My Year-Long Sugar Fast of 2014

Last year my 2014 resolution was to break whatever addiction my body had to sugar and observe the health benefits. What I found was, everyone should do it.

In 2013 it had been a growing concern that they put too much sugar and sweeteners in everything we eat, to the point of toxicity in some cases. If my body was encumbered by this in any way, I wanted to be free. So I figured a sugar fast for 2014 must have good results. It did. The experiment went very well. And I didn't even do it perfectly. So before you go thinking "there's no way I could last a whole year without sugar", you should read on for more details about how exactly I accomplished this. It's a lot easier than you think. Here's a short report about my experience and what you can probably expect if you decide to try it.



Major Findings:

- My addiction to sugar was real even though I already had a pretty healthy diet low in sugar.

- My addiction to sugar has almost completely disappeared. Definitely at a realistic level.

- I have a lot more energy.

- 10 days will definitely not do it. (as recommended by the documentary 'Fed Up')

- I feel way more in-touch with my body. I feel like it's more disciplined and primed for success. I think that's why I now have a growing aversion to beef and grease.



Diet Guidelines:

- No sugar as an ingredient to anything. Even if it's organic cane sugar or cane syrup. As much as you can help it.

- No corn syrup as an ingredient in anything.

- No artificial sweeteners. These will jack you up worse than sugar. Splenda, Nutrasweet, Equal, SweetNLow, sucrose, sucralose, aspartame-- all off-limits. Btw, nothing--NOTHING--just "passes through your system".

- Yes to sugar that naturally occurs, like in fruit or vegetables. So fruit is okay. Just maintain a reasonable portion of it. Remember that fruit is very rare in the wild. NO to any juice product that adds sugar.

- Yes to real local honey, especially if it's just a little bit once every few days in some tea or something. Again, just don't overdo it. Treat it like a delicacy. But it is natural enough that my system had no issues with it.

- Generally, no dessert. If you have to, have a banana and a protein shake before bed and it'll knock you right out.

- Remember soda and other drinks have sugar and aspartame too (but this is for you because I already hated soda)


Also I did eat Clif bars from time to time, which are made with organic cane syrup. I go on too many adventures to deal with life without them. But I will say they are the most healthy portable food of their kind. I kept them to a minimum, and I stayed away from the flavors with extra icing and chocolate.



TIMELINE
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My philosophy with new years resolutions is to not make them about just doing a thing religiously. Instead, I see the turn of a new year as a developmental checkpoint. Am I better off than I was last year at this time? Have I grown and developed closer to the person I really want to be? What can I do this year that will make me feel better about who I am becoming this time next year? It's about improving my quality of life.

Therefore, I've already decided I'm not going to beat myself up every time I accidentally eat sweets. The resolution isn't a failure just because I messed up a few times. It's only a failure if I don't feel like I made real progress by the end of the year. You should never let your resolution ruin your quality of life as you try to carry it out.

One way you do that is choosing the right resolutions. So my resolution isn't really  "I'm not going to eat sugar the entire year." Its "I want to free my body from sugar addiction".



The First 3 Months:

With that philosophy in mind, the first step was to start reading labels as I buy food, removing and replacing things from my diet that have sugar in them as they come up. I thought this would take about a month, and the real test would begin probably at the start of February. So If I accidentally ate sugar, or just succumbed to temptation, I wasn't going to beat myself up. January is my time to adapt to my new resolution.

And it's a good thing because I can't tell you how many times I was offered free dessert within the first two weeks. The universe always does that, right? Well finally someone offered me an entire chocolate cake they were going to throw out, and I said "yes". I went home and ate that entire goddamn cake. The entire thing. One sitting. Take that, universe. And I think that even broke the curse because after that it was easy.

Well, it took three. Three months just to replace everything in my diet with food that didn't have added sugar or artificial sweeteners. I had no idea just how extensive this problem with our food was.

But at the end of 3 months, not even being fully off sugar yet, I was already experiencing withdrawal. You would not believe how many ice cream trucks are on the road that you just never notice. I caught myself unconsciously fixating on Blue Bell and Ben & Jerry's logos.

I also noticed that whenever I would accidentally eat something sugary, my stomach would get upset within a few minutes, and then the next day my energy would be completely shot. Later on I figured out why this was.



6 Months, June:

The same symptoms of energy crashes persisted for a while, but there was a good 6 week period where I had no sweets at all. Then I did have some accidentally, but the next-day crash was significantly less.

The withdrawal tapered off during this time and I was no longer noticing ice cream trucks around town.

Progress!



9 Months, September:

It was some time during this period that I noticed a documentary about added sugar and artificial sweeteners had been released earlier in the year called "Fed Up". It's with Katie Couric. And in that documentary they encouraged everyone to take the "challenge" of going 10 days without added sugar or artificial sweeteners. The diet was exactly like mine.

I can't even begin to tell you the thoughts I had about that. I'll just say this. It took me 3 months just to get the sugar out of my diet; just to stop saying "oops, looks like I can't eat that, oops, not that either". And another 3 for it to even start doing any good. And these guys are suggesting 10 days... let's just move on.

By now I could actually taste the sugar or sweetener in something without even looking at the label. Like at restaurants or at a friend's house. It always had a subtle cheap taste to it.

I realized also that whenever I would accidentally have sweets, I didn't have any crash the next day. None.

I really wasn't expecting that. So I did some research and came to the understanding that when you have a lot of sugar in your diet, your body gets used to that and becomes lazy about breaking down carbohydrates into sugars like it's supposed to. Often it just stores those carbs as fat for a rainy day. The carbs you eat have a lot more energy potential than straight sugars, so when your body is relying on straight sugar, you have less energy. Your body basically gets "spoiled". But if you take away the sugar long enough, it'll get accustomed to carbs. It won't just drop everything at the sight of sugar anymore. It'll take that sugar and just throw it in the mix with the other sugar it's getting from the carbs.

This is exactly what had happened to me. My body was no longer addicted to sugar!



12 Months, December:

I was able to enjoy the holidays, with sweets in moderation, with virtually no negative effects.

I have a lot more energy. My body seems more awake, alive, and adaptable. It's also a little easier for me to feel what my body needs.

Sweets simply don't have that same punch that they used to when I taste them. I have a scoop of ice cream every once in a while, and I gotta tell ya, it's a pretty forgettable experience.

The only other weird finding is that I just don't like red meat as much anymore. I haven't done the research to see what that might have to do with sugar, but I suspect that my body simply "leveled up" to a higher state of health and awareness, and that maybe there's some truth to the theory that red meat is bad for you.



Why I recommend the diet:

1) All the health! Good feels! More energy! Weight loss!
2) It will encourage food producers to stop pumping their products full of sugar and make our food more healthy!

Let's support brands that actually care about what they're doing, and the others to follow suit. In the meantime, we can all become healthier, happier, more free individuals.