I Quit Sugar. There Were Downsides—but One Big Positive
Craig Benzine is a YouTuber and content creator. He decided to quit sugar for a month. Nowadays, you can’t hurl a cronut without hitting a thought-provoking expose on how sugar is destroying humanity one disease at a time.
my wife and I decided to quit sugar for a month, we knew that having too much wasn’t good for us. But too much of anything isn’t good for you. I wanted to find out for myself the benefits of quitting sugar.
I want to live a long time, and a lot of people say that sugar causes all sorts of health problems, from heart disease to liver disease. I enjoy life and the people in it. I want to see my baby grow up. I want to live long enough so that there’s the technology to download my consciousness into a computer and in that way be immortal.
I want to have more energy, which is apparently what happens to people who quit sugar. If I have more energy, I’m in a better mood. If I’m in a better mood, I can be more productive earn more money, and help raise my baby.
Sugar is hidden in everything, so before quitting, I had to do some research. What does it mean to quit added sugar?
Natural sugar is sugar that’s found naturally in food without us doing anything to it, like apples, milk, and vegetables. Added sugar is sugar added to food when we process it.
This is found in things like… basically everything. Bread, ketchup, yogurt, dressings. It is shocking how much sugar is in popular yogurt brands that are supposed to be healthy
Apparently, natural sugar and added sugar are more or less chemically the same thing. But when you have natural sugar in things like apples, it comes with vitamins and fiber and other good stuff that makes the body process it more slowly and in a healthier way.
It satiates you, and it fills you up more than added sugar. But when you take that fruit and make it into juice, even without messing with it in any other way, it’s still technically natural sugar and will be labeled that way, but also loses many of the benefits.
Then there are things like honey and nectar, which technically have natural sugar. They probably have a little bit more beneficial stuff in them than straight-up sugar, but it’s still a lot of sugar at once.
So, with all of that in mind, our rules were no added sugar, no fruit juice, no sugar alternatives like stevia and aspartame, and no honey and agave. This meant I had to give up my protein bar that I’d consume pretty much every day.
It also meant no sweet breakfasts like pancakes or waffles, no donuts, ice cream, salad dressing, ketchup, chips, salsa, and nearly every packaged thing in a grocery store.
The first three days weren’t that bad, maybe because we weren’t heavy users of sugar in the first place. We quit drinking soda and I reduced my ice cream and chocolate regimen over the years. But, on the third day, I felt grumpy and terrible.
On day seven, I felt amazing, but on day nine, I felt low again. I had some ups and downs. Looking back, I realized that on day four, we were going through withdrawal symptoms.
The lack of options was difficult for us to adjust to. If I wanted something to quickly eat, I couldn’t just go to a fast food place.
On day nine, I realized that I lost three pounds, and two weeks in, I lost almost five pounds. It was really indicative of the sheer volume of sugar calories I was consuming before. Quitting sugar tends to make people lose weight.
During the diet, I went grocery shopping. I stopped and looked at the ice cream, and I didn’t want it that bad. A month ago, we went to that same grocery store, and I looked at those same ice cream and impulsively bought one and then ate almost half of a pint.
When we got home that day, I realized that my cravings for sweets started to go away. Apparently, one of the biggest causes of a sweet tooth is a sweet tooth.
The cravings did come back a little, but we generally just felt better, even though I didn’t notice myself feeling better at the time.
