Hi! I'm Arielle, and I'm addicted to sugar.
Upon clicking this article, you are here, I imagine, because of one of two things:
1. You too are interested in a sugar detox and want to know if it really helps with weight management, increased energy, fewer cravings, improved skin, etc.
2. You don’t understand how a human can do such a thing, so you’re curious to see how intense this form of self-torture is.
First, here's the lowdown on added sugar and why consuming beyond the recommended daily limit might not be the best.
So, besides the obvious, why did I decide to do this?
I was hoping to learn a few things from this experiment and adopt habits that I'll actually stick with.
Leading up to the days of the sugar detox, I behaved like what can only be described as a bear preparing for hibernation.
The day before the challenge:
Grocery shopping:
So, want to see what I actually ate? You can read my entire meal plan here and see my favorite recipes used here.
And now, I give you some highlights from my detox diary, in an attempt to show what it really feels like to eliminate all added sugar for 30 days.
Enjoy the roller coaster that is my life.
6 a.m.: "Welcome to hell, Arielle!" —my body and mind
7:30 a.m.: I am mid-workout, and just realized I am chewing gum, which has sugar alcohol in it.
12:15 p.m.: Basically every salad dressing known to man has added sugar in it, so I am eating a sad lunch with lemon juice as dressing.
11:15 a.m.: I feel like I've had a continuous headache for the past couple days and I hate everything.
1 p.m.: I went to make lunch after noticing I was literally shaking. I don’t know if it’s because I needed food or because of sugar. Maybe both.
3:05 p.m.: 😩
3:30 a.m.: I just had a dream about brownies. I am not joking.
12:30 p.m.: I am sad because our catered lunch looks amazing, but because I have absolutely no idea what is in the food, I am going with the safe option (salad).
5:05 p.m.: Sugar is the second ingredient in Wheat Thins. I am not surprised, but I am also dead inside.
9:30 a.m.: I’m actually feeling really good right now. My bloating has gone WAY down and I feel like I dropped some of the weight I gained from my bingeing episodes.
6:45 a.m.: SoulCycle, a supposed safe space, has an entire spread of bagels, muffins, cookies, brownies, and other sugary shit.
10:05 a.m.: As if the spread at SoulCycle weren’t enough, it is also "bagel Friday" at BuzzFeed. I don’t have super-strong cravings right now — which is nice — but I still want a French toast bagel, because obviously.
5:30 p.m.: I am being trolled at an end-of-the-week meeting.
Every Friday, the video team has a meeting to go over shout-outs and standout pieces of content. When Tasty was up (a BuzzFeed brand that makes recipe videos optimized for Facebook), they showed a video for how to make a French-style apple tart, and one of the directions was to pour 100g of sugar into a bowl. I literally gasped out loud, and two people who know about my sugar detox started laughing. I was screaming.