In December I was really starting to struggle with myself. It had been 4 months since I had broken my leg and I was not making the progress I wanted to at that point to get my body back to pre-pregnancy weight or look. I wanted to be walking at least an hour a day and then doing 30-45 minutes of cardio a day to lose weight by December. I was able to do 20 minutes of light cardio, but nothing that got my heart rate up that much and I could walk, but 30 minutes was my max. I was told that I would be able to run in January, but I could tell that I would not be able to if I couldn’t do light cardio more than 20 minutes.
One day on my Youtube videos when I was sad about not working out, I saw this couple that gave up sugar for 30 days. I watched this video and thought, I will do this in the new year and I would do the best I could. I wanted to feel better about myself and the new year is always a good time to work on bettering yourself.
So as 2019 rolled around, I thought, it would be too hard to give up sugar and just have natural sugar in my life. And the idea of giving up sugar slowly started to leave my body.
Then, one day on Instagram, a friend posted something about a Sugar Fast. I now had two different and unrelated “signs” that it was time to give up sugar. And now there was a group of people doing this Sugar Fast so I was going to do it.
The Sugar Fast is lead by a woman that teaches to replace your sugar craving with Jesus. I know for some people, it may be hard as they see it is a religious fast and they do not want to do that. Of course, that is your choice, you don’t need to make it religious, you can just do the sugar fast for 40 days. But also remember, if you have tried before and tried again to break your sugar habit and it hasn’t worked, it is ok to try something new and modify it so it can work for you.
The more I learned about the Sugar Fast, the more I thought about how it could be for anyone. The basic rule was that you were cutting out sweets and not replacing them with sugar substitutes. After that, it was up to you what you wanted to cut out. I decided that I would cut out sweets and as much added sugar as I could, which meant not juice and no processed foods.
The parts of my journey of the sugar fast that I will cover, will be the health benefits or non- benefits. It will not be religious and I am not trying to turn anyone towards religion. That is your own personal choice and no matter what, if you give up sugar for 40 days – you are awesome!
As my journey began on what I would need to prepare to get ready for the fast, I needed to look at what I was eating. I had gotten into pretty bad habits over the last two years with my pregnancy, post pregnancy, broken leg, and holidays eating. I ate a lot more processed foods than I remember and I made a lot less foods. I grabbed anything I wanted to eat and had no problem going to Chick-fil-a for a meal more times than I can remember eating there my whole life in the past year.
I needed to prepare that I was going to cook more at home. First up, was no more store bought bagels. I was going to make my own bread. I did that occasionally, but now was going to make it all the time, every week. It takes some planning but this recipe I think is the best and you can make it with whatever flour you want. I do a mix of wheat and white. Just make sure you use a pot that can withstand 450 degree temperatures.
Next, I had to start working on my lunch for school. I had been bringing a sandwich on a roll with a bag of chips and a bag of cookies each day. I would eat anything someone brought in and did not care. Now I needed to make a lunch and snack and not eat anything anyone brought in. So during the weekend I would need to make a soup or quiche with nothing that had added sugar. My snack I decided would be baby carrots and hummus.
Dinner, was the last part. I knew I needed to make some changes here. I just had to come up with recipes that we could eat that I could make quickly. I had planned that I would have homemade sauce always on hand and had lots of avocados so that I could have avocados with cheese and garlic when I was really hungry.
The final step in my preparation was buying the book Full. I was not sure I would like it, but I wanted to try it out because why not? Nothing else had worked before to help me break my sugar cravings and habits so I knew I had to try something different and outside of what I had done before. My plan is to read it as I go through my sugar fast.
Once my sugar fast is over, I will write another article on how it all went. So stay tuned.
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