Why I’m breaking a challenge on the last day
New Year’s Resolution, Day 7: For the past week, I’ve been following the recommendations of the New York Times’ 7-Day Sugar Challenge. I have eaten a no-sugar breakfast every day, eschewed processed food, continued my habit of avoiding sugary beverages, and consumed whole fruit, spicy food and roasted vegetables.
I have been 100 percent behind the recommendations made by Well blog founder Tara Parker-Pope to reduce the sugar. Her commonsense approach to sugar reduction — avoiding the sugary breakfast, having a snack of whole fruit, bulking up the vegetables on your plate at every meal — is absolutely the way humans should eat for optimum health.
I’m wearing a halo for my first week of 2020. I haven’t had one sip of alcohol. Except for sugar possibly hidden in a condiment or sauce served at one of the two meals I’ve eaten outside my home since New Year’s Day, I have not allowed any added sugar to cross my lips.
However, I cannot complete the last challenge of the week: Savor some chocolate. I am not going to do that. Not yet, anyway. Sure, there’s scientific evidence behind the claim that eating dark chocolate is good for you. It has antioxidants. It might assist in improving your heart health.
But this isn’t my first no-sugar rodeo. I’ve done the hard part for the last week, suffering the “carb flu,” a sluggishness and sleepiness your body goes through when switching from getting most of its energy from sugar to having to use fat and protein to create its own glucose. Your body does this naturally, and it’s a healthy thing. But the switchover doesn’t feel so great.
I’ve contended with monstrous sugar cravings by eating blackberries, blueberries, kiwis and other whole fruit. It works, but the cravings come back — until they don’t, around the seventh day.
I am not eating chocolate today and undoing the progress I’ve made just when I’m starting to get my energy back and the cravings are subsiding. The second week of a sugar detox is the time when you start getting your “tiger blood,” in the parlance of Whole30, which I have completed three times. Once you get past the sluggishness, you start to feel like you can do anything. It feels great.
To be fair, the last challenge in the Times’ 7-Day Sugar Challenge is meant to be a reward. And Parker-Pope goes to lengths to explain that the chocolate she’s recommending you eat should be as high in cacao as you can stand — 80 percent or more. That’s a bitter reward!
Nope. I’ll keep my sugar detox going for another week or two at least and enjoy the benefits that accrue. I’m sleeping better and I have plenty of energy for morning exercise, even before breakfast. That’s a Whole30 no-no, skipping breakfast, but I’m trying out this intermittent fasting everyone is talking about. Maybe I’m losing weight, maybe not. I’m focusing on how I feel right now, not how much I weigh. That’s something good I learned from Whole30: Non-Scale Victories. Stay off the scale and notice how good you feel instead.
I won’t do another Whole30, mainly because of its ban on the staples of a vegetarian diet: beans, peas, tofu and tempeh. My husband and I have vowed to eat at least three vegan or vegetarian dinners per week this year, for our health but also for the health of the planet. The Whole30, essentially an elimination diet, is great for learning how your body reacts to certain foods. I love its focus on eating vegetables and whole fruit. I use my Whole30 cookbooks all the time.
I am not ready to give up the good feelings that come after days of no added sugar and lots of healthy eating. I will break my no-sugar fast one of these days, because everyone needs a little sweetness now and then. I’ll probably dig into the back of the freezer where I hid some Ghirardelli dark chocolate mint squares after Christmas, if my husband doesn’t find them first.
By the time I do that, those little squares will have magically transformed into something so sweet I won’t want more than one. That’s because the longer you go without added sugar, the sweeter sweet things taste. A little sugar can go a long way.
The real challenge comes after you give yourself permission to eat the chocolate or have a dessert. Can you stick to a no-added-sugar diet while only having a square or two of chocolate a week? Truth: I’ve never managed that. Eventually, I end up where I was at Christmas: Eating and drinking everything. Sugar is insidious. You let it in; it takes over. Next thing you know, you’re baking cookies and rolling out pie dough.
Then comes January, or whenever I force myself to step on a scale after a week or a month or more. I keep having to cut out the sugar, detox and reset.
But sometimes my resolutions do stick. I’ve had successes in my search for a better me. Hey, I made it through three complete Whole 30s. Maybe this year, my no-added-sugar resolution will be the one I keep. But if not, at least I can enjoy my sugar-free energy for another few days, or a week, or …