My Year Off – Part One Sugar

Part One, Refined Sugar…

This year is going to be, my year off. My year off what you ask?

Well every month this year, I will be giving something different up and this month it has been refined sugar…

Very early this month, I was extremely inspired by one of my guests deciding to give up alcohol for an entire year…

Now whilst I’m in awe of this, I myself don’t want to do it, but it did get me thinking…

What if every month this year, I give up something that’s probably not the best for good physical and mental health and see what changes it brings…

So I started on January 5th with refined sugar because I didn’t think it would be a hard one to start with.

Frankly after having a couple of weeks off, eating and drinking too much and perhaps not being as active as I should be, I didn’t want to challenge myself too much.

In the first 5 days of my challenge, I ended up cheating a little. Deciding this wasn’t a good start, I reset myself at the 10th of January. This means I have to go refined sugar free till February 10th, even though I am starting with mt next thing off on February 1st.

So I’m writing this and I haven’t quite finished but I know I’ll be fine because you know what, refined sugar is not a big habit of mine.

So what did I get out of this if it wasn’t that hard?

Awareness of many of the place that sugar hides.

At the beginning of the month, I was having one soy coffee every morning with half a sugar.

The half a sugar went immediately but it took me longer to register that the soy milk itself has a bit of sugar in it, so I have now gone to black coffee.

This works with the small daily fasting I now do which is only eating between 10am and 6pm everyday. I absolutely cannot wait ill 10am for my coffee so black it is!

Did you know that not all sugar is bad for you? I didn’t know this until this month.

Apparently the bacteria that lives in our guts actually needs sugar to do its thing, though it has to be sugar that is balanced with polyphenols. A great source of this is things like blueberries, pomegranate, strawberries and many other berry type fruits.

If this sort of information is something you’d like to know more about, this podcast from the ATP project is the bomb. I’m completely addicted to it!

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/the-atp-projects-podcast/id978635940?mt=2&i=1000401814252

I also discovered that kecap manis is basically sugar. I guess its obvious now I think about it, but that’s the point right, you have to think about it…

The big thing I got out of this refined sugar free month is awareness. I have a feeling I will be saying the same thing at the end of every month.

I’m happy to keep most of this month changes I have made in place permanently.

I will be keeping my coffee black, which has health benefits with the polyphenols in it when you don’t add milk. (Listen to the podcast) Also if a recipe calls for kecap manis, I will be coming up with an alternative.

I’m not going to give up chocolate as I don’t really eat it a lot. However I am going to think twice with what I put in my mouth when it comes to sugar…

So what am I giving up for February? Well I looked at the calendar and only 2 months this year have only 4 weekends. February and September and since its my birthday in September, it has to be February.

Yep you guessed it, I’m giving up alcohol!

 

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