Fitness for Busy Moms

Today is the last day of my second 10-day no-white-sugar fast.

Did you catch all that?

I think I confused myself writing it out! 😉

Because of some health issues and weight loss goals that my mom and several siblings have, I decided to get as many of my family members as I could on board with doing a sugar fast.

To make accountability easier, I started a private family Facebook group to help us all encourage each other with our efforts.

The Facebook group is nice because I can make the group invitation-only, and I can create different challenges throughout the year. We also share our favorite healthy recipes there.

We started our first sugar fast at the beginning of January and I think we all went into it a little excited and nervous, but it was fun to challenge ourselves and see how creative we could be to go without the sugar.

It’s amazing how many things you have to watch out for! I knew I wouldn’t be eating ranch dressing or ketchup, but I was heartbroken to find out sriracha sauce has sugar! Sriracha makes a great steak marinade by the way.

And the pretzels that we would often have as an afternoon snack no longer fit.

It actually kind of tuned me in more to how much I was snacking and on what.

Now I have to be honest with you. I was pretty perfect during each of my 10-day stints, but notice I said no white sugar.

I did use molasses, honey, maple syrup and coconut sugar if something called for a sweetener.

But, let me be clear, I wasn’t drowning things in it or making cookies. I’m talking like 3-4 tablespoons of coconut sugar in my huge pancake recipe. Instead of adding chocolate chips in the batter, after the pancakes were done cooking I spread a thin layer of peanut butter on top (extra protein and healthy fat) and topped that off with a drizzle of maple syrup over all.

Something interesting that happened during this whole experiment is that I naturally stopped eating so many grain carbs.

No more sandwiches at lunchtime for me! Most store-bought bread has sugar and I wasn’t going to pay for the super-expensive stuff. So while I fed my kids the customary PB&J, I usually ate leftovers from dinner.

I made bread once using honey, but that was it. I used to make all our bread, but that’s something that got cut when child number 5 came along.

Instead of rice, I discovered riced cauliflower. This is pretty awesome because I would serve myself the riced cauliflower and then mix the rest in with a small batch of rice I made for the rest of my family.

Score! Just snuck some veggies in them!

Ok, not really. They could tell and whined a bit, but the little ones wouldn’t have noticed if the older kids hadn’t ratted me out.

You really don’t notice much when you eat it with stir-fry or curry.

And you can make your own, but it is also sold with the frozen veggies. It would be super easy to make since it’s just cauliflower that’s been diced up pretty fine. I have been buying it ready-made to save time.

I also started making zucchini noodles (zoodles). Again, I would have just the zoodles, and then mix the rest in with the regular noodles for my husband and kids. We all got sauce and meat on top and this dinner has gone over very well with the family. We’ve had it several times since.

Making zoodles is super easy and the kids love helping! You can find the spiralizer (zoodle maker) that I use here. My 10-year-old daughter likes to use it to make curly hashbrown-like potatoes too.

As wonderful as this all is, sometimes I just wanted a sweet treat. For years now I have been making energy balls instead of granola bars. These are the things I grab before I go for a run or when I feel the need to have just a little something sweet.

They’re kind of like eating healthy cookie dough-but better. I take them on hikes and hand them out to the kids during the day when they need a snack. Take a look.

My overall thoughts for this challenge are:

Pros

• It has been helpful to stick to a no-sugar plan with other people holding me accountable.
• I had to get a little more creative about how I made some things, but they are changes that I now incorporate into our regular eating habits.
• I’ve always been one to look at ingredient lists, but as long as there was no corn syrup, sometimes I would let the sugar slide. Doing this challenge introduced me to some great new products that taste even better than the ones we had been using!

Cons

• I feel like to really be successful for health and weight loss, you ought to do this longer than just 10 days. I did learn new habits, but I don’t think it was enough time to really break me of my sugar cravings.
• The only sugar I eat more than I should is chocolate. And without my chocolate I turned to nuts to snack on. Waaaay too many yummy roasted nuts! For weight loss purposes, I would have been better off just eating my bit of chocolate before bed! Make sure you have a healthy alternative you can turn to when the munchies hit. Carrot sticks anyone?

On that last note, I believe the key here is moderation in all things. We didn’t use much white sugar in our house before the fast, and we now use even a little less.

But I still like me some dark chocolate every now and then.