Half Assed Fitness

Amazingly going sugar free of the 31 days of January turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. As a reminder, my rules for sugar free were this:

• No refined sugar
• No corn syrup
• No high fructose corn syrup
• No sugar substitutes
• Fruit OK
• Carbs OK
• Natural sugars OK

I had been on kind of a sugar bender through the holidays and thought I would have a much harder time giving it up.

For the first 5 days or so I ate a lot of fruit. I wasn't getting the refined sugars anymore so I had to up the natural sugars to kind of balance things out. After that I still ate a few pieces of fruit each day but not as much for the sugar as just to have something to snack on.

The most unusual part of the whole thing to me was how much hungrier I felt in general. I had to keep a close eye on my calorie intake because I was overly hungry the entire time. My theory on this is that sugar kind of numbs your hunger. Coffee will do the same thing for me. I can stave off eating with coffee for awhile, not forever.

So one of the gains that I made was an awareness of how much sugar is around and how often I reach for it out of habit. I also learned that there are many natural alternatives and natural sugar doesn't wreak havoc on your system like refined sugar does. I didn't experience the usual highs and lows in my mood or energy levels that had become part of my life. That was a huge thing.

Typically a "sugar free" diet consists of removing ALL sugars and anything that gets converted into sugar by the body as well.

White rice, pancakes, bread, corn flakes, crackers, parsnips, and potatoes are some of the foods that act like sugar in your body.

This is borderline crazy to me. The rational part of me knew there was no way I could possible cut ALL of these without failure.

I've decided to continue on with refined sugar free and make it part of my life. How about you? Anybody else have a different experience?



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I've never really believed in substitutes. Why would you eat the fake version over the real version? I eat vegetarian on occasion and I've always wondered why all vegetable protein is flavored and molded to look like meat?

Anyway, the sugar free thing is what brought me to this idea again. I was contemplating sugar free substitutes for desserts and looked into what is in them if there is no sugar. Well, it turns out there are things like Splenda in them which is a sugar substitute. Some of these have a pretty bad reputation and after doing some reading, I've decided that no, there will be no sugar substitutes. If I'm not going to have sugar, I'm not going to have something "sugar like".

I'm going all natural baby!

The reason this is a rude awakening is because I've been drinking Hansen's Diest soda because it is calorie free. I never really looked at it that closely because all I cared about was the calories. Well, it's made with Splenda. Damn. I love this stuff but I'm not excited about the Splenda.

More research has led me to see that this is really my goal:

Replace refined sugars with natural sugars

Get in the habit of reading labels and avoid products made with white sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, dextrose, fructose, and ALL artificial sweeteners. Instead use natural sweeteners, including pure maple syrup, molasses, stevia, Rapadura (dehydrated cane sugar juice) or raw unfiltered honey. Many health food stores offer products made with natural sweeteners, like cookies and ice cream, and even licorice, although it is better to make your own. Use this step to help you become acquainted with all the natural alternatives to replace refined sugar products.

This comes from a great article called Replacing Refined Sugars with Natural Sugars One Step At a Time by Lori Lipinski. Her article goes through the stages of a day on sugar and some of the health concerns we should be aware of.

Sugar has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. Not only does it totally lack nutrients, but when you eat sugar it actually robs your body of nutrients-- vitamins, minerals and even enzymes.

Sure sugar may be temporarily pleasing to the taste buds, but the rest of the body suffers for it. The sad thing is that most people are not aware of the devastating effects that excess sugar consumption has on the body.

Yikes, I knew it wasn't really all that good for me but I had no idea it was this bad. I may have to go more than 31 days after the trial. We'll see what happens.


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This is a juice recipe that I learned from The 3-Day Energy Fast: Cleanse Your Body, Clear Your Mind, and Claim Your Spirit.

This recipe is made with a juicer. I'm not sure if there is a way to make it without one.

Ingredients:
6 Granny Smith or Red Delicious apples
1 handful blueberries
1 handful raspberries
1 handful strawberries
1 sprig of mint (optional)
1/2 lime
Juice in juicer. Makes about 20oz.

Calories: 625

That's kind of a lot of calories for one dessert. A piece of pumpkin pie is only about 300. But it's sugar-free (other than natural sugars) and it's fruit which is healthy. The calories vary depending on the size of the apples you use, and it could easily be cut in half. I would suggest making half as much rather than trying to save half, I don't think it keeps real well.


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So I've decided to go sugar free for the month of January. I'm mulling it over in my mind already because I need to wrap my mind around it, prepare, and absorb the idea. That's just the way my brain works.

I know this is going to be a hard one. I've had at least one dessert/sweet/candy of some kind every day since I quit drinking. My theory behind this is that I was getting a lot of sugar in alcohol and I've been craving it ever since.

While researching recipes for sugar free desserts I found a few that had Cool Whip in them. Cool Whip? Isn't that just whipped sugar? I started doing some checking and this is what I found: Cool Whip is made of water, corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated coconut and palm kernel oil (CPKO), sodium caseinate, vanilla extract, xanthan and guar gums, polysorbate 60 (glycosperse), and beta carotene. Yum?

Ok, sugar isn't specifically listed here but corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup are almost synonymous with sugar, aren't they? I found a good article called High fructose corn syrup vs pure sugar is one worse than the other? It discusses the fact that they are both sweeteners whereas sugar is natural while high fructose corn syrup is not due to the processing it goes through. But in essence, it's sugar and I am going to exclude it during my 31 days sugar free.

Wish me luck. I think this will be harder than quitting drinking in a way. With drinking, there were obvious negative drawbacks such as hangover, difficulty getting motivated in the morning, etc. that you don't have with sugar. It's just good.

I may have to employ the same tactics I used for quitting drinking though. If you are interested in the method I used please visit this website. The information provided made it practically easy to quit a very destructive 20 year problem that I had. I know it can help anyone with an open mind and a real desire to quit any bad habit. Like sugar.



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I've been thinking about cutting sugar out of my diet. (Coffee too but I'm not ready to go there just yet.) Today I ran across an article by Zen to Fitness called 30 Day Sugar Free Challenge and it brought this idea back into focus for me.

I believe there are many reasons to cut sugar, whether you are overweight or not. For some it can be a source of extra calories and for others it's downright dangerous. In general it's one of those things that is easy to over indulge in and while it's very pleasurable and delicious, it's not really healthy.

Currently even though I take in some amount of sugar everyday, I am staying inside of my maintenance weight calorie goal so I doubt I will see any significant changes in my weight but maybe. I'm not really sure what kind of results I'll see but that's what 30 day trials are for!

In the Zen to Fitness article he mentions

This January marks the beginning of International Sugar Free Month and the 30 Sugar Free Days Challenge, organized by Dr. Scott Olson, ND author of the book Sugarettes, as a way to bring awareness to the addictive qualities of sugar and the health hazards of that addiction.

I'm going to go ahead and do the 30 Sugar Free Challenge in January. A couple of modifications though; there are 31 days in January so I'm going to make mine a 31 day challenge. The other thing is that while I like a challenge, and while I like Dr. Olson's idea of sugar free, there is something slightly ooky about the info on his website that leaves me feeling like I've been pitched a too-good-to-be-true gimmicky weight loss scam so I'm just going to cut out sugar in it's simplest form rather than follow his plan specifically.

• No Sugar
• No chocolate
• No ice cream
• No candy
• No cakes or cookies
• No mochas or lattes

I didn't list soda because I never drink it anyway.

So, I'm probably not going to post daily lists of what I do eat like in the vegetarian challenge but I will report weekly and let you know how I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing and if there are any significant physical results from this experiment.

Feel free to join me, and report your results in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.

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