Hello, everyone! Welcome to my craziness, where I decided in the last month to make my life more crazy of my own free will!
As you can tell by the title, it is day 28 of no sugar. Yes, I voluntarily decided to undergo an experiment on myself by removing all processed sugar from my diet, and mostly have done so for 28 days. I did break a bit on day 3 as my mom made homemade pudding that I just did NOT want to say no to. But considering the amount of sugar I had daily before I started, I still count it a win!
Why would I decide to remove sugar from my diet when sugar was giving me so much happiness in the hectic and crazy house that I live in? Well... because it was the one thing I was reaching for before anything else, and that isn't good. Also, I was noticing some not-so-good effects in my body aside from the normal expectations that eating an abundance of sugar might give. My health was on the decline, and all the things I was looking at was suggesting my liver might just need some help. What was the biggest thing I could change that would benefit my liver? Cutting out sugar. I also realized it was the day after the start of Lent, which is a time where one would traditionally cut something out of one's life to focus on preparing for the death and resurrection of Christ. I don't usually observe Lent as I'm not Catholic, but I like the idea of preparing for one of the biggest events in human history, and so I decided to take the plunge.
So what does 28 days with no sugar look like? Right now, it's actually not so bad! I will admit I really miss dark chocolate. I see it every time I open the cabinet to get something for the kids. I also just quit snacking altogether as it is a lot more work to make all the food for myself from scratch, and I just can't bring myself to do it. I have been avoiding a lot more this last week as well (white flour, tortilla chips, noodles, basically anything with flour that isn't my homemade sourdough, corn), starting day 25, so that has made things a bit more difficult, but cravings are practically gone, and I have noticed many other positives that I don't even mind! However, it wasn't always this way.
Day 3 - I caved. That pudding just looked and smelled so good, so I had a little bit. And then I took a little bit more. And then I stopped, because I figured even though I'm cheating, I shouldn't cheat THAT much.
Day 4 - Why does the chocolate smell SO GOOD?! The kids asking for cookies and not being able to have any myself was torture!
Day 5 - The muscle aches and headaches started. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Why was I so sore? I hadn't exercised at all, and going for walks in the morning never bothered me. Why was my head hurting? I was taking ibuprofen to deal with it because I couldn't sleep.
Day 7 - Still had headaches, but after looking things up I recognized what was happening as sugar withdrawal! I knew that was a thing, but I didn't have that the last time I cut sugar as far as I could remember... then again, I'm also cutting out sweeteners like honey and maple syrup, which I did NOT do last time, so that might be it. I do still eat fruit! Also, M (who is practically an adult already) found a recipe for chia seed pudding that she made me (it uses half a banana, a cup of milk, 2 tsp cocoa powder, and 3 tbsp chia seeds and lasts me a couple of days). It really helped with my chocolate cravings!
Day 9 - No more headaches and body aches today! That's nice!
Day 10 - Potluck at church. I got some desserts for my little kids, but avoided them myself. I did NOT want to undo everything by eating treats now that I was over that hump!
Day 11 - Measured and weighed myself and found I lost 2 lbs and 1 inch (from about a month ago, but still)! I was SO excited, I started bugging my husband to join me. He didn't seem enthused.
Day 14 - I finally convinced my husband to join me! Yay! We're in this together! Took his measurements before hand (he's starting on my day 15) so we can track his progress properly, as I just jumped in myself without doing that. Oops. He's not thrilled, but since he was actually diagnosed with having fatty liver, I am desperately hoping he will see some improvements from this. We are going to do this until Easter. Seeing that end date helped him to say yes, because he does love Easter goodies. Who am I kidding, so do I.
Day 17 - I'm not struggling with this much anymore at all! I'm finding that I have an easier time getting up in the morning, and my motivation is improving! It's fantastic! My husband is happy to find out that coffee is still ok for him, and actually even considered good for the liver if it is a good quality and not filled with sugar. He cut out the hot chocolate powder he always added to it and is having his daily 2 cups with milk only. Honestly, it smells so good! I wish I liked coffee.
