Quitting Sugar

I quit sugar almost a year ago today. And when I say sugar, I mean ALL SUGAR except for fresh fruit.  I never really ate refined sugars anyway so for me quitting sugar involved cutting out dried fruit/date balls, maple syrup, rice malt syrup, rapadura sugar etc ​

Don't get me wrong - if we go out and someone makes me dessert, I'll still eat it.  If my kids make something at school and want me to try it, I still will.  If we go on holidays, I'll indulge here and there.  Life is to be lived after all.  But on a day to day basis my diet doesn't consist of anything sweet apart from a couple of pieces of fresh fruit. I find it much easier this way as my body no longer craves sweet foods, and I feel a lot better for it.  

For me, this whole quitting sugar started as a sort of experiment.  I did a post xmas/summer holidays 'get myself back on track' detox with the aim of trying to also correct some imbalanced hormones, and remove any possible candida.  I'm not normally a detoxer as I don't drink alcohol, coffee or tea, don't eat meat, and generally eat a pretty clean diet, so I haven't really ever felt the need to to do it, but I was always fearful of doing a candida detox diet as it eliminates pretty much all fruit too.

After 4 weeks on the diet, I reintroduced 2 pieces of fruit a day, and after another 2 weeks, I was all ready to bring back in my nut/seed/date balls, and treats made with 'healthy' sweeteners, but came to a startling realisation - not only had I survived my first proper detox, but I no longer wanted to bring the sweet foods back in....  and one year on I still have no desire to reintroduce them to my daily diet.

I'm sure many people reading this will see my take on it as extremist - but  I'm an all or nothing kind of person - so this approach suits me!

The emerging evidence on the impact sugars play on our health is hard to ignore.  They are possibly the biggest health risk of our era.  For anyone who hasn't watched That Sugar Film, or read That Sugar Book - I highly suggest you do.  I actually only just recently read the book prior to Christmas, and it validated a lot of what I had already determined from the 9mths I had been sugar free.  

In my opinion cutting out sugars is a very worthwile experiment to do.  Four weeks of NO sugars will make a huge difference to how you feel.  Initially the difference will be that you feel like CRAP!  Your body will go into turmoil, you may get headaches, you may be a bit emotionally unstable and you may regret starting!  But after a period of time, you will find that foods you once craved no longer hold the same appeal, and your taste buds have changed.   What have you got to lose? (Except for maybe a few kgs, , some belly fat and your cravings!)

Rebecca Milham
Naturopath
The Natural Health and Wellness Clinic


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