The Sugar Detox

Hello! I told you this post would be coming eventually 🙂

As y’all know, I did a sugar detox from February 28 – March 11. I originally planned on doing a 21 day detox, but I chose to stop my detox before I went to Omaha last week. I decided to not worry about sugar because I knew it would be too difficult with eating out and the recipes my family was making. I really just didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.

Back in June of 2015, I did a 10 day sugar detox. But I didn’t really do it. A couple times I would get sugar free pumps of vanilla in my coffee and I would put 1/4 of a cup of sugar in my brownies and justified it by saying I was cutting down. NO! That didn’t do anything!

This time I decided to get real and take the detox seriously. I wanted to really see how it maximized all of my fitness efforts as well as how it made me feel.

Some things I learned:

1. YOU MUST READ LABELS.
2. If you aren’t sure of a specific ingredient from a label, google it or just skip the product.
3. Freaking pickles have high fructose corn syrup in them. Wtf?
4. Spices have sugar.
5. Ketchup (and many condiments) have sugar.
6. Peanut butter has sugar.
7. My protein powder has sugar.
8. Vanilla extract has sugar.
9. No breads (you’ll have to make your own…no worries there are plenty of recipes online!). Follow me on Pinterest to see some I pinned.
10. I started craving carbs because I wasn’t getting sugars. And carbs are a sugar. I also found myself craving salty foods too.
11. If you look up sugar detoxes on the internet, they all say different things. Some say you can’t have fruit, some can. Some say you can have a limited amount of artificial sweeteners and some don’t. I say yes to fruit and no to artificial sweeteners.
12. The sugar detox aligns with whole 30 if that’s something you’re interested in.
13. Grapes became dessert for me. They are SO SWEET now and so refreshing to me!
14. Just because it’s fruit doesn’t mean you can have it. Dried fruit is made with sugars so you need to read labels!

So how did I get some sugar/sweetness?

Date paste is what I used when a recipe called for sugar and I felt like it was needed. It’s super simple, you soak dates in water for 10 minutes, throw them in the food processor, and process until it’s a paste. I love it. I keep this in my refrigerator at all times now.

What did I do about condiments?

I made my own ketchup and stored it in a mason jar (it wasn’t pink like this picture makes it look like, I promise it’s red haha). I love this ketchup better than normal ketchup. I’ll never go back to buying ketchup again. It tastes so artificial and fake now!

I made my own BBQ sauce, too. 🙂

I also made my own mayonnaise and ranch dressing but I made it wrong so they didn’t taste good.

What did I eat?

These plantain chips became my best friend. Like I ate half of the container one night with salsa. Because guess what…some chips have sugar and these don’t!

I made turkey nachos. It’s ground turkey with taco seasoning on top of plantain chips with tomatoes, cheese, lettuce and some salsa. To die for.

Another thing that I ate was a lot of these when I needed some sort of sweetness…

I highly, highly, highly recommend Larabars. They are healthy and satisfying. Do you remember when I did the protein bar test last August? Well, it was then that I found my love for Quest Bars. I used to take them everywhere with me and snack on them for dessert, but now thinking back…they bloated me like crazy! And i’m thinking it was due to the erythritol and other artificial sweeteners. Now I don’t buy quest bars; I only get Larabars. Because they are made out of dates (the natural sugar) and can be used as dessert.

La Croix is the only other thing I drink besides black coffee and water. You can drink unsweetened teas, unsweetened almond milk, and coconut milk too.

I made some pulled pork and threw it on top of lettuce with cheese and DILL pickles (because those don’t have high fructose corn syrup) and some of my homemade BBQ sauce. Again, labels people!

I made almond butter cookies. They really weren’t that good but when you’re craving a cookie, but can’t have sugar, it will totally do.

I made my own blueberry chia seed jam.

This was good on my favorite pancakes…

with almond butter. I lived off of almond butter during this detox. You have to be sure to read the label..some have sugar and some don’t. This was a good brand that I found.

And with that almond butter, I also ate a lot of these almond butter banana waffles.

I am so thankful that sweet potatoes weren’t off limits (they are on some sugar detoxes) because I lived off of sweet potatoes too. Baked sweet potato fries, sautéed veggies, and a turkey burger with homemade ketchup. Notice the La Croix in the background 😉

More sweet potato fries and homemade chicken fingers. This has been my go-to meal lately!

And for dessert I would make a probiotic bowl. I diced up some fresh strawberries and banana (or whatever fruit you like) and poured some Green Valley Kefir to get probiotics in my body!

Doing this detox gave me a lot of reason to get creative in the kitchen, which just happens to be one of my favorite things!

You know, when you’re in the actual process it really doesn’t feel like you’re seeing any difference unless it’s super obvious one day, but now that i’ve introduced it back into my diet and haven’t been as strict on myself…i’ve definitely noticed how much it really did affect me. And because of that…I decided to do another detox starting yesterday. I want to get rid of all those toxins in my body from the processed foods and sugars i’ve allowed recently.

^^This is super helpful for label reading!

When I posted about bloating a while ago, I mentioned that I wanted to see if sugar had anything to do with it based off of what my cousin was telling me happened to her when she did Whole 30. Sooo, with that said, I would recommend doing this for anyone struggling with bloating and cannot figure out why…I absolutely noticed a difference this time around.

Let me know if you have any questions about the detox so I can answer! I want to help!

Ps. Follow me on Pinterest. I find lots of good things for the sugar detox (and well, all things healthy that I can). I’ll follow you back!! 🙂