Hey Max -
can you add me to the no sugar challenge?? thanks, Ellen

i'm back in ny now but i'm reading your CFEB blog every day. am hoping to get connected with the ny crossfitters in the next week or two.

best,
ellen

Uhm. *blush*.

I'm in, damn it.

Just had a glass of chocolate milk. Not so much because I needed to have some sugar before the challenge, but I needed to wash down that piece of cheesecake.

I'm going to take this a step further and commit to entering everything I eat into fitday for the next 30 days.

Daniel, I think those pants are too big for you. I think you should stop climbing and crossfitting, it's clearly making your clothes look silly on you.

Hopefully it's not too late to join in on the un-fun. I saw the original sugar post earlier this weekend and have not had any today. I did have two scoops of Ici ice cream for dinner last night in anticipation of the 30 day challenge.

James this was partially your idea, so you are in.

Thanks for the FitDay idea Leon. I have been meaning to track my nutrition for a while. Thus, I am going to do this as well. Today, I also plan to start writing down my CrossFit and other training regimen and results. This is day 4 of the no processed sugar diet for me. Provided a 10k+ does not come up this should be easy to maintain. In addition to the no sugar challenge I am going to try what I will call a moderated insulin response diet. This will include eating only cultured dairy products and whole fruits. Off limit (ideally though likely very limited) items will be potatoes, processed corn, white flour, and white rice.

Not yet defined in the rules is prepackaged fruit juice. Many juices and blends contain significant portions of grape, apple, or pineapple juice. In the commercial juicing process the fiber portion passing through is limited meaning the functional result is fructose water with some fiber.

Gita: in this challenge you may have as much juice as you want, however, the first thing I tell my nutrition clients is to cut our juice, hopefully forever. I never, ever drink juice (maybe wheat grass juice). It is a pure waste of calories, and you might as well drink soda as grape juice. That being said, if a 10K comes up, just use 1/4 grape juice/water mixture, you should be fine. And by the way? It will.

Preferably, if you are going to have juice, make it yourself.

Connie's Post from CFO:

Here is some food for thought for participants and non-participants alike.

The Objective:
The purpose of the 30-day challenge is not put forth an impossible task, rather it is to engage you in mindful eating. Eating mindfully means to eat for your health rather than for mere pleasure. “I ate it because it tastes good” is not the best approach to making food choices. Eating this way is detrimental to your health, often leading to poor body composition and at its most extreme, diseases such as type-2 diabetes and obesity. Refined sugars and processed foods fall into this category and it is these foods that more often than not stand in the way of your well-being. Unfortunately, these foods can be incredibly addictive and difficult to avoid. Admittedly, stopping cold turkey may not be the most effective approach for everyone and can actually be counterproductive. I encourage you to focus not on what you are giving up, but instead on what you are getting by eliminating sugar. You are regaining control of your health. My intention is not to get you to suck it up, but to get you to look at your food choices through a new, more critical lens. By the end of the month, I hope that you will be able to identify your own unhealthy habits/food addictions and learn how to replace them with more nutritionally sound ones.

Why sugar?
Sugar is a tough one. It seems like one of the most common issues I see among my clients, and I have struggled with it myself. While there are many harmful effects of eating refined sugar, one of the worst is the blood sugar imbalances it creates. Sugar causes a sharp blood sugar spike that may give you an immediate rush but will leave you feeling drained shortly after. Aside from calories, it provides the body with no nourishment because it is void of any of vitamins and minerals that your body needs. By eliminating or minimizing your consumption of sugar you can stabilize hormone levels, which will help to improve your mood and energy. Begin by forgoing the quick fixes of sugary processed foods and learn to satisfy that sweet craving with nutrient dense whole foods. The following is a list of food substitutions:

Healthy Alternatives:

Ketchup: Salsa
Salad dressing: Olive oil & Vinegar
Jelly/Jam (on toast): Butter & Cinnamon on toast
Ice Cream: Plain yogurt/chilled Coconut Milk w/Berries
Cookies & Candy: Sliced Apples w/ Almond/Peanut butter
Soda/Energy drinks: unsweetened Coffee or Tea
Protein bars: Fuel 2 go bars + protein (meat, dairy)
Cereals: Steel cut oats w/ Cinnamon and Almonds
Deli Meats: Whole Chicken meat (home cooked)

* Healthy Alternatives in italics

Become Informed:
One of the best things you can do for yourself is to learn how to read food labels. All packaged foods are required to disclose ingredients- this is your RIGHT, so take advantage of it! In an ideal world this wouldn't be an issue, instead we'd be make all of our foods from scratch, but this is far from reality for many. If you are someone who purchases a lot of packaged or prepared foods, pay especially close attention to the ingredients listed on the back of the label. Even foods that at first glance appear to be sugar-free (e.g. meats, dairy, and tomato sauce) may contain some form of sugar. Sadly, the food industry takes advantage of consumers by making fancy labels using words such as “natural”, “high fiber”, “good source of...” to get people to believe that it is a healthy choice. Don't fall victim to the all the hype. Here are some ingredients to look out for:

Common sugar names:
barley malt
beet sugar
brown sugar
buttered syrup
cane-juice crystals
caramel
carob syrup
corn-syrup solids
dextran
dextrose
diastase
diastatic malt
ethyl maltol
evaporated cane juice
fructose
fruit juice concentrate
glucose
golden syrup
high-fructose corn syrup
invert sugar
lactose
malt syrup
maltodextrin
maltose
mannitol
molasses
raw sugar
refiner's syrup
sorbitol
sorghum syrup
sucrose
turbinade sugar
(Marcum, Radha. "Labeling Sugar." Delicious Living. February 2008: p. 30).

