Sugar Free: Day 1

Well I manage to get through the first day pretty well. Despite coming into work and see the normal cake display in the cafe.

 As well during the day had all the normal things lying around in the kitchens, chocolate cakes, hot desserts, and all other sorts of what now have to be called bad things.

So how did my day go,

Breakfast;
        Museil with a natural yoghurt and half a banana, a slice of whole wheat toast, and a glass of pineapple juice.

Mid Morning Snack;
        Banana

Lunch;
        Couple of sausages, some new potatos with peas and sweetcorn.

Dinner;
       Homemade tomato soup, followed by braised beef stew, with mash and vegetables (cooked for me at work as had a evening function on, so was left over from that).

Throughout the course of the day 3 bottles of water.

Not to bad, not as healthy as Alex has been, but I don't always have the best choices for a lot of things at work. Well for tomorrow hopefully start doing some extra things at home have just sorted out a new blender and have got a water filter as well to improve the taste of water here.

If you have any ideas or suggestions of meals or other things to try without sugar let me know.

Chaos in the supermarket

So after spending a full day at work I had to head for the local Tesco Extra in order to stock up on food for the challenge, plus having just spent the past week away I had no healthy food anyway.

Now I have to say I never thought some items had so much bloody sugar in them. The easy part was the fruit and veg, as all of that is allowed so just grabbed lots of everything I like, lots of fruit to eat for breakfast and have in smoothies.

Then it was on to the rest of the shop, the most important thing for me is to eat a big breakfast in the morning as working around food all day is not easy and I won't be able to eat again until around 2pm at the earliest. Finding a cereal without any sugar was a major headache, I knew to ignore all the normal things like Coco Pops, and Chocolate Wheatos my previous choices. I was looking at the grain/oat based cereals which I could have with yoghurt and fruit, now reading the ingreatients on these I was suprised at how many I found which had sugar as the 3rd or 4th ingredient in them, not good. In the end I got Jordans Natural Muesli, which has no added sugar other than the natural occurring sugars in the fruit so not to bad.

After that it was not to hard managed to get whole wheat pasta, rice and bread which are all things I eat a lot of. The biggest challenge is going to be at work with all the nice things around me.

30 Day Challenge: No Sugar Diet

So after being inspired by the TED talk about trying something new for 30 days, Alexandra (Swedish traveling friend) and me have both decided to cut out sugar from our diets for the next 30 days. Might also have had something to do with the amount of chocolate and sweets we had while I was visiting Sweden recently.

We are going to start on the 16th Feb, yes I'm sure your thinking that is when this blog got posted, and finish on the 16th March. Have just spent the last couple of days in the build up to this, while writing this I'm trying to finish the last bottle of cider in my flat (2351), this has meant while at work today I have enjoy all the things I won't get over the next 4 weeks. Such as chocolate tarts, a couple of slices of birthday cakes, and the odd sweet. Does not help me working in a catering company at all.

We spent the past couple of days sorting out the rules for this, had a look around online at various sugar free diets and came up with the following.

Not Allowed
       Chocolate, sweets, alcohol (just finished the cider 2359), ice cream, pastries, cookies, cakes, desserts, pies, squash (as in concentrate juice), flour meaning white bread, rice, pasta, all kinds of jams and marmalade's, all kinds of foods with refined sugars (cooking sauces, soy sauce), sports drinks.

Allowed 
       Fruit, Fresh juice (long as no added sugar), raisins, nuts, veggies, cereals without added sugar, whole wheat bread, rice, pasta, milk and unsweetened yoghurt, eggs.

Well wish us luck, some of the staff at work I think are taking bets to see how long I last.

The start of it all

The main theme of this is going to be about various 30 day challenges I will undertake, inspired by a TED talk given by Matt Cutts. I will most likely also go off on random about anything else which comes to mind, as well as highlights of my past 3 years of traveling around the world and the craziness of working in the catering industry in the UK.