Why I’m doing a sugar detox
- To eat less.
- To improve my mood.
- To improve my gut health.
- To manage my blood sugar to reduce the risk of chronic disease and balance my hormones.
- To manage my emotional cravings by dealing with the reasons behind the emotions rather than masking them with food.
I was on a slippery slope to consuming junk food. My version of junk food may be different to yours, whilst I do allow myself to eat quality dark chocolate, I had started to have the odd cake or three now we are going out and about more. This led to a craving for more sugary snacks which were then being brought back into the house. Eat Natural bars are not eating naturally really, they contain added sugar. The Nakd bars are slightly better as the sugar comes from dates and raisins, but I can make something similar myself using just dates and more nuts and seeds. Once I’ve started this daily habit of opening a wrapper then I’m only two steps away from eating ice cream from the tub. So, all this processed stuff is not going to be eaten at all this month!
What I’m hoping to achieve and how I can track this.
| Goal | Tracker |
| Lose weight. Just a kg or 2 nothing major. | The scales will tell me. |
| Reset my tastebuds so that the sweetness of fruit and veg is more obvious and appealing. | When I’m enjoying celery sticks and nut butter again. |
| Create some new healthy quick meals. | I’ll be posting them on Insta. |
| Stop the need for snacking. | I’ll keep a food diary. |
| Learn to sit with my emotions. | Keeping a journal. |
| Improve my gut health and alleviate IBS symptoms. | My stomach will tell me. |
| Feel less low, less often. | Keeping a journal. |
| Reduce tooth decay. | Stop needing fillings. |
Removing added sugars from my diet and balancing my blood sugar gives me the focus to consume the right foods. Building a nutritious way of eating is the cornerstone of my health journey. This is in line with my values for the year of focus, consistency, and responsibility. I feel a way off these values in lots of areas of my life, but food seems to pull them all together and help with all the other stuff.
I came across this lady recently. I like her style.
“Right now, choosing to be healthy is a revolutionary and socially deviant act.
It requires unconventional strategies and non-conformist choices. It requires extraordinary awareness, moxie, self-compassion, and resilience.” Pilar Gerasimo
Food for thought….Is sugar consumption the new smoking?
Perhaps? The sugar industry is very influential at lobbying and raising huge amounts of cash for governments. They have recently delayed the latest implementation to the Health and Care Act 2022, as the food industry were ‘not ready’ for the advertising ban pre-9pm on foods high in sugar, fat, and salt. Oh and there was a delay in getting Royal Assent, so it won’t happen until 2024! Meanwhile our kids pester us for smarties and pile on the pounds. The white stuff (sugar) is very addictive, delivering big hits of dopamine to our brain, it rots your teeth, can cause cancer, and shorten your life. Sounds like smoking?!
Fat was once wrongly labelled as the baddie of the western food world, due to research commissioned by the Sugar Association in the US in 1967. As the newly burgeoning food industry of the 1970’s jostled for your pounds, they jumped on the low-fat food phenomenon and replaced all the tasty, good fat with equally tasty but mostly processed/added sugars in its place.
Whilst we do need natural sugars or carbohydrates to function, our food system has been overrun with sugar in every packaged product out there. Sugar is wonderful at making food taste better and acts as a preservative extending the shelf life of many products. However, sugar at high levels is not wonderful for our bodies in many ways. Excess sugar makes us fat and causes inflammation. Fat doesn’t make us fat, although bad fats cause inflammation, but that’s another blog.
This is why it’s healthy to think about how much sugar we are consuming. But not to obsess over it, just have a think, make some small changes which are going to be manageable, and see how you feel.
Awareness is the first step to change. We are hard wired to crave sugar. Yet there is no need for this evolutionary trait in our modern society.
Do you ever feel hunger anymore? Hunger is natural, everyone should know what it feels like. If you felt hunger in the last day or two, great. How about doing a little experiment to see how long it takes you to feel hunger by delaying breakfast or skipping lunch? Does that hunger last, or come and go? How does it make you feel, can you cope, or do you feel ill? If you feel unwell it’s likely you’re on the blood sugar roller coaster and your body doesn’t know how to dip into your fat burning stores. Our current way of eating – breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, has led to little time for our body to ever get hungry. How much of those six options are we eating foods, junk or otherwise, with added or lots of sugars and refined carbohydrates? Perhaps write yourself a food diary to see what you really eat. We always underestimate what we eat unless you have an eating disorder such as anorexia, in which case this article is not aimed at you, and I really hope that you are able to get support.
