Cutting out sugar and yeast for three weeks how hard could that be?
I have willpower, a good enough reason (which I’ll share with you) and a belief I could do this.
To be honest, I may have underestimate how big a challenge this was going to be. I have to admit it, I have to share.
I am a 100% sugar addict. I love the stuff and it has taken me a long time to realise how big my addiction was.
I may not have been getting my sugar hits though chocolate bars, cakes or gooey chocolate brownies.
I’d progressed and made the switch to “healthy” sugars…. honey, maple syrup, agar nectar, fruits, fruit juices and medjool dates.
So why did I have to cut out Sugar and Yeast?
To cut a very long story short, as mentioned in previous blog posts I was having huge problems with my energy level, my training was starting to suffer, I was lethargic, struggling to get out of bed, my skin went really bad, especially on my shoulders. I had bloating and I had the most horrendous craving you could imagine for sugar. I had zero control over my cravings. I had to have something sweet. I was suffering from candida.
To learn more about candida see the blog post - What the hell is candida?
Cutting out sugar and yeast was brutal.
Not so much the yeast. I’d already cut out bread, white potato and pasta and hadn’t eaten them for years. It was the sugar, that I struggled with. There’s sugar everywhere and it’s in everything and its incredibly hard to get away from.
I struggled for the first nine, ten days with massive craving. I wanted and I needed something sweet. I was so desperate for anything. I was googling recipes trying to find, sugar free, yeast free cookies and cakes. I looked through all of our cook books and focused on the “healthy’ cook books such as, Deliciously Ella. There was nothing. Everything that would taste good used some alternative to sugar, which I still needed to avoid. I’d been eating the alternatives sugars in the false belief they were better for me and that I was making the right choice with what I was eating.
I wasn’t, I was feeding my sugar addiction, but in a “healthy way”.
What I’ve realised now is the “healthy alternatives” are not that much better than the processed sugars you get in chocolate bars and cakes.
Yes to a degree they are better. But you will still be consuming huge amounts of sugar and not even realising it.
Some of the big culprits are fruits, fruit juices, honey, and medjool dates.
I think many people forget fruit contains a lot of sugar in the form of fructose.
To give you an example of my morning breakfast. I would have a small glass of orange juice (packed with sugar), protein pancakes, with loads of fruit (sugar) on top and drizzled with honey (sugar). I though I was being healthy - so much so I did a blog post on it - Healthy Protein Pancakes!
All I was doing was kick starting my day with a ton of natural “healthy sugars”. I was giving my body exactly what it wanted. I was feeding the candida which was already out of control.
I’m pleased I pushed on through and cut out all of the sugar and yeast from my diet. I’m not going to lie, it was hard, it was really difficult. But it has made me so aware of what I now put inside my body and how my body reacts to it.
During the three weeks I lost around 7 pounds. I was still eating lots of food, but I was sticking to vegetables, organic lean meats and fish. My bloating stopped, and the craving did subside. One of the best results was getting testing at the end for candida. I’d done it. It wasn’t complete gone but it was now under control and out of my organs and out of my blood stream. I’d made amazing progress in terms of getting rid of this fungus. This was only one part of what I needed to be doing. But I was heading in the right direction and I’m finally learning how to control my sugar addiction.
If you have uncontrollable urges for sugar, or craving for alcohol, it may not be you. You may be suffering from candida. Go and see a naturopath.
Or cut out sugar and yeast for 3 weeks and see what happens to your body. Monitor yourself and see if you feel better by making this change. It won’t be easy, but if you do it properly and fully commit. You will change your life for the better.