7 Secrets to Surviving Without Sugar

Surviving without sugar is not as hard as you might think. My family of four stopped using refined sugar in 2021, to heal our bodies from chronic illness.

I’m not going to lie, it was a challenge. My 11-year-old literally cried one morning at breakfast because he missed his Froot Loops. But we made it. Our first goal was one month. Then, after we went a whole month without any added refined sugar (with some little slip ups here and there), and we had reaped some great benefits – better sleep, more focus, less impulsivity, and lowered blood pressure – we decided to make this a permanent lifestyle change!

Sugar is added to EVERYTHING these days. It’s addictive and it’s hidden in places you don’t expect. But through a few simple practices, my family was able to eliminate it altogether. And you can too.

Discuss with your family the reason you are taking this step. Maybe you want to feel better, or live longer or reverse chronic disease. Whatever the reason, assure your kids this is not meant to punish them. They might feel punished because sugar is often seen as a reward in our culture. Birthday cakes for living another year, cookie bouquets to celebrate, treats for Valentine’s Day and Christmas and Easter.

In fact, there’s a literal reward in your body as well. Physiologically, the brain produces dopamine when you eat sugar. This is one of the reasons escaping sugar is hard. There’s a mental and physical addiction to get past. But you can do it. And I promise it will be rewarding in the end.

After you’ve cleared the pantry of sugary foods, do the same for the fridge and freezer. Again, take everything out and read every single label. Put everything with sugar on the top shelf of the fridge. Do the same in the freezer.

Even if you think there can’t possibly be sugar in something, read the label anyway. Make a cup of coffee, congratulate yourself on taking this step, and dive in. I almost skipped reading the ingredients on a can of kidney beans and a can of organic tomato sauce I used to buy in bulk from CostCo. Because I thought WHY would beans or tomatoes have sugar ADDED to them?

But, I was surprised to find, they did.

Why is Sugar Everywhere?

Sugar is not just for sweetening. It was also one of the earliest and best food preservatives. For decades, people used sugar as a preservative to store food, to get a family through winter until the next harvest. That’s why we we have jams and jellies. But for us, our next harvest is our next grocery store run. So we don’t need those preservatives anymore.

Manufacturers know about the dopamine production sugar triggers. They know your body can become addicted to sugar, which is why they have gotten really smart about hiding sugar in their products. They do this by calling added sugar by different names, so when you read the ingredients, you don’t notice the sugar you’re consuming. But suddenly, you’re hooked.

It’s like the old drug deal adage. Your first hit is free. Because all they have to do is get you to try it once, and they know you will come back for more. So, in addition to “sugar” also be on the lookout for:

Other Words for Sugar on Nutrition Labels

corn sweetener

corn syrup

corn syrup solids

dehydratd cane juice

dextrin

dextrose

maltodextrin

malt syrup

maltose

rice syrup

sacchrarose

sorghum

sorghum syrup

sucrose

Tell your family they have two weeks to eat everything in the Box-o-Sugar, and on the top shelf of the fridge and freezer. After that, it’s long gone.

As you grocery shop for the next two weeks, focus on buying things you know don’t have sugar in them, so you don’t have to add them to the box, or the top shelves. Use this as a period as one of transition, of forgiveness. You’re going to discover a lot in this two weeks. Keep reading those labels, and forgive yourself when you bring home some stuff that has to go in the box. Because that is what this time is for. To ease you in.

The day before your circled day on the calendar, take the box to your local food pantry. Give your fridge or freezer items to a neighbor. Or, if they’re open, throw them out. Then take out the trash. Get ALL the sugar completely out of your house so you can start the next day fresh and sugar free.

Shopping online is the easiest way I’ve found to ensure I can read all the labels and get everything I need for my family. It’s going to be time consuming at first, so I advise you spread out your planning/label reading over a few days, so it’s not so overwhelming.

Most online grocery ordering systems have an option to reorder everything from previous shopping trips. Utilize this function, so it’s not so time consuming in follow-up trips.

For pantry items, I’ve been relying on some online sources including Thrive Market and VitaCost. (None of the brands I mention on this page are sponsors.)

Thrive Market focuses on making nontoxic, eco-friendly brands more accessible and affordable. They are also a 100% carbon-neutral company. VitaCost is owned by Kroger, and has a plan to become Zero Waste by 2025. I use VitaCost only when I can’t find the things I need at Thrive. Which is not often. But they do have a great sugar free jelly I can’t find anywhere else.

