9 days ago, I stopped eating sugar again.
All sugar.
The sugar free zone means NO:
- chocolate
- cakes
- biscuits
- ice cream
- yogurt
- lollies
- honey
- maple syrup
Nil, nada, nought, nothing. Zip.
Diddly-squat.
Ditching sugar is not an easy task, as not only is sugar in all the fun stuff – including almost every recipe I’ve ripped out of a foodie magazine, sugar is a staple ingredient in most everyday foods, even the organic stuff.
So it’s back to basics:
- Full-fat versions of cheese.
- Meat, sugar-free dairy products,
- ALL the vegetables.
- And a little bit of fruit. (The fibre in whole fruit helps to digest the frustose so you don’t get the insulin spike).
While one bonus of a sugar free eating is the likely disappearance of a few pesky kilos, my goal of removing sugar is more about long-term health, vitality, and diabetes prevention. (It runs in our family)
I’ve done it before, 7 years without a single piece of chocolate crossing my lips, but let sugar creep back in when I broke the chocolate drought in 2010!
Sugar cravings returned with a vengeance and I had no control whatsoever.
My breakthrough in getting over the insatiable cravings then was something called “The One Day Diet”.
Inspired by the article by Dr Mehmet Oz in a recent Good Housekeeping, the idea captured my attention.
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/health/diet-nutrition/advice/a13312/dr-oz-one-day-diet/
It is this.
Anyone can do anything for ONE DAY.
The winning concept of this strategy is that on the one-day diet, every day is the first day.
And, as Dr Oz says, if you can do it for one day, you’ll gain the “confidence and courage to try it for one more day”
With a few tactical moves, such as making sure there’s no easy access to sugar-filled junk, I can easily overcome my cravings for sugar IF I know it is just for one day and tomorrow I can eat it if I want to.
Of course, tomorrow is the start of the next one-day diet too.
One day by one day, you break the habit and stop the cycle of sugar highs and crashes until the cravings cease.
And each day of no sugar stacks upon the one before, and soon enough, you’ve established a new identity as a healthy person who chooses better.
There’s a caveat in this kind of eating plan that bodes well for success too.
If you do choose to eat sugar one day, it matters little to the chain of sugar-free days, so long as you jump back on and treat tomorrow as a completely fresh start to your one-day diet. So each day, we are presented with an opportunity to do it differently and take charge of our health.
The one day diet strategy, coupled with a mantra of “What would a healthy person do?”, are two of the best practical tools in my “healthy lifestyle” toolbox today. They might become yours too.