Sugar-free Lent

Although I’m a Catholic, you can bet (as all good Catholics do) that the saints are not holding their breath for me to stroll through the pearly gates very soon after I die. Even so, I make an attempt to connect with my religion a little more during Lent, and I choose to do so in the typical manner of ‘giving something up.’ Like many Americans, I generally make some sort of diet-related sacrifice  - no brownies, alcohol,  cookies, or [insert whatever food item you like here] type of sacrifice. But I do this because whatever I’m give up is truly difficult for me to do, and when I want it, I have to stop and reflect on the meaning behind why I’m giving it up. 

This year I toyed with giving up alcohol, but honestly that would not be too difficult, and I would only have to  think about a spiritual connection on an intermittent basis. I decided that I wanted my sacrifice to be something which would unite me daily with the divine – and the one thing I have (and love) on a daily basis is added sugars.  Honey on my oatmeal, a bite of chocolate after lunch, a piece of candy out of the secretary’s dish at work, gelato or a cookie in the evening – I could go for all of that in one day. I have a great love for all things sweet. So this, this giving up all added sugars, would certainly be a sacrifice that allowed for a daily dose of divinity. My decision was made the week before Lent, and I was ready for a sugar-filled “Last Week of Sweet Stuff” before I bonded with my religion for forty days.

On the day I made the decision, I found out a few of my friends were starting a “10-day No Sugar Challenge” which would start the following day.  They told me I should do it with them. For a brief moment I thought ‘No Way! I’m giving it up for 40 days, I need time to prepare and enjoy and get it all in before I do that!’ But then I thought… hmmmm… yes I will jump off the same bridge all my friends are jumping off!  I had already planned to give up sugar for Lent anyhow, so why not just start right then, with them? And that’s what I did; I just gave it up, cold turkey.

When I say I gave up sugar, what I mean is, I gave up sugar which is not naturally occurring. No cereals (or anything) with more than 5 grams of sugar in a serving. No honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, molasses, agave or table sugar, since these are all processed and not actually natural. No cookies, brownies, cakes, pies, donuts, candy or dried fruit, including raisins, because dried fruit is an awful lot like candy. Nothing which contains the fructose ingredients High Fructose Corn Syrup or Crystalline Fructose.

I decided that I would still drink alcohol, but avoid sweet alcohols like hard cider, liqueurs, dessert wines, Sambuca, etc. (Yes, I know, alcohol has sugar alcohols in it, but I have about three glasses of wine a week, on average, so it’s pretty minimal.) I also eat fruit, since the sugars are naturally occurring and even in high-sugar fruits the sugar content is far less than it is in any processed food. I have noticed that fruit tastes very sweet to me, now. I mean, a banana and an apple always tasted sweet, but now they are really, really sweet – and grapes are almost TOO sweet for me and I love grapes!

So, what exactly have I been eating, you ask? Well, remember, I gave up sugar but I did not give up carbs. I eat a lot! Eggs. Bananas, grapes, melon. Peanut butter. Pasta with olive oil or my own home-made tomato sauce. Pizza with dough made from scratch. Grape Nuts. Oatmeal. Apples. Nuts. Cheeses. Chicken breast. Steak. Tortilla chips and home-made salsa or guacamole. Salads when I go out, and the dressing is just olive oil and maybe a little balsamic. All kinds of veggies  - squashes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, asparagus, peppers, eggplant, carrots. Homemade waffles with fruit on top. I’ve been making a lot of soups. Fresh baguettes. Olives. Pickles. Rice. Lentils. Spinach. Fish, lots of it. Shrimp. Salmon burgers. Grapes and cantaloupe. Pears. Sugar-free greek yogurt with fruit added. Basically, REAL WHOLE FOOD. Yes it involves cooking, or eating out at places which are generally a little more costly, but honestly, the extra dollars are very well spent if they are an investment in my health and in keeping my body disease free. We even joined a CSA for the summer, so I expect it will be easy to continue to eat like this. It’s not difficult to do, it just takes a little planning and some (generally) simple meal cooking. It’s actually very fun, for me – and even if you’re not the ‘in-the-kitchen’ type, you can buy a roast chicken and all kinds of veggie sides for not a lot more than it costs to buy them uncooked, and then you don’t have to do the work. So really, you just have to plan a little and decide where you want to spend your hard-earned money. For me, this is an easy choice.

