Sugar Free {Week 1&2}

I am lumping week one and two of the eight week programme together as the idea at this point is to just cut back on sugar so there isn't cold turkey style changes made to your diet.  I like the idea of this gentle approach but I don't need two weeks of it.

Last night we cleaned out the pantry and removed any food that had more than 6% of sugar; for future purchases I won't buy anything outside of this range from now on.  A lot of things went but I was surprised by how much of our staple pantry items got to stay.  The I Quit Sugar cookbook does not use many cereals such as rolled oats, pasta and couscous but I have left those items in too as the sugar content is fine and as I use them I will work on buying less in the future.

Next week is cold turkey week.  I am not making the children go cold turkey as it would rule out fresh fruit; I think their growing and active bodies will handle that much fructose but I will rule out dried fruit.  I did not realise that dates are 46.7% sugar and raisins are 69.1% sugar.  Read your labels!  Fresh fruit is not ruled out forever, just the first few weeks as you recalibrate your body to not crave sweetness.  Some fruits have less fructose so I will buy more of those for the children and for us too when I can eat them again.

I am very grateful that a lot of our cooking is safe to stay, this would never work if I had to give up milk, meat or coffee.  I feel very positive about this right now, especially after seeing how much sugar was in some of the foods I have been eating and even worse, feeding the children.