My Banishing Sugar Journey
To Chip or Not to Chip
Some lessons learned in my 1st grocery shopping since banishing sugar from my life
Did I come home with cookies?
Did I come home with ice cream?
It hadn’t even been 48 hours since I’d publicly proclaimed here on Medium that I was banishing sugar from my life. And now I needed to go buy groceries, while my body was still craving a sugar fix.
Could I do it? Could I hit the check out lane without a sugary product in my cart?
First, to clarify, in my banishing sugar from my life, I’m not cutting out ALL sugar. I’m cutting out, or at least drastically cutting down the ADDED SUGARS in what I eat.
The recommended daily amounts of ‘ADDED SUGARS’ for women is LESS THAN 25 grams of added sugar a day. On the rare days that I actually looked at what I’d consumed (believe me, this was an almost nonexistent occurrence), I’d easily consumed well over 100 grams of added sugar, if not more than that.
There just wasn’t a candy bar or bowl of ice cream that I didn’t like.
And even though I’d cut out sodas several months ago, when I was drinking those, I could happily enjoy a 20-ounce bottle of Vanilla Coke every day. Even just with keeping it at ONE — that’s still 77 grams — THREE times the recommended amount before I even walked out the door in the morning. Add a fast-food meal for lunch. A dinner with equally high amounts of added sugar. A candy bar in between. A bowl of ice cream for dessert.
Bowl? Ha! On a ‘rough day’ it most likely the whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s. There’s 31 grams in a pint of ‘Everything But The…’.
Yep. Just one soda and one pint of ice cream and I’m over 100 grams — FOUR times the recommended amount and I haven’t even started counting the other amounts.
My favorite Walmart chocolate chip cookies? Those were going to be the BIG TEST for me on my shopping trip. The serving size is one cookie, for 14 grams of added sugar. But who can eat just one? Not this gal. Easily two.
You know, writing this all out, I see that 100 grams a day, four times the recommended amounts are probably the lowest days I had. Most likely I exceeded even 100 grams.
But you know how it is when sugar is calling your name! I could hear those cookies yelling at me clear across the store. Now if I could avoid the bakery area, I’d stand a better chance at skipping them.
But…I needed bananas. And the bananas are within clear view of those luscious, soft, yummyicious cookies. Cookies I hadn’t had for several days.
Yes, this gal was going through withdrawal symptoms something fierce.
I shopped when I got off work that day at 2 pm. At 9 pm that evening, it would be 48 hours since I’d finished the last two little Halloween leftover candy bars in my drawer. So, it had only been 41 hours since I’d consumed any sugar.
But who’s counting?
POTATO CHIPS
After I plopped the kitty food bag in my cart, I headed to the grocery side of the store.
It was showdown time.
I passed a four-way display of potato chips.
Potato chips! I could get those.
I didn’t have any at home. They wouldn’t have any added sugar. Heck, no sugar at all. And I could munch on that and get my ‘snack fix’. Not a candy bar, but it might fulfill the emotional part of my sugar addiction.
I picked up a bag and double checked the ingredients.
Nope. Virtually no sugar.
But then the REAL FOOD mantra that Dr. Lustig has been touting in his books ran through my brain.
Real Food!
Potato chips may not have any toxic sugar. But they also didn’t have any nutritional value. Yes, they were created from potatoes — a very real food. But by the time they were processed and made into chips — nope, not a spec of any nutrients remained.
That’s when I realized that I was focusing on the wrong thing. Yes, I needed to look at the added sugar contents, but I really needed to concentrate on REAL FOOD — no processed foods.
Ugh, this was going to be harder than I thought.
POPCORN
The idea of popcorn briefly surfaced as I crossed the chip idea off my list. Again, this was a real food, that started with corn. There was possibly a small amount of sugar in the flavorings, but basically no sugar. But about a week ago I’d watched a YouTube video that compared four different snack foods and related what they all did with glucose levels.
Dr. Becky Gillaspy tested hard boiled eggs, almonds, dark chocolate and popcorn.
Even though a big bowl of popcorn sounds like the healthier option, the way our bodies react to consuming popcorn made it the worst of these four choices.
I passed on the popcorn too.
HONEY
I was doing pretty good. Better than I expected. I still didn’t have any cookies or ice cream in my cart. But then I looked at my list and saw ….honey.
I only buy raw, unprocessed honey. Never processed honey.
And honey is found in nature. From bees, not from plants. So my feeling was that it’s a very natural substance.
It’s got to be ‘real food’, right?
I’ve used raw, unprocessed honey instead of sugar in my teas for probably close to 20 years, believing it was the healthiest sweetening option.
But yet…if I’m looking at the sugar part of the equation, honey is just as bad as sugar. Sugar is sugar is sugar. And my body is going to react to the honey the same way as added sugars in my tea would be.
I try to drink 16 ounces of green tea every day. There are so many health benefits associated with green tea. I want to continue with that.
But…I just can’t bear unsweetened tea. And I knew if I tried to switch totally to unsweetened, I’d likely stop drinking my green tea.
I’d already cut down the amount of honey I was using. Before, for a 16-ounce tea, I’d use about 3–4 tablespoons of honey to sweeten it. But seeing that the honey had 17 grams of sugar — per tablespoon! — and as I was getting close to the end of my jar, I’d already reduced the amount down to 2 tablespoons.
Instead of crossing honey off my list, I decided to cut the honey down to 1-tablespoon. That 17 grams is still a huge portion of the recommended maximum of 25 grams. But if I can be vigilant about keeping the other added sugars either down, or completely out, of my life, then I reasoned that I could get the honey and just be very, very careful with it.
As images of Elmer Fudd sneaking along saying “Be vewy, vewy careful….” flash through my brain…
I came home with the honey.
But I didn’t come home with any cookies, candy, ice cream, or any other pies or snacks.
Just a note about the green tea results a few days later. (Bleeeeech!!!) I add cinnamon in my green tea too, so I bumped up the cinnamon a bit. I did reduce the amount to 1-tablespoon. It’s not as tasty and sweet as I like, but it’s tolerable.
I also know that as I adapt to this and get my taste buds readjusted to a life that’s not as sugar oriented, that I’ll start enjoying the tea again and I think that I’ll be able to eventually cut out the honey completely. Maybe by the end of this jar?
A special note to all the people that read my initial post about banishing sugar from my life last week. So many of you were encouraging and supportive. And many of you mentioned wanting to at least trim back the sugar consumption some. So, I know I’m not alone out there fighting sugar addiction.
That’s why I thought I’d do a follow up here and share some of the things that I’m finding that I’m struggling with on this ‘Banishing Sugar Journey.’
I realize that even though I survived my first shopping expedition successfully and didn’t buy any of the products that were calling out to me so lovingly, this is still a DAY-TO-DAY journey. Each time I steer my shopping cart through the store I’m going to find new battles and new challenges.
It’s been just a week. A successful week. So far. But I know the finish line where sugar doesn’t tempt me is still in the far-off distance.
I can do this!
If you’re one that commented and said that you’d like to reduce the sugar that passes your lips,
You can do this too!
