Beat the Sweet

Today marks Day Two of my sugar-free diet.

I have decided to cut-out added/processed sugar out of my diet for a seemingly-impossible seven days, and it's already proving to be more of a challenge than I expected. Added sugar is found in practically everything - from the obvious cookies and cakes to the not-so-obvious salad dressing, ketchup, peanut butter, cereal, spaghetti sauce, cottage cheese, salsa, even sliced turkey.

My plan was to stick to natural, unprocessed foods to avoid added sugars. Remember people, the point of this is to cut-out added sugars from my diet, not to avoid sugars all together. Foods like fruit and bread contain naturally-occurring sugars, which are fine. Lunch yesterday was supposed to be a turkey sandwich on organic whole-wheat bread (which, again, has natural sugars, but no added sugars). Simple enough, right? Wrong! My lunch backfired when I started reading labels - the mayo contained sugar, so I though I'd substitute some light ranch dressing or caeser dressing. Nope, all sugar. Then I looked closer at the turkey itself. Yep.. even the turkey (Kroger brand) contained added dextrose. I just wanted a sandwich!

Ultimately, lunch ended up being a salmon croquette (salmon, flour, egg cooked in a pan with olive oil) with some mustard. Typically, I eat these with ketchup but, of course, ketchup has sugar. Ughhh frustration.

Dinner was chicken-pot-pie (cooked by my sweet mother) and contained peas, carrots, corn, cream of chicken, and roasted shredded chicken. No sugar here - I checked!

Breakfast this morning consisted of two poached eggs and a slice of whole-wheat toast (again, contains naturally occurring sugars, but no added sugars which is what I'm trying to avoid). Lunch is leftover chicken-pot-pie from last night, with snacks of fruit and almonds in between meals. Yummy :)

My reasons for doing this? Well, that's a good question. Mostly just to see if I can. I'm a fairly healthy eater anyways - I rarely eat desserts, I make an effort not to eat processed foods, I don't eat fast-food, I don't drink soda.. So I thought I'd further challenge myself. Already, it's been an eye-opening experience at how much sugar our population really eats. I mean, is it really necessary to put sugar in my tomato sauce, sliced turkey, and yogurt? Considering the average American eats 22 teaspoons of sugar per day, which is almost three times the recommended amount, I think not.

Noms.

More updates later. Enjoy your week!

xoxo