Feb 13, 2024 | Productivity
Ok, technically I gave up added sugar, and technically I didn't give up 100%, and technically I'm doing it for longer than a month. Let me explain.
This year, I'm trying to do 12 experiments in 12 months. I want to shake my snow globe and see if I can unlock significant improvements in my life. To start, I decided to quit most added sugar. Everyone says it’s bad for you, but would removing it make me feel any different?
So many foods have added sugar in them that it's hard to completely eliminate it without being anal, spending 10 minutes at every meal forensically analyzing every nutrition label.
Instead, my goal is to stay under 20 grams of sugar every day.
This means I can't have dessert, sugary drinks, or any food with a decent amount of sugar, like baked beans or BBQ sauce.
(I am also avoiding artificial sweeteners like Stevia, along with natural sugar sources that are nutritionally bare, like honey and fruit juice. Those don't have added sugar, but I still want to avoid them because they lack the fiber and other health benefits that come with fruit.)
The assumption is that if I avoid all those things, I'll be below 20 grams of sugar. That doesn't mean I don't check nutrition labels, but I can go out to eat without worrying too much that my meal is shooting me over the limit.
There are no health benefits to consuming added sugar, so why would I want to? But it's easy to say that and hard to actually avoid it. (It tastes really good.)
So, the goal is two-fold:
One more thing. The goal is to do it for six months, not just January. January marked the jumping-off point, but 30 days is too short to see the long-term benefits.
If I only abstained in January, the dawn of the following month would bring a binge-fest of donuts, Reese's, and ice cream. I want to see if I can do it until the end of June. That will give my body and tastebuds time to break the addiction, hopefully for good.
Before January, there wasn't a day that went by that I didn't want a sweet treat to finish my dinner (and my lunch and breakfast).
Muffins at breakfast, BBQ wings for lunch, and Oreos after dinner. I wanted them all.
And it isn't 100% my fault.
The food industry wants you to consume as much as possible, and it's no secret how they'll get you to do that.
So they advertise it to you every day, ensure that any celebration includes sugar in its traditions, and sneak sugar into foods you'd never expect.
How are you supposed to fight against this? Willpower?
Good luck.
During week one, things were looking bleak. I grieved as my family ate cake at our New Year's party. I sobbed when I saw Blue Bell released a new flavor. A depressive episode followed the day that I ordered a 12-count at Chick-fil-A without lemonade.
Besides the obvious stuff, giving up my standard "healthy-ish" snacks and meals because of their sneaky sugar content was one of the biggest struggles early on. Followed closely by the birthday party, where I had to stare down a Boston cream cake in all its glory.
I forgot to take a picture of the cake, but DALLE was able to recreate exactly what it looked like.
But I got through that week, and things started to get better. Now, it's a pretty smooth ride.
The only reason I've succeeded so far is by making it a big deal. I told everyone in my life that I was giving up sugar and turned it into a challenge with a few other people.
I told my mom, I told my coworkers, I told my best friends, and I told my worst friends. Everyone knew that I was doing it.
If you tell everyone you know that you're giving up sugar for six months, your pride is going to work overtime to make sure it happens. I don't want to be the person stuffing his face with cake six weeks into the challenge, explaining all the totally legit reasons I gave up and how it's totally for the best and that I learned so much even in those six weeks.
I think about that scenario when it gets hard, and it keeps me in line.
The other key point was having that 20-gram buffer. I would have quit very early on if I had to make our waiter recite every ingredient of every dish or avoid my favorite Chipotle bowl because fajita veggies have two grams of added sugar for some dumb reason.
With those two points in mind, it’s been easier than I thought it would be.
The best qualitative example of how my life changed occurred when I went on a weekend trip with friends.
Trips are usually my time to go on a sugar bender, stuffing my face with ice cream, cookies, cookie ice cream, etc.
But I went on a weekend trip in January and found myself in the produce aisle instead of the ice cream aisle. We picked out different berries and explored fruits we hadn't eaten in a while. That was a fundamental change in mindset.
Instead of leading to a ton of extra calories, this trip led to extra fruit. I'm not upset about that.
My biggest quantitative benefit was losing 9 pounds just by avoiding sugar. I've still had plenty of meals where I've consumed a lot of calories, yet I've still lost weight.
I've also had more energy. I've gotten less sleep on average over the past month while having the same or slightly more energy. I don't have as much brain fog at night, and I don't need to rely on caffeine as much.
Overall, month one was a success. We'll see how the next five go!
Eat a cookie for me,
Alex
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