Giving up sugar in 2018

[Fabianthefabulous]

Tomorrow I am giving up sugar.

The plan is not to eat anything with sugar or sweeteners as an ingredient but I will be focusing on sweet tasting things, so will concentrate my efforts on foods with more than 5g sugar per 100g and not beat myself up if I eat a few savoury things with small amounts of sugar (eg crackers).

I am expecting my coke zero addiction to be one of the hardest things to stop but I want to loose the taste for sweet things not just replace sugar with sweeteners so it has to go!

Anyone want to join me?

I know there was a long running 'giving up sugar' thread from earlier in the year but I thought it would be good to have a new thread for those of us just starting (or restarting).

Would love some buddies or any advice or encouragement from anyone who has managed to give up sugar already.

Bagels, crumpets, most brown bread, Chinese sauces, I found it almost impossible to find any prepackaged sandwich or pasta dish in M&S/boots, baked beans, crackers.

49 weeks of no sugar, sweeteners or snacking here 👍🏻

Like the pp said I now find it is difficult to resist as a sausage roll! (Eg) even the quality street and mince pies didn't phase me over Christmas.

I do log what I eat but genuinely eat what I like for my three meals. I
stick to around 1800 cals per day.

I'm nearly 5 stone lighter too 😉

What stuff (savoury) should I cut out?

It's amazing what has sugar in it. Bread often does, salad dressing, ketchup and most condiments, baked beans, some savoury biscuits, some soups - you have to get used to reading labels on products and never 'assuming' that things won't have sugar in them. Many, many tinned, bottled or otherwise long-life items contain sugar.

Wow - 5 stone FabulouslyGlamorousFerret??? Well done you That's very inspirational.

More that I've remembered- pesto, curry paste, most brown bread, bbq sauce or anything that is glazed, marinated, spiced in bbq flavour, chinese 5 spice, nearly all packet spice kits (like sausage casserole/chilli etc).

Almost anything that is processed in any way has some in. And honey/agave counts as sugar.

Thanks Jun 🙂

so some questions for the people who have done this before and had weight loss results, do you never have anything sweet or some things occasionally? i have been reading about baking with dates instead of honey or sugar as its naturally sweet fruit you can still make some sweet things with it...or is it best to choose nuts/cheese or another savory treat instead? maybe just for a few weeks to get the cravings down? I dont drink, smoke ect so sugar is the only treat i have really, so would like something every now and again without going off the rails.

Silkybear, when I did it properly last year for 8/9 months I lost nearly two stones and regularly went out and had a few drinks (vodka and Diet Coke) or had a takeaway, or if I went out I'd pick the most healthy thing that I liked and occasionally had a dessert (often just ice cream - and sometimes just so others wouldn't try and push me into having something worse "because I was being too good"). I'm not saying I did that all the time, but probably did one or the other once a week. I travel a lot for work and stay in hotels, so am eating out frequently. I probably could have lost more quickly if I'd been stricter, but I was happy the way it went. I felt I got results and had some fun! However once I got near two stone off it plateaued a good while (I had another 2 stones to lose) and I may have to tweak it a bit stricter when I get to that point.

Oh, and I often put a teaspoonful of Honey in salad dressings I make or occasionally on toast.

I didn't eat anything with sugar in at all until May. The first sugar I had was on my birthday!

From then on I occasionally had something, bit hardly ever. I stopped missing it. But I had things like strawberries and cream still.

I also used dextrose powder as an alternative, which was recommended in the Sweet Poison book.

Well done fab, i want to be 6 and half stone lighter , can i ask Tufted at what point did you start with dextrose powder? And i have started getting my 'full switch' back does the feeling feel stronger as time goes on on is it say as soon as u start to notice feeling full. Im trying to decide if im eating for sake of it or really hungry. 16 days in.

I only eat breakfast, lunch and dinner, no puddings or snacks so I don't eat anything sweet, so need to sweeten artificially. The sweetest thing I eat is 'Fruit and Fibre' which I have in the mornings sometimes. I pick the raisins out though as I find them too sweet now!!

The reason I find it so easy to stick to is because there is no restriction on ingredient or portion control on my actual meals, this is the bit that has always caused me angst on 'diets' in the past.

There is no panic around my meals anymore (like coming home from work and having to find something slimming world friendly!) and because I eat so regularly I don't get cravings in between anymore, this is a side benefit of giving up sugar as well I suspect.

The omitting sugar and snacks is a small price to pay for eating three lovely no pressure meals a day.

I didnt have anything Inbetween my 3 meals first 2 weeks this week ive had nuts a few times and worried i didnt really need them more just habit of snacking and found more stressful so thinking of going back to 3 meals and just to include nuts fruit etc in a meal, is good to hear what its like on other side

@FabulouslyGlamorousFerret even without the raisins fruit and fibre contains quite a lot of sugar. Added sugar (in the bran flakes). The only cereals that contain no sugar is plain shredded wheat, grape nuts and porridge.

I still do have snacks, but not as often and not when feeling a craving for something.

