30 days quitting all sugar challenge

Last year we had a ton of New Year’s resolutions – 1. Lose weight, 2. Travel a lot, 3. Start our own business, 4. eat healthy, 5. exercise daily and many, many, many, many more. It’s funny to realize now that NONE of these has happened. We tried to do all of them at some point of the year, but the truth is, we wasn’t even sure we needed or wanted these things at some point.

Now, before you give us a lecture on goal setting or send us a link to a 20-minute YouTube video on how to set goals or make vision boards, we've got to tell you – we have watched them all. Okay, we don’t know if all, but lots of them. And we've read enough books on the topic.

We know we're not solid, but honestly we don’t care. The problem with our goals is not that they’re not specific, measurable, or that there’s no reason why. The problem for us is that they’re set too far in the future. We mean 366 days to achieve something? That’s too long.

1st problem: If we achieve our goal in January, what am we going to do the rest of the year?

2nd problem: We have enough time, we'll do it tomorrow (even if it’s December 15th and we still haven’t lost weight).

3rd problem: Life.

See it’s either too much time, the fear of the “next step” after achieving that goal or simply a life change that changes your perspective.

So this year, we'll be making one New Year’s resolution: Take everything one step at a time. One day, one week, one month at a time. Not a month-worth of activities packed in one week and not everything too far ahead. We will have our goal for maximum a month, then a smaller goal for the week and then a few smaller ones for each day that lead to the “big” monthly goal.

This deadline of 30 days keeps us focused. If we have to say we won’t drink any coffee for 366 days, we can guarantee we'll be going to the coffee shop the next day. But if we say we won’t drink any coffee for 30 days (one of the most difficult things for us) – we might even make it to 30 days. After all we know that our chances of “winning” are bigger if we don’t have to do something for too long.

If we, on the other hand, say we won’t drink coffee for 366 days, we know deep inside that we will, at some point (probably at the 43th day) go to a coffee shop and buy a coffee. So we know we will lose that bet with myself anyway at some point. Why waste any time and not do it the next day?

This month

For this month we feel like we need to take care of our health and our goal will be to reset our taste buds by quitting all sugar aside from fresh fruit. We thought about going gluten-free, trying paleo and all those types of diets. But we know that the one thing we need to do is remove simple carbs and all concentrated forms of sugar (even if it’s dried frui

t) from our diet.

People take those no-sugar-challenges pretty simple. And we do too. In fact the last few years, we have been what many people would consider sugar-free. Why? Because we didn’t eat any refined sugar.

But we ate honey, dried fruit, maple syrup, agave, coconut blossom nectar, even stevia…And here’s the thing: we did it almost every day.

Over time we just felt like even though we're eating healthy (we are eating dried fruit and nuts after all) we don’t feel better. And we always had this sweet taste in our mouth, even when we had just woken up. We also noticed that if we didn’t get any sugar we would get annoyed.

Why do this challenge?

While honey and dried fruit might be healthier and more nutrient dense than refined sugar – the fructose inside is not better for your health and. When it’s in moderation it won’t matter much, but we think we’ve slowly forgotten what moderation is.

So our plan is to quit all sugar aside from fresh fruit and just reset. Learn again what moderation is.

Many people would say – fresh fruit also contains fructose. Don’t eat it at all.

Yes, fresh fruit does contain fructose. But we know myself and the chances of us eating more than one whole banana a day are thin. The chances of us eating 6 dates in a brownie or 3-4 Tbsp honey are much bigger.

From this challenge we expect to stop craving sugar that much and to reset our taste buds back to normal. Back to the taste buds that would taste a milk chocolate and think: “Damn, that’s so sweet, it’s actually hurting us.”

Of course we don’t just stop sugar because we don’t want to feel like a junkie or because we need to prove that the food industry is trying to kill our taste buds and us. We also do this challenge because it will help us lose 8 pounds, bring some freshness to our skin and give us more real energy.

One more reason

We write this blog and we read approximately 15 science reviews and original research articles a week on how to live a healthier life. But we must admit right now we don’t feel like we're living a healthy life myself. We're sitting for 10-12 hours, we haven’t exercised in a while – not even stretching and if it wasn’t for the one green smoothie we lately have in the morning – we would probably be developing a bad scurvy right now.

You know the story of how one woman asked Gandhi to tell her son not to eat sugar? Well here’s the short version if you don’t. One week after the woman asked Gandhi for that favor, he told her son not to eat sugar and the kid stopped eating sugar. Gandhi took a week to talk to the child, because at the time the woman asked him for help he was also eating sugar. After he quit sugar, he felt he can tell the child to do the same.

We're not Gandhi. If we have to tell a child to quit sugar, we will do so and then after all the motivation is gone probably eat a chocolate bar. Not because we're lying, inauthentic or don’t believe sugar is bad for you. It’s because We know sugar is bad for the kid, but we guess sometimes we're not sure if those rules apply to us.

So this month and this whole year we will be more like Gandhi. Because whether something is backed by science or not doesn’t matter if we're not able to do it myself. And we'll start with his experiment. We will quit all sugar for the next 30 days.

The Plan

After the holidays we're so sick of sugar, but we know as the days and weeks go by we will probably start to crave it. So instead of thinking we can’t eat any sugar for 30 days, we will focus on this: Eating 8 servings of fruits and vegetables. If you’re wondering why 8, read here.

We will break those down to 4 servings of vegetables (all colors) and 4 servings of fresh fruit. With the fresh fruit we will make sure to have a maximum of 2 servings of fruits that are sweet like mango, banana, pine-apple and 2 or more of those that are not that sweet like berries and lemons.

In general we will also be focusing on eating more other plants like nuts & seeds, whole grains and legumes.

The thing about sugar is that it’s everywhere. salami, yogurt, dressings, sauces, bread…everything that’s been processed has sugar. We don’t eat many processed foods, but many Asian foods we love and use also contain some form of sugar. So we'll stay away from them as well. Instead we'll try making them myself.

When: January 11th – February 10th

Do’s:

• 8 servings of fruits and vegetables
• more plants like nuts, seeds, some whole grains and legumes
• a food journal.

Donts:

• refined sugar
• dried fruit, honey, agave, maple syrup, coconut sugar, coconut blossom sugar, stevia or artificial sweeteners
• processed foods
• bread & sauces we haven’t made myself

We know there are many diet challenges right now. We get about 10 emails a day on those. And they’re all great, but we think it’s important for everyone to make these challenges their own. To tailor that challenge to their needs. Whether you join us on this challenge or do another one, make sure to do everything in a way that’s best for you.

Also this month expect many sugar-free recipes. There will even be some desserts with only fresh fruit as the sweetener and they’re satisfying!

See you tomorrow with a satisfying green smoothie recipe.