Good luck to everyone! What has been the most revealing food so far? Post to comments.

Posted by Connie Moreno at 9:33 PM | Comments (1)

Thanks for putting up the post up from Connie. I thought about putting together a list of sugar names, GIs, and insulin responses. As usual, my ability to come up with project ideas is better than my ability to complete them.

Gita, Max - thanks for the food for thought on alcohol and juice (no pun intended)

Catching up on yesterday's WOD...
45 warm up
85 x15
120 x5
120 x5
120 x5

After realizing that my regular breakfast of Joe's Os has a smattering of sugar (1g per serving), I had Greek yogurt with almonds and blueberries for breakfast.

Connie's list is missing my personal favorite euphemism for refined sugar: Agave Nectar is found in Cliff Bars and guaranteed to sell more of your product to hippies the world over. Chemically, it's 90% fructose and 10% glucose and in addition to the cool sounding name encourages the destruction of Mexican desert.

I wish I could join you all on the no sugar challenge. I am on my own challenge and for the last month or so have been eating only 1 sweet per day. That is a huge accomplishment for me (as I used to eat whatever I wanted which included chocolate several times per day!). I am feeling great with this change so I am going to stick with that for now. But I will be cheering all of you on and someday maybe I will be there too.

I've been living essentially no-sugar and low carb (

Hard-boiled eggs
Cottage cheese w/almonds and cinnamon
Salted mixed nuts (from Costco)
Celery/Apple and almond butter
Baby carrots and hummus
And homemade protein bars

If I ate meat, I'd be all over jerky, but vegetarian jerkies are expensive, frequently terrible, and filled with unpronounceable ingredients. Alas.

I have yet to find jerky w/o sugar. Alex says he knows of one but I don't recall the name. He says it's expensive. Daniel, I would die without plain Greek yogurt from Trader Joe's. Do you eat that?

Sugar Free Jerky

kewl but they're out of stock.

One of my favorite non-sugar breakfasts is steel-cut oatmeal made with unsweetened almond milk and blueberries....mmmmmmmm.

Amaranth with fruit or drizzled with honey is good for breakfast. I like the texture better than oatmeal.

Besides protein, amaranth grain provides a good source of dietary fiber and dietary minerals such as iron, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and especially manganese.

Max sez no honey, honey.
I just had an "oh shit" moment. Salad greens w/ the only dressing I have at work right now, some kind of tahini thing called "Goddess." It has apple cider vinegar. I thought, oh no, maybe it's like concentrated fruit juice. A little poking around and I discovered that A.C.V. is actually thought to lower G.I. of carbs in your meal. Not sure I'm buying this, just yet. But suffice it to say, I don't think I need to be concerned about A.C.V. in my dressing.

Elaine - honey is a NO

Alex - Thanks for including "agave nectar". i found some a.n. as an ingredient in my salad dressing today and steered clear. Close call.

I eat a fair amount of sugar. I like to treat myself every day with something yummy. This is hard. My mouth wants a cookie. I have a little headache. I think a piece of chocolate would make me happy. I hope the withdrawals are over soon. *help!*

Usually, I stop feeling like a sugar-crazed monster after about three days. By day five it's not bad at all and by one week, it's pretty easy. However, if I eat starchy stuff, I start craving all over again. For me, a slip up isn't just sweets, it's all the high GI carbs (most grains and grain products, ditto for potatoes and corn and everything made w/ them). Hang in there mama! Try chicory root or cinnamon tea.

I don't have a sugar habit, but shopping at TJ's today, I was quite surprised to find sugar in oh, 50% of products, including the roasted chicken I buy weekly. Why, why WHY would you put SUGAR on a ROASTED CHICKEN?? WTF??

I have cooked many a chicken and never have I used sugar to cook them, it never even occurred to me. It is in ALL of the prepared chicken products that are oh-so convenient!

HTML tags enabled, use with care.

I don't get it.

And why is there a v-shaped girl sitting on a purple ball here?

Does this blink?

Now it does.

Ev,

I don't much care for store-bought yogurt, mostly because I've never really figured out what to eat it with, and generally prefer cottage cheese. However, I do make my own kefir, which is similar and full of probiotic goodness.

As for sugar-free jerky: you could make your own.

http://zenfrittata.blogspot.com/2008/12/angry-jerky.html

I wonder if I can use link tags

Today I ate:
- cottage cheese w/almonds and cinnamon
- broccoli green curry w/tofu
- two hard-boiled eggs
- assorted handfuls of nuts and spoonfuls of almond butter
- kung pao tofu
- kefir

... and no sugar.

I also discovered that nearly all of the fake meats that I use frequently are off the list. This will make things difficult, but in some ways I'm curious to try cutting them out - they tend to be highly-processed, not-terribly-healthy foods.

day 1 no sugar challenge: done!

Another yummy snack- if dried fruit is allowed:
Trader Joes dried pineapple rings- unsweetened, unsulfurized (they are just pineapple). They are freaking amazingly sweet and take a long time to chew, so they are really satisfying.

Cheryl:

Allowed, and GI of only 66, so good choice especially if combined with a fat and protein source.

After discovering that no breakfast cereals were allowed, we made granola with no sugar:
1 tablespoon melted butter
1/2 cup quick-cook rolled oats
1/4 cup sliced almonds, broken
1 tablespoon crumbled pecans
1/4 cup raisins
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch salt
Preheat oven to 300F. Melt butter. Mix with oats until completely absorbed. Add nuts, cinnamon, and salt, and spread on a baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes. Add raisins.

To be eaten with milk or yogurt.

Day 1 of no sugar.

No sugar today by any means. Sorry for the late posts.