I can speak for my experience. As a few months back I decided to dump sugar (No Sugar Challenge), artificial sugars included. I also drank water instead of juice. After a month my face looked 5 years younger. Water tastes great now, by the way.
I noticed right away that my skin became smoother, small bumps disappeared, it used to be matte and suddenly it got a sort of sheen. So I definitely started looking younger. On top of that, I lost weight, so my face looked better from that too, as well as my whole body. I also suddenly started having more energy, lost my cravings and the feeling of hunger all the time. I started eating healthier. So that made a difference to my appearance as well. People regularly assume I’m in my twenties, but I’m 36 now.
I now enjoy the gift of taste better than before. To say the least, quitting added sugar has enabled me to appreciate natural tastes, and enjoy eating healthy also. If there is anything that I have learnt from (no sugar challenge) this experience, it is that at times, we don’t need more of anything to make us happy. Instead, doing away with a few things here and there could bring incomparable joy and contentment in our lives.
Read Also: Food that helps you to Reduce Belly Fat
Benefits of cutting out sugar (No Sugar Challenge)
If you’re a sugar lover, you can probably empathize. Sugar is addictive — it turns on reward pathways in your brain and causes withdrawal. Without the right game plan, it’s hard to break a sugar addiction. But when you do kick your sugar habit, the changes to your life can be extraordinary. Cutting down on sugar promotes:
- Fat loss
- Mental focus and better mood, thanks to decreased brain inflammation
- Decreased hunger and food cravings
- All-day energy with no crash, thanks to stable blood sugar
It takes about two weeks for your body to get over sugar cravings and withdrawal. With that in mind, here’s a 4-week no sugar challenge. Over the course of the next month, use this step-by-step guide to break your sugar addiction and start feeding the body foods that make you stronger, not weaker. Everything you need to know is in this article.
You’ll be amazed by how good you feel after you get off sugar. Here’s how to do it.
Week 1: Ditch the sugar and eat more fat
Go to your kitchen and look at the nutrition labels on everything. If the food has more than a couple grams of sugar (or if it’s high in carbs, like pasta or potato chips), throw it out.
This applies to natural sugar, too. Sugar is sugar, whether it comes from a candy bar or from a cantaloupe. “Healthy” sweeteners like dates, honey, coconut sugar, maple syrup, and agave nectar are no better than table sugar; they’ll still spike your insulin levels and cause cravings.
You want to stay under 20 grams of sugar a day for the next month, and keep your overall carbs around 50-150 grams a day. The goal isn’t too cut out sugar entirely — healthy foods contain a small amount of sugar, but the point is to limit them so they don’t mess with your blood sugar and lead to energy crashes.
Once you’ve gotten rid of the sugar and carbs in your kitchen, head to the grocery store and stock up on lots of quality fats, protein, and veggies. Choose things like:
- Grass-fed beef and lamb
- Wild salmon
- Pasture-raised bacon
- Pasture-raised eggs
- Raw nuts
- Grass-fed butter
- Olive oil
- Coconut oil
- Avocados
- Broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, fennel, cabbage, and other nutrient-dense, low-carb veggies
Week 2: Hack your sugar cravings
Sugar is addictive. It lights up the reward pathways in your brain and causes withdrawal symptoms when you stop eating it. After a couple days without sugar, the cravings are going to hit. You might experience:
- Low energy
- Mood swings
- Strong desire for carbs/sweets
- Headaches
- Trouble sleeping
- Brain fog
This is your body going through sugar withdrawal. Stay strong! The withdrawal will pass after a few days and you’ll feel better than ever before. In the meantime, here are three ways to hack your sugar cravings:
Eat lots of fat (and don’t count calories). Start your day with a Coffee and have lots of fatty meat and butter-drenched vegetables for lunch and dinner. Don’t count calories while you’re getting off sugar; fill up on fat and eat until you’re full. The combination of fat, protein, and fibre will curb your appetite and ease cravings.
Put Brain Octane Oil on everything. Brain Octane Oil is a special type of fat that your liver converts to energy almost immediately. Brain Octane suppresses your hunger hormones and helps a lot with cravings and low energy. Drizzle it on your meals to help you get through sugar withdrawal.
Keep good snacks handy. When you’re going through sugar cravings and withdrawal, make sure you have lots of high-fat, low-carb snacks that you can eat without prep. Choose things like clean meat sticks/bars, grass-fed hot dogs and sausages, grass-fed cheese (if you tolerate it), raw nuts, nut butter, and dark chocolate (78% or darker). The moment a carb craving hits, grab a high-fat snack. This strategy makes a bigger difference than you might think.
Stick out your second week without sugar. It’s usually the most difficult, but once the cravings subside, you’re going to feel amazing.
Week 3-4: Enjoy your new body and brain
By week 3, your sugar withdrawal will probably have come and gone. You can expect sugar and carb cravings to disappear almost entirely. You won’t have to battle to not eat that cookie at the end of the day — the desire just won’t be there.
For the 3rd week of the month, expect to feel better and better. You’ll enjoy extraordinary mental clarity, stable energy, fat loss, decreased inflammation, better sleep, and more. Now is a good time to experiment with your diet and find what works best for your unique biology.
- Try adding intermittent fasting for even more mental focus and fat loss
- Consider going full keto
- Fine-tune your nutrition with the right supplements
If you slip up getting off sugar, don’t beat yourself up. Sugar is physiologically and mentally addictive. It’s not easy to kick, but it’s worth the struggle.
One final thing: coconut sugar is sugar, the fruit is sugar, agave is sugar, honey is sugar. If it’s sweet and doesn’t have a brand name chemical, it’s sugar. They all act almost the same in your body.
Difficult to Quit Sugar (No Sugar Challenge)?
If you find any kind of difficulty to quit sugar, you can achieve by following steps. It all depends what you want to achieve. Some possible steps:
- Stop eating refined sugar. Consume only healthier sugars.
- Also stop eating hidden sugars, or healthier sugars, glucose syrup, HFCS – high fructose corn syrup,nhoney, agave, maple syrup, cane sugar, squeezed juices without the pulp and the likes.
- Stop eating added sugar altogether. This is hard to tell what is added or not when buying prepared food, conserves, canned food, bottled stuff, so it is better to stop consuming those altogether. Consume as much as you can in raw form.
- Stop consuming anything that contains sweeteners, sugar substitutes (artificial or natural). The today acceptable “sweeteners” are stevia, erythritol and xylitol. But as everything this list also changes…
- What about starches, carbohydrates, pasta, bread, crackers, chips, wheat, corn, rye, oat, potatoes,.. Some people are also letting those go.
- Then fruits and vegetables with a higher content of sugar.
Which level are you targeting?