I run (every day) at the moment and get really hungry still sometimes, but it is real hunger.

I didn't start using dextrose for a few months, but only because I didn't buy any before that.

Sweet Poison lays out the different kinds of sugar- fructose, glucose (sucrose). Fructose is the bad one. 50% of table sugar is fructose. Your body doesn't use it in the same way as glucose.

Fructose from real, whole fruit (not fruit juice or dried fruit) is fine in moderation as the skin, pulp, fibre helps the body digest it. And it fills you up sufficiently for the amount of sugar.

Added sugar in food is at least 50% fructose and is what messes with your hunger hormones. Glucose is different and can be metabolised by the body without messing with the hormones as much.

Hi all, I haven't posted on this thread yet but I was on the other one.

I started low sugar in Nov and lost 10lbs, stopped over Christmas, but have been back on it again since the start of Jan. Weighed myself today and I've a stone off which is great! Am setting this as a long term change to my lifestyle rather than a diet though, no going back!

Hi Taggy. That's great, well done. I'm at a stone off now (unfortunately I was well on my way to two stones in August, but hey ho, I'm back in the game again and have lost a couple of lbs in the two weeks since I started two weeks ago, so I'm feeling confident of being back there by spring).

I have been doing this since the beginning of the year and for the first time last night I got serious cravings for sugar. After fighting it for a few hours I had some cheese and pickled onions, pickled onions are surprisingly sweet at 7.1g sugar per 100g but I only had a few and it seemed to hit the spot. I didn't want to go down the artificial sweetener route.

Hi everyone how's it going? I'm doing ok still. Had one blip a few days ago (time of the month munchies) and had a couple of choc biscuits, but otherwise I'm ok. (Wish I liked pickled onions!) Doing well this week. The hotel I'm staying in had a dreadfully poor selection of veggie food, so I've walked 5 miles (there and back) each day to a nice cafe. Got to have helped!

not too bad, had started having a handful of nuts in the evenings after dinner and a square of dark choc (80%) a couple of times a week. im not going completely sugar free but ive been out for coffee a few times now where I would usually have cake/biscuits and its been quite easy to just not have it. the dark choc is good as it contains sugar but it tastes quite bitter, so i can enjoy one square and its enough. would quite happily eat 100g of milk choc in ten minutes. Im not perfect at the moment but I am making changes that hopefully will last. Im eating less processed food which can only be a good thing.

i do find I think about sugar alot in the day though, I hope over time my brain will find new things to think about. Im breastfeeding a 3 month old though so alot is down to lack of sleep and needing extra calories I think.

Im still going lost 11lb so far i made some Frutose free fudge last night was amazing! Sugar cravings r going, my taste buds have definitely changed, loving different herbs and spices

thesugarbreakup.com/2017/03/16/chocolate-nut-fudge-easter-treats/#more-6889

So I've now managed 2 full weeks without the obvious sugars such as chocolate and biscuits. No real cravings but have used nuts as a snack... lots of them. Yesterday I was so tired I could've slept all day? Could this be sugar related?

Now looking at all the hidden sugars... any obvious pitfalls to watch out for?

I've been lurking I was inspired by this thread at the beginning of January to give it a go, and it's been so much better than I anticipated! I love baking and would normally make a cake once or twice a week, maybe biscuits too. This month I've been having fun experimenting with savory baking instead, which I've never really done before so lots of cheesy biscuits, sausage rolls, veggie pies with rough puff pastry... I haven't found I've missed sweet things that much, but maybe it's all the cheese and butter I've been putting away instead! I have lost a couple of pounds, but the most amazing thing has been how much energy I have this month. I usually need a nap around the afternoon, which means during the work week I just feel tired half the day and at the weekend I conk out for an hour while the toddler is napping. But since giving up sugar I just haven't felt as tired, and the one time I did take a weekend-nap (more or less out of habit), I then couldn't get to sleep that night for hours. It's nice to loose some weight, but for me not being tired all the time is incredible. I'll definitely be continuing this past january, especially now my taste-buds seem to be adapting to less sugar too and I'm not craving it much. The only thing I do notice and miss is that I can't drink coffee without sugar, and I used to have at least one cup in the morning. I've switched to tea instead, and once or twice just had a coffee with a lot of hot milk, which isn't so bitter.
Anyway, I just wanted to say thanks to those of you who started this thread! It has been an inspiration.

Oh, and I'd definitely recommend "The Case Against Sugar" by Gary Taubes to learn more about which sugars are fine/not good to eat and what they do to your body. I'm not 100% on board with the full extent of his argument, but there is a lot of interesting and well researched info on the history and science of sugar, written in a way that's very accessible.

The book "Sweetness and Power" is also great, if you're interested in an academic (but still readable!) history of sugar from a historian/anthropologist. It's a classic for good reason.
pdf here

Chicken well done! That's great.

I read The Case Against Sugar last year, it was recommended on last year's thread. I got a bit bogged down with it. I found Paul McKenna's sugar book summarised it more simply for me (ignored the hypno but!)