Sugar Free February

The goal for February is to cut out refined sugar. 

Why sugar?

I mean, can’t we all just agree that sugar is the devil?

“There is little doubt that sugar is the absolute worst food for your health,” says Dr. Jack Wolfson in his book The Paleo Cardiologist. “Unfortunately, sugar is the most addictive food on the planet and is responsible for more deaths than all drugs, pharmaceutical and illegal, combined.” 

There’s no source for that statistic in the book, but his basic idea is that sugar directly leads to heart disease.

Plenty of research has been conducted on the effects of sugar on the body, and basically, they all conclude the same way.

SUGAR = BAD

Let’s specifically look at why sugar elimination would be good for the various members of my household.

For me: My own history with sugar is a troubled one. I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia in college, after randomly passing out several times. Once while riding a bicycle. Downhill. That’s an incident I will never forget, and neither will the poor friend who was riding with me, who thought she might have to perform CPR on me as I lie unconscious in the middle of the street after falling off the bike. Another friend was with me when I passed out while shopping at the Esprit outlet. (Anyone remember Esprit?) I knew it was coming. I could feel my blood sugar levels dropping and my highly intelligent friend told me to sit down in the middle of the store. RIGHT NOW, she said. I didn’t listen because I thought that would be embarrassing. So I tried to make it to a row of chairs where a husband and son were waiting for their wife/mom to finish shopping. I didn’t make it. I passed out across their laps. So much for avoiding a scene.

My doctor’s answer to this problem was to keep some butterscotch candies in my purse. When I felt my blood sugar dropping, he said I should pop a candy and I would be fine. I tried that and it did work, while walking across campus one day. And one time, when I was DRIVING. 

It did occur to me that perhaps there should be some proactive solution to prevent these episodes from happening, instead of reacting to them when they did happen. But. I was in college. It was the late 90s. And I was having a really good time. Seems silly now, but back then, passing out on occasion was not something I worried about too much.

When I got older, I cut back on sugar, because I knew how it affected me. I started to notice when I had sugar in my coffee in the mornings, I had trouble focusing on projects at work. Cutting sugar from my coffee was a great way to keep me productive until at least lunchtime. 

But I never did cut it out completely. Despite all the signs in my life that were LITERALLY pointing me toward danger.

For my husband: My husband’s A1C is dangerously high, at the level of type 2 diabetes. While his doctor told him there was NO WAY TO LOWER HIS A1C LEVELS once they reached past the point he was at, I refused to believe there was nothing he could do EXCEPT TAKE DRUGS. And I was determined to prove her wrong. Eliminating sugar for him just seems logical, given that the body absorbs sugar quickly, causing blood glucose levels to spike. 

For our kids: A recent study by the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus shows that sugar exacerbates ADHD symptoms. This is not a new concept. But the pandemic seemed to serve as a catalyst to my oldest son’s struggle with ADHD. Perhaps all of 2020 could serve as a closed psychological experiment in my house. But some things I noticed during lockdown with him is 1) he eats a LOT of sugar and 2) he wasn’t making great decisions after consuming that sugar. While being a teenager is probably the cause of some of that poor decision making, I was hoping some of it could be controlled through diet. 

Now, let me provide some perspective. He wasn’t stealing our car and taking it for joy rides. The bad decisions I’m talking about included incidents like 1) not paying close attention during Zoom classes and then not being able to remember what his Biology teacher just talked about for an HOUR or 2) using a baseball bat to hit the tether ball after we asked him not to do that TWO DAYS IN A ROW.

(I’m capping these words a lot. I’m writing this on Day One of the no sugar experiment. Perhaps writing in all caps is a sugar withdrawal symptom?)

So, my kid is not exactly a juvenile. But. When I grounded him for using the baseball bat on the tether ball, I asked him if he remembered the past two days when I asked him not to do that. And he did. I asked if he understood the reason I had asked him not to do that and he said yes. I asked him if he agreed with the reasoning behind the request and he did. When asked why he did it anyway, he said he didn’t know. (Just so you know, the first rule of ADHD parenting is to not ask them WHY. Because they don’t generally know the why. But I asked anyway. Because my brain can’t wrap my head around it and…..WHYYYYYY?)

Immediately, images of my son’s future stealing cars and/or knocking over liquor stores flew through my mind. And me going through the same conversation and him not being able to say why he did those things. “He SAID he wanted to be an engineer for NASA, officer. I don’t know WHY he would steal a car.” 

Of course, this is a parental overreaction. Right?? I mean, do you think Jeffrey Dahlmer’s mother overreacted? Or held herself back from overreacting? I don’t know. (Did I mention I’m on Day 1 of my period AND Day 1 of the NO SUGAR experiment?)

The experiment

The idea of cutting out sugar for February was sparked by an article in ADDITUDE magazine, suggesting the removal of all sugar from the child’s diet for ten days. On the 11th day, you give your child sugar, to see if he kicks up a gear or three in terms of hyperactivity and his ability to focus. And make life changing decisions like “don’t hit the tether ball with the baseball bat.”

But instead of doing that for ten days, we are doing it for 28, in the month of February. And I’m fairly certain we won’t be reintroducing sugar into our diets in March. Because the idea of my plan is to make these habits stick long-term. We’re changing lives, people.

Let’s be clear, though. Cutting out sugar, for us, will not include natural sugars like honey or real maple syrup. 

I’m not a monster.

What we are cutting out is refined sugar. But it’s important to remember that refined white sugar comes with different names on our ingredient labels. So, in addition to cane sugar, be sure to also eliminate any box or bag with the following ingredients:

• corn syrup
• corn syrup solids
• dehydrated cane juice
• dextrin
• dextrose
• maltodextrin; malt syrup; maltose
• rice syrup
• saccharose
• sorghum or sorghum syrup
• sucrose

What about Valentine’s Day?

Yes, I know, there is a holiday in February that is entirely based around chocolate. But here’s the thing. There’s plenty of sweets you can have that don’t have refined sugar. Because of the popularity of the Keto diet, stores are stocking treats made with Stevia or Monk Fruit, neither of which spike blood sugar levels to the extent of refined white sugar. And, there are other ways to celebrate love.

If you remember from The Plan post, there are measured ways to form habits, according to the British Journal of General Practice.:

1. Decide on a goal that you would like to achieve for your health.
2. Choose a simple action that will get you towards your goal which you can do on a daily basis.
3. Plan when and where you will do your chosen action. Be consistent: choose a time and place that you encounter every day of the week.
4. Every time you encounter that time and place, do the action.

So the plan for February is to:

1. Decide on a goal: Cut out refined sugar
2. Choose a simple daily action that moves you toward the goal: Don’t buy groceries with sugar. Throw out the sugar you currently have.
3. Plan a consistent when and where you will perform the action: 3 times a day, in our kitchen
4. Do the action. This is the hard part, isn’t it?

See the results here:

Results: Sugar-Free February