Eating no sugar for ten days was hard at the beginning, easy after a few days of figuring out how to do it, and hard again at the end when I was running out of a variety of things to fix for dinner. Basically, you can have fish, chicken, lean meat, fruits, vegetables and, of course, zucchini noodles.

I guess that’s a lot of variety. It just didn’t feel like it on Day 9 and 10. I missed bread and pasta and pizza and burgers. But having fish, chicken, fruits, and veggies is the way we should be eating anyway — I know that.

New Dietary Recommendations

I’ve learned that the new dietary recommendations state that daily sugar intake should be no more than 10% of your calories. This includes natural sugar as well. Right now I’m trying to limit myself to 1200 calories a day. Ten percent of that is 120 calories a day for sugar. Each gram of sugar has four calories. 120 calories divided by 4 equals 30.

So…I should have no more than 30 grams of sugar a day. That’s not much!

If you want to figure your recommended maximum sugar grams:
(number of calories you eat per day) times .10 is (the maximum number of sugar calories you should have daily).  1200 X .10 = 120

Then take that (maximum number of sugar calories you should have daily) and divide by 4. 120 ÷ 4 = 30

This final number is the maximum grams of sugar per day you should consume.

Thirty grams of sugar a day is not a lot of sugar. And compared to what I was eating? Really not a lot. Don’t forget this number includes natural sugar as well. A banana has 14 grams of sugar in it, so when I’m  trying to limit myself to 30 grams of sugar a day, I’m going to pretty much get 30 grams from eating fruits and vegetables anyway. (If I’m eating right.) That’s like staying on this no sugar challenge for good. Yikes.

Natural sugar

In fact, most days during this challenge I’ve had around 30 grams of sugar in my daily sugar intake, and none of these were from added sugar. They were from naturally occurring sugar in healthy foods. Besides the fruit, there was natural sugar in mushrooms, eggs, spinach, almonds, onions, tomatoes, avocados, lettuce…you see what I’m getting at here.

That’s one of my main takeaways from this — I didn’t realize how much sugar I was eating every day.  I had no idea how much natural sugar there was in healthy foods, even before I started adding the junky kind.

Now let’s hand out some End of Challenge Awards:  

Favorite meals :

Portabella mushroom caps (recipe here)
Zuchinni noodle shrimp scampi (recipe here) using my new spiralizer here

Favorite indulgence:

Tostitos tortilla chips and wholly guacamole

Can you believe it? ZERO grams of sugar in this yumminess!

Favorite benefit:

During the entire ten days of no sugar, I did not experience as much hunger as usual, even though I was eating less calories than normal. Even better, I didn’t have my usual shakiness when hungry.

Normally when I get hungry, I feel shaky. When I got hungry during this challenge, I never once had my usual shaky feeling. This benefit alone was worth giving up sugar.

But did you lose weight?

Finally, to answer to the question I’ve been asked the most , I lost five pounds. Five pounds in ten days — not bad. I’ll see if it stays off as I get off the challenge.

I will definitely still try to limit added sugar. It may be the key for me. The improved energy and general better feeling I had far outweighed the pleasure of eating  lots of sweets. It really did. I just felt better.

No Sugar For Ten Days!

All in all, ten days of no sugar was challenging, but not impossible. I encourage everyone to try it and see how much better you’ll feel.