Day 21 - I felt rather depressed today. I took my measurements again and found that nothing has changed. Poo. Hubby lost 1/2 inch, so that's good! Forgot to scale him, though. I've been learning the differences in visceral and subcutaneous fat. Weirdly, I've been measuring myself in 2 ways due to my diastasis (it makes it difficult to get a proper measurement standing as all my organs push everything forward).
Day 24 - I figured I wanted to ramp up our detoxing of the liver, so for the next week, starting day 25, I wanted to do MORE (it kinda helps that I have a 1 week detox on my 101 in 1001 list to do with my husband, so why not turn this into something). Using my research, I wanted us to do the following: drink 16 oz of water first thing in the morning with 2 Tbsp lemon juice at least 30 minutes before eating anything (also trying to drink more water during the day than I have been); cut out all white flour, corn, and peanut butter (unless the peanut butter was organic, which my husband promptly went to purchase when in town the next day); decrease the highly sugary fruit; NO fried or prepackaged foods (which meant no more tortilla chips); and we were going to do 20 minute walks plus 10 minutes of strength training daily. I think I just like challenges or something.
Day 25 - We started our more rigorous plan. I measured my diastasis at 4 fingers wide, and found a 10 minute daily workout that is meant to help fix it in about 3 weeks. We'll see. I started doing it along with walking 10 minutes each morning right after my lemon water, and 10 minutes at some other time of day. Also, weirdly, I'm getting rather itchy legs in the evening. I haven't had this in years.
Day 26 - I am a grumpy pants. Really grumpy. I've not been having the chia pudding as I was trying to eliminate bananas for myself due to their higher sugar content (and it takes a couple of hours before you can eat it), but I am REALLY grumpy. I started taking my magnesium powder in the evenings so I don't really crave the chocolate anymore, but still. After supper I felt so gross. I still don't understand why. I think it's because I'm not getting much for quick carbs anymore. I ended up eating a single date as a kind of 'dessert' with a bit of peanut butter on top. That helped immediately, but dates have a high sugar content, so I don't want to make this into a habit! Oh, and my itchy legs got even worse. I have been using lotion, but during the night I had to resort to putting a cold pack on them to help relieve the itch. Oh, and it seems I have a bit of swelling in my ankles, too. Why?!
Day 27 - I took my measurements again. My standing waist measurement didn't change. Not a bit. My weight decreased by maybe 1/2 lb, which isn't really much so I didn't think much of it. Now the kicker for me was my laying down measurement... it was 2 inches lower than day 11! That is a substantial difference! I looked up why I would have such a strange difference in my waist numbers, and it turns out that my diastasis is definitely affecting things when I stand up, so fixing it should really help, but also it is likely that the 2 inches I lost is in visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat tends to move about and settle depending on if laying down or standing up, so my 1 inch lost initially might have been there, but the visceral fat is pretty settled in among the organs and feels pretty solid. To me, this is kind of a big deal! After all, that is the unhealthy fat I wanted to get rid of! I'm also thinking the itchy legs might be a detox effect. I scratched my legs a bit much this evening and made them bleed. Oops. Really trying to ramp up my water to help that.
And so that brings me to today! I have chia pudding in the fridge for later (because I'll likely need some kind of pick-me-up this evening). Today is 4H for M, so my husband takes her and they are gone all evening until 9:30. This week has been a struggle due to so many evenings where someone needs to be somewhere by 7, which is our normal supper time, so I've been trying to get supper ready for 5:30 three days of the week which is really odd. And tomorrow I'll need to make the sourdough pizza crust again so all three of us can eat it (M is gluten free, except she can eat whole wheat sourdough which I've been making for years now, so that's nice). I've been really struggling in the evenings alone with all the younger kids. My patience is low, I'm irritable, and the noise level is reaching deafening levels some days. It's a lot.
Anyway, that has been my 4 week experience with no sugar so far! I've got 2 weeks to go! I'll need to see how this diastasis workout does, and how well things work for my husband as well. Honestly, if you can get past the first week, it's not nearly as hard after that. And my motivation is much improved! As an example, my 'to do' list usually has at least half a dozen overdue items on it that I just don't want to be bothered with, and I am down to one item as of yesterday! Yay!
We'll see if I continue after Easter... my plan is to do so on weekdays, but allow myself freedoms on the weekends.
Ta Ta For Now!
