned that, I about died.

Instead, I’ve switched to a bowl of oatmeal with a splash of milk, half a banana, a handful of blueberries and a sprinkle of brown sugar. The oatmeal itself has no sugar and the fruit adds about 10 grams, but it’s *naturally* occurring rather than added sugar.

According to the internet, natural sugar is a lot less harmful to your body because it’s covered in a natural fiber casing, which slows down our body’s metabolism of it. Added sugar, on the other hand, has been processed and removed from its fiber casing which means it goes WHAM!, straight into the blood stream. If you’ve ever seen a kid pour a pixie stick down his throat, you basically know what happens from there.

Anyway. Breakfast was the first thing I changed.

Up until this point I have also eaten a lot of candy. Like, a lot of candy. But not just any candy. One kind in particular: York Peppermint Patties. Those things are my kryptonite. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being my roommate, you know I keep the fridge stocked with them at all times.

Ugh, I’m embarrassed to say how many of those suckers I usually eat in a day. It’s at least five or six, sometimes more *hides face*. Each one has fucking nine grams of sugar. Nine! You’re only supposed to have 25 grams total in the entire day.

I am so not a calorie counter or nutrition-label-reader, but that’s just out of line. I’m not even going to do the math and see how many grams of sugar I was consuming in a day previously.

So. Since eating something sweet after a meal is a lifelong habit of mine, I’ve cut out the mints and switched to squares of super dark chocolate in their place. It still contains sugar, but it’s much less than my beloved Peppermint Patties and pure dark chocolate has a lot of health benefits. If you get the right kind, the amount of added sugar can be zero or close to it.

I’m loving these dark chocolate bars from Trader Joe’s, which have about a half a gram of sugar per square. Since they’re so dark, the flavor is intense and you really only need one or two squares to get the sweet fix you’re looking for. Just make sure you read the label before buying, because there are similar looking ones that have just as much sugar as a Snickers bar.

They say cutting out sugar makes your taste buds change. True story: I splurged and had a Peppermint Patty about five days in, and I was floored by how sweet it tasted. I know it sounds crazy, but I haven’t wanted another one since (instead I want donuts, all of the donuts…).

So those are the two big things I’ve changed diet-wise. In the other areas of my diet I’m trying to just be generally better, like drinking water the majority of the time and eating snacks that are mostly protein instead of carbs.

It’s worth sharing that we went out of town to visit friends smack dab in the middle of these last two weeks and these rules went out the window. I ate pumpkin bread and drank beer and dunked my potato chips into giant scoops of ranch dip, and I had no guilt about it. But I got back on the wagon on Monday.

That’s the only way I think a change like this can work for me—it can’t be all or nothing. Even with that little sugar-laced interlude, I’m experiencing a noticeable difference in how I feel in the last two weeks.

The Bad: Negative Side Effects Of Cutting Out Sugar

I’ll talk about the good parts of cutting out sugar next, but first I’ll share the things that have sucked. There have been two of them: headaches and cravings.

The headaches blow and they happened right away. I read that this might happen; your body is going through withdrawal just like it does when you quit nicotine or another addictive substance.

To fight the headaches, friends suggested I drink lots of water and eat cheese, both of which I did, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I think maybe you just have to ride it out. The headaches have subsided this second week, thankfully.

As for cravings, I didn’t really have any the whole first week. I think I was all jazzed about my shiny new low-sugar life and the novelty of trying something new. This week it’s been craving city. I want donuts. Yes, I know I already said that. I also want pie. I also want ice cream, which doesn’t even make sense because it’s snowing out.

I’ll go ahead and have these foods if I really want them, but I’m trying to stick it out and remember how much better I feel without so much sugar in my diet.

So now for the good part: the positive changes.

The Good: Upsides Of Cutting Back On Sugar

The main reason I wanted to eat less sugar is not to lose weight or change the way I look. For me it’s 100% about how I feel, and if I’m being honest, I went into this feeling pretty crappy.

Almost every afternoon, I’d be seriously dragging. By 2 p.m. I could barely keep my eyes open, so much so that I thought I might be getting mono or something. Now I realize I was juiced up with like, half a cup of sugar by that point in the day, so it’s no wonder I was crashing.

My sleep was also jacked up. I’m not going to say that two weeks later I magically have perfect sleep, but I have noticed that most nights I’m zonking as soon as my head hits the pillow instead of lying awake with my wheels spinning.

And finally, to once again be brutally honest, I was having a little freak-out about how poorly I’d been eating in terms of my age and general health. I just turned 31, and while the number itself doesn’t scare me, it’s true what they say: once you hit your 30’s, your body just can’t hang like it used to.

A night of drinking instantly shows in my skin. A few days without a vegetable and I look and feel like death warmed over. I don’t want to feel worse with each passing year. I want to be one of those people who can still run a marathon (if, like, I ever go crazy and decide I want to do that) into their 50’s. Cutting out sugar was a big first step, and I hope to keep it up into 2019.

UPDATE: Click here to see how I’m doing two months into my journey of cutting out sugar!

Could you or have you ever given up sugar? Leave a comment and tell me how it went.