The blood sugar roller coaster
When we eat our blood sugar increases and the pancreas secretes insulin to deal with the sugar. This is the key to unlock the place to store glucose either in muscles or fat cells, if it is not needed by the liver. What we eat determines how much sugar is released, when it is released, and for how long it stays there and whether it comes back to baseline or dips below before returning. Minimising the peaks and troughs of this roller coaster is what we’re aiming for to feel well. For more info see this article from Zoe. Whilst managing your sugar intake is only one part of a healthy balance diet, if you can get this on track then the rest is much more achievable. See Jessie Inchauspé, the Glucose Goddess’s, new book and social media pages. You can even download a weeks meal plan for best blood sugar balance.
Blood sugar roller coasters akin to ‘The Big One’ in Blackpool can lead to a multitude of issues down the line and we’d all be better to address these now before we experience their symptoms. Easier said than done until you have a diagnosis of pre-diabetes or high blood pressure! To focus on the positives, better glucose management can give us fewer cravings, better energy, more restful sleep, slower ageing, improved fertility and sex hormones, better skin, fewer wrinkles, healthier heart, less cognitive decline, fewer menopause symptoms, easier management of gestational diabetes and type 1 diabetes, and less risk of type 2 diabetes. Who wouldn’t want that?!
The obvious sugar laden products to avoid:
- sugary drinks (pop, energy drinks, fruit juice, smoothies, cordial, syrup in coffee, bubble tea, flavoured milk drinks, yakult etc.)
- baked goods (biscuits, cakes, pastries, doughnuts, flapjack, cereal bars etc.)
- confectionery
- ice cream
- desserts, custard
- jam, honey, chocolate spread, chutney (sorry Shaws)
Which products is sugar found in that may not be so obvious?
Anything processed with a label with more than a few ingredients is worth checking. The biggest culprits are at the top of this list.
Cereals (especially Frosties, Crunchy nut cornflakes and Jordan’s Granola!)
Ketchup and other condiments such as mustard
Pasta sauces and other cooking sauces
Yoghurts
Plant milk/coconut water
Processed meats
Protein powder
Ready Meals, soup
To learn more about this in a light-hearted entertaining way I heartily recommend “That Sugar Film” on Amazon.
Now you’re aware you may be consuming products with added sugars. There are a few options. Use the same product have it less often or less of it, search for a lower sugar version, make your own, don’t eat it anymore. What are you going to do?
Good reasons to quit added sugar 😊
Reacclimatise your taste buds to real sweetness
Our taste buds can get desensitized the more sugar we eat. Like most drugs, the more you take, the greater the tolerance your body builds up. We then require more of the substance to achieve the same previous state as when you first started ‘using’ the drug. The fruit and veg growers are aware of this and are breeding varieties of apples and broccoli and everything you can imagine to be a sweeter version to hook people in to buying more. This will then lead to extinction of older heritage varieties which our taste buds can no longer tolerate.
Make your microbiome happy
The bad bugs in your gut microbiome are often the ones making you crave sugar. You are not necessarily in control. Feeding these bad bugs can lead to an imbalance or dysbiosis. This imbalance can not only cause impaired digestion; including IBS, gas and bloating, but because the gut is linked to so many other areas of the body, it can also impact skin issues, behavioural issues, allergies, hormonal imbalance, and joint inflammation. Quitting the sugar and feeding the good bugs with the fibre and fermented foods they crave make the whole body happy. 😊
Get rid of wrinkles and spots
Whether you’re a teenager suffering from acne or have had a long struggle with eczema, or you’re heading into middle age and beyond with increasing wrinkles then quitting sugar can help all of us. The skin is an elimination organ and can represent what is going on inside the body. High consumption of sugars disrupts the microbiome, and this can lead to inflammation and hormonal disturbances which can present as acne or rosacea. Excess sugar can also break down elastin and degrade collagen which in turn leads to wrinkles. Quitting sugar is much cheaper than all those age defying anti-wrinkle creams!!
Balance your hormones & reduce PCOS symptoms
Eating too much sugar can throw your blood sugar out of whack and believe it or not, your blood sugar is linked to the balance of hormone function in the body. Research into polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) has highlighted the link between sugar consumption, overall carbohydrate intake, and hormonal activity. It has been shown that insulin resistance is one of the root physiological imbalances in most, if not all, PCOS. High insulin levels impact more than just blood sugar, they are linked to other hormones in the body including oestrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, and can tell the ovaries to make more testosterone, a root issue in PCOS. Although more of a recent connection, the need to balance hormones is one the most beneficial reasons to quit sugar.
Would you like some help to quit sugar if you’re finding it impossible to do yourself? Get in touch for a free initial chat to see how we could do that together.
Here’s to feeling better so we can enjoy life x
