10 Awesome Things That Happened When I Stopped Eating Refined Sugar For One Month

 

In my younger days, prior to motherhood, I was always more of a salty snack type person. Something happened to me during my first pregnancy and I began to have some serious cravings for sweets. Ice cream was number one. I wanted it every single night. A lot of it. As the years went by my tolerance for sugar increased and I was able to, and wanted to, eat more and more of the stuff. Chocolate of almost any kind and an excessive amount of sweet creamer in my coffee were daily indulgences. I decided to give up sugar for a month to see if it made me feel any better. It is officially one month later. Here is what happened.

More Energy

The first few days I actually felt more lethargic than usual, maybe this is because I tended to use sugar as a quick pick me up when I felt myself dragging. I have four children and the oldest is the only one who does not still wake me up in the middle of the night. I sort of thought being exhausted all the time was just the way I felt at this point in my life. I figured one day I would get enough rest again, like when all of my children are grown. After cutting out the sweets, however, I had a noticeable increase in energy. Especially in the late afternoons when I usually would have had a hard time keeping my eyes open some days.

 

More Restful Sleep

Maybe this could also be contributing to my increase in energy. I used to have a more difficult time falling asleep. I thought it was just typical adulthood anxiety. I would lie in bed at night thinking about what I needed to do the next day, making checklists in my head. Since I tend to get woken up three or four times a night on average I was spending probably an hour or two every night lying awake, wishing I was asleep. Since I gave up the sugar I am falling asleep earlier and when I do get woken up I fall back to sleep without all the internal noise.

My Skin Looks Better

About two weeks in I noticed my skin was looking smoother and softer. My pores look smaller and my complexion seemed to have an overall more “glowy” appearance. Similar to changes I have seen in my skin when I have adopted and stuck to new skin regime for a month or two.

 

Teeth Stopped Hurting

I don’t like to admit that sometimes when I would indulge in ice cream or peanut butter cups or other sweets my teeth would sort of ache. Why would I sit and continue to shovel those naughty treats in when it made my teeth actually hurt? Obviously, I was an addict.

Gums Stopped Bleeding

Before my first pregnancy I had never dealt with bleeding gums. When I went to the dentist I was told it was common during pregnancy as pregnant women has a higher blood volume and her body is more sensitive to the bacteria in the mouth because of hormones. This happened every time I was pregnant so I got one or two teeth cleanings during my pregnancies. This helped but did not completely eliminate the bleeding. After my fourth baby was born the bleeding did not stop. I sort of accepted it, thinking maybe I was just getting older and things were sort of beginning to fall apart. When I stopped eating sugar, my gums stopped bleeding. It took about a week. It surprised me because I honestly thought it was something I was just going to have to live with. What a relief.

 

Less Irritability

I am utterly surprised about how much less irritability I experience now. The first week was bad, I was pretty grumpy. But after the withdrawals were over I felt much more emotionally stable. I am more even tempered, patient, and calm. Again, I had chalked up having a less than cheerful attitude sometimes as a result of the demands of motherhood, adulthood, and sleep deprivation. I am so happy to have found that I am capable of being kinder and experiencing more joy than I was. I did a little research and found this great article about how addictive sugar is. There has been so much research done on how illicit drugs affect a persons brain chemistry. There is evidence that sugar can act the same way.

 

Stopped Craving Sugar

Again, the first week was tough. I wanted sugar and I thought about it all the time. I also had terrible headaches. By week three I was no longer craving it. I even had a little birthday cake at a friends’ party. In the past, I would have eaten a whole piece, maybe even a second if it was offered. This time I had a couple of bites and gave the rest to my husband. It was delicious, but I didn’t really want it. And because I hadn’t been eating sugar I could feel the changes in my body as my cake hit my bloodstream. Honestly, the cake did not make me feel great.

 

Started Making Better Food Choices

This was all a part of the snowball effect of making one positive change. I wasn’t eating sweets, but I still had to eat something. I was hungry! I was terrible about waiting until my children were all asleep and then indulging heavily in sweet treats. Now I still have a snack at night because I cannot fall asleep if I am hungry. But now I have some protein (I like hard boiled eggs, turkey with some avocado, or my almond butter balls), or veggies (carrots with hummus or my greek yogurt ranch dip, celery with almond butter,  a small salad) or if I really want something sweet, a little fruit. The same thing when I felt hungry in the afternoon, instead of reaching for something bad for me I just made sure to have healthy snacks on hand. Something else I love are these salted chocolate RX bars, a friend told me about them and they are great! A little, but not overly,  sweet, and very satisfying. I have them when I am craving something a little more indulgent.

I Lost Weight

This is why I originally decided to give up the sugar, I hoped it would help me to lose weight. After my last baby was born, the weight was definitely not falling off. After her first birthday had come and gone and I realized I had actually gained weight since the initial weight loss following her birth, I felt a little depressed. Ok, honestly, I felt a lot depressed. I had also broken my foot when she was about six months old and I gained 15 pounds or so during the following few months when I was on crutches and mostly inactive. I loved my morning cup of coffee with whatever sweet delicious creamer I had for the week. I mean, I really LOVED it and relished it. That was hard to give up. But I don’t miss it now. One month later, and all of the positives above have come together and I actually have energy to move around again. I am not regularly working out as much as I would like but I am much more active because I actually have energy now. We are taking a lot more walks and I am sitting down much less. So drumroll please: after one month of cutting out refined sugar (almost completely except for that birthday cake and some blackberry cobbler because blackberries are in season and I want to be healthy but I am not a crazy person) I have lost ten pounds. Yes ten! In one month! I was amazed. I thought maybe three, maybe five. I am so happy about this, and I plan on sticking to it, because I still have 20  more pounds to go.

 

The final awesome thing that happened when I gave up sugar for one month was

I Felt Like A BOSS

Yes. I did. And I do. I had tried for a long time to make some progress on my weight and when a person tries and tries to gain some control over something as basic as their own weight and fails it can be so defeating. And it can carry over into other areas of life. Also, because removing sugar from my life helped me to have more energy and an overall more positive outlook I was able to tackle some things on my to do list that had just been sitting there for a LONG time, which also felt great. I am sharing my experience with this because I was truly amazed at the changes I have seen in one short month and I am so happy I did this. I encourage anyone who is struggling with health or weight issues to give this a try for just a month to see if they have any improvement. I would love to hear about the experiences of others regarding this. Please feel free to share in the comments or send me a message. I would love to hear your story!

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