For thirty days, Michael, our friend, Hester, and I limited ourselves to eating the daily recommendation for added sugar - five teaspoons for women, nine teaspoons for men... I'm still not over the injustice of this gender difference! Our sugar challenge ended on Thursday. My thoughts:
- Eating just five teaspoons (20 grams) of sugar per day is totally doable.
- After two or three weeks, I stopped craving added sugars much.
- As I got used to eating less sugar, I started very easily picking up on sugar in food. The whole wheat English muffins I bought to make mini pizzas tasted sweet to me. Sure enough, they had a couple of grams of sugar in them. Lots of Thai food has a bit of sugar added to it. When I went out to a Thai restaurant with Michael and good friends from church, I could taste it in almost every dish. I made Japanese curry the other day which called for three tablespoons of honey in the whole pot. I could very clearly taste the sweetness.
- I plan on continuing to stay within the recommended amount on most days. When I go beyond that amount, like when I had a large slice and a half of delicious homemade coconut cake on Easter, I want it to be an intentional deviation from the norm, not just mindless consuming of junk.
- During the past months, I really really missed dessert a few times. And as the challenge neared its end, I started dreaming about what decadent dessert I would gobble down when my five teaspoon chain was removed. I landed on coffee ice cream with homemade fudge sauce. After eating the small bowl below, I felt buzzed in a light-headed, uncomfortable way for several hours. My body was not used to it!
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