During this Sugar-free Lent, I have been doing a LOT of reading on the effects of sugar in the body and some of the conclusions on research studies I’ve read have been really scary. Mostly because the amount of sugar we typically consume is not normal and our bodies have not adapted to handle processing it all. I believe (and many studies support this belief) that is why diabetes and metabolic syndrome are on the rise in our population – because our sugar consumption has increased at a pace far faster than the rate at which our bodies can adapt to accommodate the extra sugar.  And the “fructose is a good sugar because it’s closest to fruit” seems to be one of the greatest marketing lies ever told. This may be true if you were consuming only the amount which you would find in a piece of fruit, but chances are you are consuming far more than that, and not in anywhere NEAR it's natural form. Several published medical studies are showing that consuming high amounts of fructose in any processed form (i.e. agave, honey, etc., as opposed to the amount of fructose ingested when eating a piece of fruit) can have a very detrimental effect on your liver and your brain. EGADS! In any case, reading about some of these studies may have scared me out of eating added sugar for good. I’ve always been told eating a lot of sugar is not healthy, but after doing my own research, I really believe consuming excess sugar is detrimental to my goal of living a long and happy life.

Do I miss the sugar? Generally, I don’t. I am not going to say this has been easy the whole time. The beginning was tough, and I’m thankful I had friends doing it and supporting me for that first ten days! But overall, it has not been that difficult to go without eating added sugars, and it seems to be easier to do every week. I have a big sweet tooth. I definitely miss chocolate and some days I really just want some dam.n gelato, already. And the little green iced sugar cookies one of our secretaries made on St. Patrick’s day, which I *know* were heaven because I’ve had her cookies before… well, they were very difficult for me to turn down, but I did it. And so far it’s been ok, and having the option to eat fruit really has satisfied my sweet tooth when I do have a sugar craving. Actually just last weekend at a brunch I went to, someone brought VooDoo Donuts – I have been dying to try them and it was one of the first places I planned on going after Lent, but when I was faced with them in my friend’s kitchen, I really didn’t want them. There was tons of fruit, which was super delicious and if anything, I overdosed on honeydew and pineapple! 

Since forgoing extra sugar, I don't notice that I feel any better or worse, physically. I can’t say I have any more or less energy, any more or less mental focus, or any more or less digestive issues – everything feels pretty much the same as it was when I was eating sugar, almost six weeks ago. I will say that I have had a pretty stressful few weeks and I feel like I’ve handled it better than I have in the past. I also have not gotten sick, and generally when I’m pushing myself at work this hard, I DO wind up with a cold or some other illness which knocks me on my butt and forces me to slow down – that hasn’t happened. I am more curious to see how I feel once I start eating sugar again, maybe then it will be obvious, but for now, not much seems different.  I sleep really well, and I have no idea if there is a connection here, but I NEVER get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, where before, when I was eating more sugar, I feel like I would wake up every night to do that. Weird!

What I didn’t realize was how much sugar I was eating before I started this, and how much sugar is IN everything - read the labels, it’s crazy! At first it was weird to have oatmeal without honey and Grape Nuts without the teaspoon of table sugar, but it wasn’t bad. And I just added either bananas or apples to my oatmeal, and I really like it that way. It turns out Grape Nuts are totally delicious on their own, I don’t even want to add sugar and probably will never do that again! There have been a couple occasions where I really wanted to have some chocolate after a rough day, or go out for ice cream or gelato, which made me realize how much I used sugar as a pick-me-up – for me, sugar does mentally make me feel better. I have had to find other ways to make myself feel better, or just ride out the stress or bad emotions. It has been an eye-opening experience on that front. Not an easy one, but a good one.

Even though Lent is coming to an end I am planning to continue down this road of consuming minimal added sugars. Believe me, I will be eating my fair share of Cadbury eggs and jellybeans come Easter Sunday, but after that, I truly feel I will be just fine without the added sugar, because right now, six weeks in, I am just fine! I’m also not worried about what kind of damage I’m doing to my body by consuming all that sugar. I am positive I will eat some added sugars here and there, but my thought at the moment is it will happen once a week at the most. I really want to see how long this lasts for me after Lent. It's actually one of the reasons I'm writing this, so that I can come back to this post and have a reminder how scary the effects of sugar are. It's just not good for me and I really am OK without it. So we shall see how it goes, but for now that is my intent.

By the way, if you eat fat-free or low-fat foods, check the sugar content (and the ingredient list) of the low-fat version vs. the full-fat version. With few exceptions, I find the lower fat version to be higher in sugar and that the ingredient list is far longer and more difficult to pronounce, which is something to think about (and a topic for a whole ‘nother blog!)

Stay sweet, my friends. J