Really love chocolate? Try a Lily’s chocolate bar made with stevia.

Your kids like ramen? There’s sugar-free versions of that too. (Yep, ramen has sugar in it.)

Love a good chai latte at Starbucks? That has 42 GRAMS OF SUGAR in it. Crazy, right? Try ordering just a latte instead, with honey added for sweetener. This will have naturally-occurring sugar from the milk, if you choose milk. But it won’t have any ADDED sugar.

One thing I would be careful about here, though, is the OTHER ingredients in the label. The substitutes I’ve mentioned so far have mostly real ingredients. But some sugar-free substitutions do not. Some bottles of liquid stevia have added flavorings. Most grocery stores have sugar-free sections for diabetics. But the list of ingredients on those labels are long and hard to read. And that’s exactly what you don’t want to put in your body.

Don’t go from one poison to another

Our goal is to find products with:

1) no added sugar and

2) the fewest number of ingredients and

3) the most RECOGNIZABLE ingredients on the label.

For instance, a bag of Reese’s Zero Sugar Miniatures Peanut Butter Cups has the following ingredients:

Maltitol, Peanuts (Adds a Negligible Amount of Sugar), Cocoa Butter, Chocolate (Adds a Negligible Amount of Sugar), Lactitol (Milk), Cellulose Gel, Polydextrose (Adds a Negligible Amount of Sugar), Vegetable Oil (Peanut Oil, Palm Kernel Oil, Palm Oil), Milk Fat, Contains 2% or Less of: Cream (Milk) (Adds a Negligible Amount of Sugar), Salt, Lecithin (Soy), Sodium Caseinate (Milk), Natural & Artificial Flavor, PGPR, Sucralose, TBHQ & Citric Acid (to Maintain Freshness).

Whereas Lily’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups have the following ingredients:

Dark Chocolate (Unsweetened Chocolate, Erythritol, Chicory Root Fiber, Cocoa Butter, Sunflower Lecithin, Vanilla Extract, Stevia Extract), Peanut Butter (Peanuts, Palm Kernel Oil, Erythritol, Peanut Flour, Chicory Root Fiber, Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Salt, Sunflower Lecithin, Stevia Extract)

See how the list for Lily’s is shorter, and the ingredients are real life things, and not crazy scientific names that have too be researched to find out exactly what they are?

Websites to help you find real food

To help me process these choices without going crazy, I use a couple of real food websites. You should check these out if you find it daunting to trudge through all the ingredients you don’t want to put into your body.

Lisa Leake’s 100 Days of Real Food is a great recourse, as is FlavCity, where Bobby and his crew make YouTube videos in grocery stores, pointing out the ingredients on packaged foods. In fact, FlavCity recently came out with an app that you can use to scan labels, to make it even easier on you.

If you are a fan of fast food, this is going to be especially challenging for you.

Luckily, we live in a time when some restaurants, even some fast food establishments, are acknowledging the desire of some of us to eat healthier and are offering some stronger options. Also, most restaurants have menus and nutritional info posted online. Look up your favorites and find out what has added sugar and what does not.

You can start with a breakdown of the sugar content at my favorite restaurants.

Check out my sugar-free snacks recipes and sugar-free desserts board on Pinterest for some ideas to get you started. Try different recipes. Find your favorites. And you’ll never go without again.

One of my favorites homemade treats without sugar is Breakfast Cookies. Oatmeal and chocolate chips and ooey and gooey and so filling. Just make sure you get some sugar free chocolate chips, like Lily’s, which are sweetened with stevia.

But you know what? That’s okay.

What’s going to happen when you have that treat is:

1) it’s going to be WAY sweeter than you remember, since your palette changes after the elimination of sugar and

2) it’s going to feel WAY better than it did back when you were having it every day. That is what a TREAT is suposed to feel like.

The point is, don’t beat yourself up. You are doing yourself a great service by cutting sugar out of your life, but for it to be sustainable, you have to forgive yourself some little missteps now and then.

You have to be able to indulge on occasion, for your own psyche. I promise, after you’ve been off sugar for a while, those cravings will diminish. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in front of the TV at the end of the night, thinking I wanted something sweet. And I had Lily’s chocolate bars in the pantry, ready for just such a craving. But as I sat there thinking about it, I realized I didn’t really have a physical craving for it anymore at all. At that point, it was just a mental one.

What allowed me to escape that addiction? Following all the tips above. Giving myself the gift of a life without reliance on sugar. And realizing that I can do it.

And you can too.