I’ve been trying to find different ways to deny myself.
Earlier this year I took a month off Social Media. During the summer I took a month off of watching TV. During that time I had been toying around with the idea of not eating sugar for a month. I brought the idea up to Charity during July because I knew if I was going to be successful I needed her buy-in. I pitched the idea of eating no sugar in August, to which she reminded me we had Sophie’s birthday party and should hold off until September.
September first it began, it was the month of what I call “No Sugar Added September”
The Goal
The goal of this month was two-fold.
1) I wanted to do some sort of fasting. I hate fasting. I like to enjoy all the good things life has to offer but I began to notice I was enjoying somethings in excess. For example: instead of having a bowl of ice cream as a special treat, I was eating ice cream almost every night after dinner. In my office we have candy readily available and I found myself heading straight to the candy dish after lunch. I wanted to deny myself and choose to focus on God to meet my needs instead of candy.
2) I wanted to loose a little weight. I’m not going to lie about this part of the diet. I thought cutting added sugar out of my diet would help me loose a few pounds. I was shocked at how quickly I lost five pounds. Now, loosing weight was secondary to connecting with God. But I do think this helped me get my mind clearer.
The Strategy
For anything to be successful there must be a strategy. When I say “No Sugar Added” this could mean many things. Some people thought I was only eating celery with organic peanut butter or rice and beans for every meal; this wasn’t the case for how we planned our fast.
The fast would include removing items from our diet that added sugar to what we felt was normal and healthy. For me this list includes, but is not limited to:
Skittles
Slurpees
Milk Shakes
Jelly Beans
Donuts
Syrup
Creamer
Cookies
What we didn’t remove were foods we felt had healthy sugar. Foods like: beets, banana, apple, etc. For the most part my food consumption stayed the same, I just removed foods that I knew were high in sugar. I still ate oatmeal for breakfast or a smoothie. I still had sushi or a sandwich for lunch. I didn't examine the bread for sugar because we already buy healthy bread. I can go into more detail if you would like to talk about it.
The Conclusion
It was tough at the beginning. I would say for the first 10 days I had a pretty good headache at night. I found myself taking more Advil to help with the pain, but it soon left. Yesterday was the last day and I think it was a successful decision of giving something up to focus more on God. You may ask: "When do you start eating sugar again?" The answer: "I don't know, I'm not ready today..."
What do you think?