Goodbye, Sweet Tooth!
How I managed to say “No” to sugar and lost 5.5kgs in 5 weeks!
Guilty Pleasures
Since the last 2 years, my body weight has been on a rollercoaster. This was not surprising to me. I was a self-proclaimed fast food connoisseur. And since many of my friends knew me to be, I always preferred quantity over quality in food. Yeah, that’s stupid. Well, but that was me. But I always had excuses down my sleeve to justify my unhealthy eating habits — “I’m young and I can eat anything I like”, “Hostel mess food sucks, I need to stay alive”, or my favorite, “I’ll do some extra reps in the gym tomorrow”. So this way, every bite of that McDonald’s burger, every bottle of beer or those once a day bottle of Pepsi went down guilt-free. Also, I prided myself on having good body metabolism. B̶r̶e̶a̶k̶f̶a̶s̶t̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶g̶,̶ ̶l̶u̶n̶c̶h̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶a̶u̶p̶e̶r̶. Eat like a fucking king, every time. Yes, as you can guess, I was doomed.
When I came to another city for my internship, things should have gone a bit better. But, they just became worse. The weekends were marked with more beers, Pizzas, and rolls. I started keeping cold drinks in the fridge itself. Also, I had taken a liking to chocolates although, I never really had a sweet tooth. To make things worse, my physical activity also reduced to a minimum since I started working. And things started taking a toll on my body. I was a mere 68kgs when I started my internship. The new city lifestyle slowly and hideously had increased my weight to almost an 80kgs in a year. Of course, my mother was proud as I was looking “healthy”. But, with that increased weight loss, little or no physical activity and the added habit of smoking had made me an unhealthy blob. And it was not something that went unnoticed by others too. I failed the Sinhagad Trek, which is not even considered a fucking trek. Uncle and aunties much much older than me bypassed me in that trek and I had to sit down at the sideways, due to lack of breath.
So I decided to turn to Matt and pick up yet another challenge. This time, something very different. And I took his inspiration for a 30 Day No Sugar Challenge.
Preparation Day
The main motive was to somehow bring my BMI down to an acceptable range. Apparently, my medical checkup had declared me as “obese”. So, in order to achieve this, I needed to change my diet. But with a small change — there should be no sugar in my diet, well at least no processed sugar. So I called up one of my friends, who had, in the past taken up something similar. He mentioned increasing my fruit intake and warned me that this is going to be tough since most foods have sugar. Also, he asked me to check the label behind each food item and say no to the ones without any nutrition labels. “Okay, this sounds easy”, I said.
So off I went to the supermarket to buy the necessary items. And that was when I realized the challenge was easier said than done. Almost every fucking thing, be it Masala Oats, Muesli, Atta, Rice, Maggi, mayonnaise, even the goddamn Ching’s Schezwan chatni had sugar in them. How can you put sugar in yogurt or plain curd! And yes, I had to say goodbye to all snacks — biscuits, waffles, aloo bhujia, and even brown bread! The only thing I could find without any sugar was brown rice, Quaker plain tasteless oats, tofu, and dry fruits. Since I was short on the itinerary, I had to explicitly order frozen chicken, eggs, mushroom, broccoli, sprouts and a lot of vegetables.
The First Week
The only wholesome meal of my day became breakfast. And this remained constant — eggs, bananas, and milk. Prior to this, I was under a 30-day oil-free breakfast challenge. So, breakfast was not an issue. The main concern was the lunch. Since we had lunch in the office itself, I resorted to Paneer, any green vegetable sabzi and salad. For snacks, I had fruits, and a lot of them, since lunch was never fulfilling. I had to say goodbye to tea and coffee. An occasional green tea helped. But honestly, I hate the taste of green tea. Dinner was either brown rice and boiled chicken, tofu or mushrooms. That shit is tasteless. So I added salt and pepper “to taste”. I realized bananas are the most underrated fruit in our country. Do you know India is the largest producer of bananas? Since banana was both fulfilling and easily available, it became my go-to snack. “Khana banana nahi aata, but banana khana aata hai.” So, all in all, the first week went by smoothly without much trouble.
Fuck The 2nd Week.
This is where things started to become tough. And by tough, I mean, really tough. You must have heard the phrase, “Sugar Cravings”. Well, that thing exists! Our body has this craving for sugar. It gives that sudden burst of energy which lifts our mood. And now, with my body low on sugar, I began to have this crazy desire for snacking. And snacking on anything I could lay my eyes on. As my office is notorious for having a large snack inventory of sugar-filled snacks, I had to, with much difficulty, and a watering mouth, avoid them. Yes, the mouth-watering term is apt! But as I thought of them vada-paos, cookies and those packet of chips, I munched the bananas away. Also, fructose content in the bananas helped satisfy the sugar needs, to some extent.
On weekends, I had to watch my friends sip on their beers and enjoying the pizzas and biryanis. Fuck, that was tough. Having a salad while the other person enjoys a plate of barbeque chicken wings, in your favorite restaurant, is not a good sight. Surprisingly, the weekends were the easiest. Since I had control of what food I can have, I started exploring the web for some healthy options. And I learned to make Oats Omelet! And trust me, it’s delicious! My cold-drinks were replaced with salted soda-lime and sprouts salad quickly became a snack alternative. But that took some time, cause, well, chewing a spoonful of sprouts feel like chewing grass. Not good.
The Last Week
Well, as I write, I’m currently on my last week of the challenge, with 3 more days left, and I’m sure I’m going to finish the challenge successfully. This challenge coincided with my 30-day running challenge. So, my body felt really healthy. I lost about 5.5kgs in 5 weeks! With the diet and the running combined, I went down from 79.1kgs to 73.4kgs in that short span of time. To be honest, those numbers on the weighing machine felt really good! The second week and the few days of the third week were the toughest. But, I realized that on surviving them days, rest of the days went on without any problems. I realized that I was more in control of my mood. I remained with almost the same energy levels till the end of the day. Another thing, which was really interesting was, when you quit sugar, other non-sugar containing foods taste sweeter than usual! That was fun!
Frankly, I can’t wait for the challenge to end. I really feel in the mood of eating some junk, fast-food, even as I write. Yeah, I’ll be cutting down on the sugar intake, keeping it to a minimum even after the challenge. But, I’ve made a list of things I’d like to eat once the challenge ends — the first being garlic bread with cheese! Well, you can sometimes have a guilty pleasure! But hopefully, it doesn’t develop a sweet tooth!
This is blog post 2/30 in my 30-day one-blog-a-day challenge. If you haven’t read the first one, you can find it here! Thank for all the support and appreciation you all showed on my previous blog! Until then, a happy healthy life!
