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A Few More Days Of No Sugar

Day 13: Madeline finally eats kale chips. We gave them a few days break from the kale chips and reintroduced them. Carson ate a bunch, too.

Things seem to be looking up.

Day 19: Carson sneaks candy from a visitors bag and eats all of it. SMH

Day 20: Our first no-candy Easter. It was unusual, challenging and worth it. I got the kids ThirtyOne mini utility totes with their names on it for their baskets and filled it with meaningless gifts. Fun things that they could play with at church. I really didn't have it in me to go search for things. We're down to one car and I'm tired.

I've had 2 canker sores for over a week, from where I bit my lip when I had the first one from the beginning of this challenge. I can't eat much and frankly, I don't want to be awake for them! They burn me.

Madeline head-butted me and I cried! Then, I cried harder because I used a different mascara and it got in my eyes (what?) and burned my eyes! I was a mess. That got thrown away. Poor Tim, running around everywhere trying to figure out what's wrong, console kids (who were worried and pouting-Madeline).

Day 21: I'm not sure how I feel about today so far. Nine days left in the challenge and I'm going to be excited to see it done with. I plan on eating a cake. I really do.

I'm down 4 more pounds. I actually worked out to get there. I've been walking for miles!

I think I'm going to make a goal of posting all my favorite recipes soon.

Day 12 of No Refined Sugar

I haven't written in 6 days because I'm trying to get my stuff together. And quite honestly, there hasn't been much to write besides cravings and monotonous meals.


I think I underestimated this challenge, or rather the details. I thought I would be able to, well. Let me start here first: Our plan was to eat everything we already had before the challenge started and we did pretty well at that. We managed to eat the majority of our food and it was a little rough but what I didn't want to do was find out at the end of this month that we weren't ever going back to refined sugar and have to throw out all our food. We pay a lot of money for food and we really don't have much to work with. I think some things we didn't end up being able to eat was some cornbread boxes (because for the life of me, I cannot manage to make cornbread from scratch and I have tried a dozen times, I keep thinking it'll work this time, it'll work and it never does), a gluten free pancake mix with good reviews, our condiments and some cakes mixes, and leftover sugars.

The first few days were rough because it wasn't payday but I managed to squeeze money here and there and get some things. Payday rolled around and I got the majority of things on my list. With cravings, we kind of ate everything up, so I restocked. After that our budget was wiped. How do people do this? This real food is so expensive!

I talked with friends at play-date and they were telling me about subscribe and save on amazon. Okay. It's hard to shop online for food because I can't touch it, but I don't think I can find this stuff local and it's way too expensive when I do. We're on a 1 month trial with Amazon Prime right now. Shipping was so expensive so I really had no other option right then. It's supposed to come on Monday, which is fast for free. I just have to see if Tim will go for the $99 at the end of the month, and that pays for the year. If we do decide to continue with healthier food, it may be a cheaper cost in the long run and I'll be forced to use amazon more. I can save on gas if I do it for toilet paper and things like that.

I read into this challenge for a while before I started, but for me there isn't anything like actually doing it to learn. I can try as much as I'd like but I have to experience it. One of the things that got me interested in this was decreasing depression. I seriously struggle with it and I thought this would help some. It did, for like a week and then it hit me again, just slapped me. I'm trying to deal with it. I know that we aren't completely changing the way we live but I did hope it would help more than it has.

I attempted a bread recipe from Healthy Families For God and found I didn't do it right AND there had to be instructions missing. I really miss bread.

I have mastered mediocre but healthy shakes. I do only as much as my blender can tolerate, which is a little more than I thought it could but not enough to do what I really want it to do. They key I found is to use a LOT of cocoa powder! Makes everything great.

I successfully managed a zucchini bread recipe last night and it was a hit. I have now made 4 little loaves. Three are already eaten, but don't jump to gluttony. We missed it and it's pretty healthy and tastes like cake.

I have 4 other recipes to try out but I can't do anything until my coconut flour comes in with my other things from Amazon. I can wait though.

I went to a fundraiser/yard sale today. The lady who does the Dayton LLL organized it. I ended up find decent cloth diapers for .25 cents each and found Carson enough shorts to last a week without doing laundry. SUPER excited about that. He grew out of most all his clothes and we haven't gotten hand-me-downs in a while so we're out! I seriously hope to find a lot of yard sales this season for .25-.50 shorts for him and the rest of my kids, too. That will help.

Day 6 Of No Refined Sugar

People keep asking me why we are doing this. Tim keeps asking me why he agreed to it, I keep asking myself, why am I doing this? We keep saying never again! NEVER AGAIN! Grazing yesterday did not help. Maybe my waistline, but that's not why we are doing this.

Let me make that clear, we aren't doing this to lose weight. Will it be nice to lose weight from it? Yes. Very much so. I stepped on a scale because it was right there and I have dropped 8 lbs. Maybe less, since the scale might be off a little. Am I excited about it? Not really. I am happy to shed the weight but it's not really a fat weight. It's really my body detoxing in a way. Just emptying out. 8 pounds seems to be nothing lately for me to lose and gain and lose.

