I thought it would be super easy, giving up sugar for a handful of days. Me, the girl who doesn’t eat much sugar in first place, at least not added sugar. It’s actually pretty rare I eat foods made with refined white or brown sugar.
But SUGAR HIDES.
Sugar hides in plain sight. While I wasn’t eating a lot of refined sugar, I was drinking wine, snacking on dates and dried fruit, mounding fruit in my smoothies and berries and drizzling maple syrup and honey on everything. This is the sugar I’m keenly aware of.
But sugar hides. In ketchup, salad dressing, pasta sauces, peanut butters, yogurts, instant oatmeal, granola, supplements, flavored waters … even deli meats!
For the most part I felt ok. But just ok isn’t thriving. It’s not sleeping soundly. It’s waking up feeling a little blah. It’s feeling a few energy swings in the day. My skin was getting drab and dry with a few splotches. I was even noticing weird things, like my eyes would get irritated when I ate sugary foods. My feet would swell and throb. And I have to admit that my pants were tighter than I wanted.
Sound familiar? At all?
Severe chronic illness can happen at the hand of sugar consumption (like depression, anxiety, diabetes, and the list goes on). These don’t happen just one day. They build over time. The body tries to warn us too, by sending little signals to us all the time. If we ignore them, those signals get a little bit bigger, then bigger and more pronounced, until we ultimately can’t ignore them anymore. But it starts small, like the little signals I was beginning to feel.
So, it was time to stop the cycle. I wanted to have power over my food, not the other way around. Time to stop sugar from having power over me. Starting with seven days sugar free.
It’s just a week. No added sugar. No refined sugar. And mostly not even natural sugar. Together we can do anything for one week. Doesn’t mean forever, just an opportunity to take a break and feel different … the way I like to feel.
For sure it means a bit more cooking at home this week and being prepared with more nutritious choices, but I’m worth it. You are too.
If you’re ready, join me on the Spring Fling. 7 days of nourishing, healthy foods. We start May 16th.
Spring forward like a nutritional warrior with me.
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