Day 4: Sugar Surprise! (31 days without sugar)
Hello!
It’s Day 4, and I was very surprised this morning. My typical breakfasts would tend to be on the sugary side. Coffee with sweetened oat milk, oatmeal with bananas and maple syrup, or almond milk yogurt with berries and granola, or pumpkin muffins, etc. Breakfast is often the sugariest meal of the day. So, I’ve been making an effort (even before March started) to have low sugar breakfast foods, like avocado or peanut butter on toast.
But trying to find a pre-packaged bread that doesn’t have any added sugar is hard! (Hint: Ezekiel Sprouted Breads are sugar free- they’re in the freezer section at your store.) Fortunately, I’ve been nurturing a sourdough culture that a friend gave me at the beginning of the pandemic, so I can make my own bread if I really want to, without any sugar at all.
But that wasn’t even the surprise today. I know to look for sugar in any baked products (including crackers!) and condiments.
In our household effort to lower our carbs (in general, not only sugars), we’ve taken to eating more “dinnery” things at breakfast time. So, this morning between online yoga activities I pulled out some frozen black bean burgers and cooked them up. While they were in the pan, I took a look at the Nutrition Facts, and each burger patty has 3g of added cane sugar. (These are the Gardein Chipotle Black Bean Burgers.) I ate one anyway, since I didn’t really have the time or desire to fix something different, and someone needed to eat it, and it was tasty and satisfying. But I won’t be finishing off the package this month.
Honestly, 3g of sugar doesn’t feel like a big deal to me. And I don’t think that eating a black bean burger is going to start a cascade of sugar cravings for me, certainly not in the way that a sweet coffee or a chocolate chip cookie would, so I’m not too worried about it. But, 3 grams here, 4 grams there, 12 grams in the next place…. it all adds up as unnecessary carbs and calories that I don’t need.
So, I guess I’ll be a little more vigilant about reading packages BEFORE I purchase or prepare items. In an ideal world, I’d prepare all my food from scratch this month, but truthfully, that’s not going to happen. And here’s where the “all things in moderation” comes into play. I’ll accept that my sugarless March isn’t going to be 100% sugarless, but I’ll still do my best. Overall, I’m feeling really good. I’m pleasantly surprised how easy these first few days have been.
Hugs,
Cheryl
