I Went Sugar Free for 30 Days

I haven’t shared this with you on instagram (in case I would fail), and only shared it with a couple people in real life, but for the month of September my husband and I decided to go sugar free. Like we completely cut it out of our meals/snacks. I’m talking sugar-free condiments, sugar-free snacks, sugar-free sauces, etc. And no sugar alternatives. No stevia, no honey, no maple syrup, no coconut sugar, no monkfruit, no aspartame, no sugar or sugar alternatives.

But I personally also took it a step further. I did a Whole30. I cut out processed food (even if it didn’t have sugar ingredients), dairy, alcohol, grains, legumes, and did not try to re-create baked goods with “approved” ingredients. I didn’t even allow myself dates (the fruit, not date w/ friends LOL) because I knew I would be eating them as a replacement to curb my “sweet tooth”

But this wasn’t the first time I went Whole30. I did my first one February 2018 but it only lasted 23 days because then we took a trip to Iceland and I wasn’t going to forgo the local desserts. I’ve attempted it sometime in 2019 again but then shortly gave up. So I decided to do it September 2021. I figured if we’re going sugar free, it’s not that hard to take it a step further to go fully Whole30 since most processed food had some form of sugar anyway and I don’t eat grains/legumes that often anyway.

Now if I’m being totally honest with you, the past 30 days were more of a “dirty Whole30” and I’ll explain why a little further down in this post.

Why did we decide to go Sugar Free / Whole 30 in September?

We are both huuuuuuuge lovers of sweets, desserts, and sugary treats. Like HUGE. I know many people say to stop eating sweets in moderation, don’t deprive yourself or you’ll binge, etc. But the idea with this was to get rid of a sugar addiction. To reset our taste buds. We’ve tried the moderation thing, trust me.

So this time we went all in.

And looking back on it now, it actually wasn’t all that hard. Well, the middle of the month was a little tough, but then I got past that.

How did it go?

When you hear an extreme like “I’m not going to eat any sugar for 30 days”, your automatic response is probably like “OMG, they’re starving themselves” or “They’re depriving themselves, this is wrong” or “They’re on an extreme diet” or some version of any of these.

But if you think about it, we really weren’t meant to be consuming so much sugar in our meals/snacks. We’re not even meant to be consuming processed food, for goodness sake! We’re supposed to eat whole, real food. So that’s what September 2021 was all about.

And many people, when you tell them what we were doing, they’re like “Oh you’re on a diet.” It really wasn’t like that. The goal wasn’t to lose weight. Calories didn’t matter, we didn’t restrict ourselves, we didn’t cut out natural carbs (like potatoes, etc), we didn’t tell ourselves “you can’t eat after 7pm”. If we were hungry, we would eat real food. Not pasta, not a microwaveable meal, not something processed, not a snack to “get by”. The goal was not to lose weight. If we found ourselves wanting a snack, we’d have berries, peaches, pistachios, almonds, etc, or we’d make an actual meal. If we were still hungry after our meal, we’d have seconds. There was no restriction.

And I think that’s what was helpful, no restriction and/or calorie counting. If we were like “No, you’ve had more calories than you need” then I think this would have been much harder.

The fact that we had a meal subscription service also helped. In August I signed up for Green Chef. I used to do Hello Fresh quite often in 2019 while I was still working my traditional 9-to-5 job but then cancelled it. This August we made the decision to sign up for a meal subscription service again because cooking is not our favorite thing to do. This time we chose to go with Green Chef because it uses all organic ingredients. If you’re interested in trying out Green Chef, use this link to sign up + get $55 off.

Did we cheat?

Some of the Green Chef sauces did have coconut nectar as an ingredient, which is a sugar alternative. However, most of the meals we would choose were 100% sugar free so if once in a while a sauce had coconut nectar, we were ok with it. Like I mentioned above, it was a slightly “dirty Whole30” for me. Outside of our Green Chef meals, we ate mostly protein + veggie combos of some kind.

There were 2 days were we did consume some form of sugar though.

We went on a triple date on the 23rd that we have been trying to coordinate since April 26th. We went out to Village Whiskey in downtown Philadelphia. Hubs and I both ordered burgers, he got his with a bun, I got mine without a bun. With the ingredients of the burger sauce, there wasn’t really a way to avoid sugar so there was some cheating there. And also, the burger had cheese on it. After the burger date, I actually felt ok and didn’t really notice a reaction in my body.

On the 24th of September, my sister and I had a little “Goodbye Summer” date with a cute charcuterie picnic on the beach. I cheated on that day too with some dairy (cheeses) and sugar (drinks, fig jam, and one of the crackers had honey as the ingredient). After this picnic date, my stomach actually felt really queasy as I was laying in bed, trying to fall asleep. On top of that, I felt bloated for 2 days following that date. I’m thinking this was because I consumed more dairy + sugar on this date that on the burger date. Plus my body was basically clean from dairy and sugar from going 23 days without it, now it was really feeling the effects that foods like dairy and sugar cause to our bodies.

But for the other 28 days, we did not full-on cheat or allow ourselves wiggle room (outside of the Green Chef sauces, which were sparse anyway).

Was it worth it?

Absolutely. I literally feel less puffy / inflamed. I feel like I’ve noticed an improvement in my motivation, a bit in my energy levels (although coffee will always be desired 😉), and just all around feel good. Both of our faces look much better, our skin is less bumpy and has less discoloration.

On top of that, throughout this entire process/month, I do feel like I’ve grown to appreciate savory foods more and love them a little more. And fruits too.

As far as “healing” our sugar addiction, I’ll keep you posted on whether this worked or not. But at one point in September we went to my parent’s house to celebrate my dad’s birthday and I truthfully wasn’t even enticed by the cake and sweets on the table. I just drank my tea and didn’t have a pull towards the desserts. It just wasn’t worth it to me either. So that’s definitely improvement. But one of the days, I hosted an open house at a listing and ordered macarons for it. That did entice me, I love macarons, but I remained strong! And when we were on our burger date with friends, I didn’t have that huge pull to end our dinner with a dessert. Would it have been nice? Of course. But I didn’t feel the need for it like I used to.

Overall, throughout this entire month, my body has been feeling good. And it feels good to feel good.

What happens now that it’s over?

Now I begin slowly reintroducing some of the categories I’ve cut out and seeing how my body reacts. The idea is to see which categories affect my body more and which categories my body tolerates better. But also, after this “reintroduction” phase, I don’t want to go back to eating like I used to. Now that I’ve had this month of eating + feeling good, I don’t want to go back to making my body feel sluggish, bloated, puffy, and unhappy. I am aware that my meals/snacks won’t always be perfect, but I’m leaving this month with the intention to keep this up at least 80-90% of the time.

Like I said already, it feels good to feel good.

💖 Alena