Crazy, Week-Long Mid-Winter No Sugar Challenge!

While everyone else is still running around catching frosted flakes on their tongue, you’ve been thinking about getting off the sugary stuff.

Let’s do it!

This challenge is not about quitting forever or being perfect. It is about seeing how well you can avoid sweets for six days.

Stop Being Sweet from Monday, February 27th until Saturday, March 3rd. It’s not even a whole week. How easy is that? 

Participating in this challenge means you will avoid and abstain from all of your trigger foods and added sugars. If there’s a food that makes you binge on sweets, avoid that food! If it’s an apple and you only eat one, eat it! If you’re out for dinner and they offer dessert, say no! If you visit a friend and they offer you some pie, say no way!

Comment below if you’re in it to win it. Lurking is for sweetie pies.

Commit! It’s just six days.

Have a birthday celebration you don’t want to try to hurdle without sugar? Excuses, excuses. There will be other birthday cakes.

Accept the challenge and stick with it. It’s only six days.

Are You Sugarholic?

• Can you imagine a happy birthday without eating cake?
• Could you enjoy a wedding without having dessert?
• When you eat sweets, do you want more and more?
• Are you annoyed when you have to share sweets with others?
• Is your sugar consumption making you unhappy?
• Do you binge on sweets?
• Is your reputation that of a “sugar fiend”?
• Do you eat sugary snacks to relieve stress?
• Do you look forward to eating junk food?
• Do you stock up on sweets at home and still run out?

If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, take the interactive sugar addiction quiz!

Had Any Sugar This Morning?

Ban Sugar from Schools!

If parents want to have the freedom to exercise their personal responsibility in making choices about how much sugar their children eat, then parents can feed their kids sweets in the morning and refill them with sweets when the children arrive home after school. 

We don’t let kids chew gum in school. We also don’t let them curse, fight, or surf the web during class because it distracts and disrupts the education process. People understand and agree on that. Those rules were made to help teachers and students do their jobs better.

I’ve never heard someone say that preventing children from chewing gum or picking fights in school was an infringement on their personal freedom. So why do people get upset about the idea of banning sweets from schools? Because people don’t consider sugar to be that unhealthy, let alone addictive. If parents knew beyond a doubt that sugary foods were substantially impairing their child’s abilities then they’d be all for banning the stuff from schools. They might even stop purchasing sweets for home consumption. Yet plenty of people think sugar is a major food group that is okay to consume in moderation just like cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol (all banned from schools).

Why do we continue to eat something when we know it’s bad for us? Peer pressure? Availability? Addiction? Brainwashing? Ignorance?

The sugar ban suggestion made it to the municipal level by way of concerned parents and education professionals. The idea that there is an evil politician removing our children’s freedom was spun by PR firms hired by food manufacturing companies. Still, some parents believe the removal of flavored milk from cafeteria menus is a big government attempt to take away our right to choose. These people believe in choice—when it comes to strawberry vs. chocolate, that is.

Sugar Free Valentine’s Day

Unsweetened Carob Chip Cookies: Somebody loves me, yes they do!

Gwenn made some sugar free cookies for me today and I just had to share them with you. This is not to brag or anything (nah nah) but instead to show that once you’re off sugary junk—provided you have sweet people in your life—the folks around you will adjust and accept your “strange” behavior. In fact, you might even rub off on them (more on that below).

That’s not to say that a portion of this batch of cookies didn’t have chocolate chips, because they did. However, there are no added sweeteners in the batter for both the unsweetened carob version and the chocolate chip version. Bananas sweeten the batter. I only eat the unsweetened carob chip cookies, which taste very good when you’re off sweets.

As a result of my unsweetness, I can easily count 5-8 friends and family members who have definitely have cut back on their sugar intake. I can list an additional 5-8 folks who at least claim to be avoiding sweets. Everyone knows sugar is bad for them and yet “everyone is doing it,” which makes it that much harder to stop.

Imagine if you cut back on sweets and ten people around you get inspired to do so as well. Now that would be sharing the love!