We're doing this because we can. Because we feel like it's going to be a real eye opener. Because we know that if we keep going on the way we have been, bad things are going to happen to our health, now and in the long run. I would not have thought that my food has sugar in it, ALL of my food has processed sugar in it. Here we are "treating" ourselves to these cookies and sweets and candy bars because we think that we aren't consuming it everywhere else. We've been fooling ourselves! Completely ignorant and oblivious to what we are putting in our bodies.

We know that with challenges like this, we are going to learn an abundant of healthy ways to live. Some we might leave behind, others we'll keep. But we are never going to truly know what it's like until we do it. If we don't do it, we'll never even try. We're holding ourselves accountable to this simple principle of no refined sugars. To be honest, it can't be that hard. Think of the people who HAVE to do this every single day or experience extreme health problems and set backs. We can learn to enjoy it. It can't be that hard. It's ONE month of our lives. 1.

With that being said, let me tell you about our day! It was great. Tim fixed a piece of exhaust on the mustang while I cleaned two rims and Jim cleaned his car windows and Valerie gathered supplies. We put the first top coat on her counters (looks GREAT!), packed and left. On 75 north Tim decided that my parent's house was close enough to Lexington to go ahead and take the split towards Louisville (rather than Cincinnati). My dad and sister were supposed to be throwing a very late birthday party for my mom right around the time we would have arrived. Well, that fell through and she was pretty upset about it. We met Marybeth at Target by Tinsletown and bought the madre cupcakes we couldn't eat, then headed up there. It sure was a surprise for her!

It worked out wonderfully. We did end up driving for 2 extra hours but it was worth it.

We ended up snacking on fruit and nuts in the car. We were starving by the time we got home. Tim found noodles that were acceptable and ate those with something and I made a Potato, mushroom, kale dish that was very tasty.

Day 5 Of No Refined Sugar

Naturally, since I am always serving children and don't have the time or energy to eat breakfast, I don't. I am no longer accustomed to it and I don't really want breakfast. I don't crave it, it's not my favorite food (I like the food better in the evening) and yeah.
TIM on the other hand LOVES breakfast and often wants me to make it. I am usually willing to but other times, I don't have it in me. Today was one of those times. The morning was supposed to be my time. The time I had to visit some friends, to go looking at different places.

So that's what I did. I went out, hoping to find a cast iron skillet (I didn't). I went back and Tim worked it out for himself. ;) Then I made two eggs and tomatoes chopped.

THEN I met up with Dreama and ate no-refined sugar french fries with her. It was a wonderful 30 minutes. During lunch, I read a street sign and recognized it as the street Emily lives off of. So, I dropped over very inappropriately, but they loved it, just like old times.

Besides just getting away, I had another purpose to coming to Lexington. Valerie wanted to treat her counters. It's a kit where you make your counters look like granite.We had fun priming it, it was a new experience! That layer had to dry for 8 hours, so we rewarded ourselves with Panera.

DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO EAT AT PANERA BREAD???? The chicken noodle soup HAS SUGAR IN IT.  Did you know that? The lady at the counter got real tired of me asking her to read me the ingredients. It sure was an experience. I ended up with a great salad and no dressing. I gave Valerie the bread, no need to pay for something and it go to waste.

We went to Kroger to get some ingredients for a cake. I found yummy chips there, too. But no salsa. I didn't look very hard.  Then we decided to venture out to Trader Joe's where I found a sugar-less bread and some salsa and the most delicious fruit strips, and some powder stuff. Trader Joe's was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. Whole Foods wasn't very far so we went there, too. I actually think that's where I found the sugar powder. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was from there. Whole Foods was a different experience.  I found green pea crisps there. I shared them with Brody, my nephew pup.I really like the crisps. I  have had then before, there aren't a lot of ingredients in the plain ones, which are the ones I prefer.

Let me tell you about the cake we made. Ha! It was good. It's a black bean cake that doesn't taste anything like black beans. The icing was great, but the first attempt was a big flop. Then we made brownies and those were horrible. I should have added two cans of beans rather than the one. But the cake, I'll be making that one again!

In conclusion, it's hard to go to these stores looking for a particular list of ingredients to make one recipe. I think it may be easier to buy foods with good prices/deals and make stuff from them. I  want to be a meal planner, but I'm not very good at that and it goes out of the window with cravings anyway.

Not to mention there aren't whole food and natural food stores very close to me that are worth going to. Really.

Brunch: Eggs and Tomatoes
Linner: Salad from Panera
Snack: Bread with real butter and a taste of chocolate bean cake, chips and salsa, fruit strips

Day 4 Of No Refined Sugar

 Day 4 was incredibly difficult. I was running behind on everything. Tim and I decided to go out of town to Jim's bachelor party so I needed to get the kids to Tim's mom's so I could start preparation (I fed them cereal with coconut sugar for breakfast). I forgot that I had some bowties to go out (wasn't an official order, it was a photography bundle that I'd been working on for a month, that's a lot of bows!!) and they were almost done so I finished them and got them mailed. I had to sort through the mountains of clothes we have to find stuff to pack and ended up cleaning in the process. Maybe I need to make more trips so my house will be clean?

Anyway, I grabbed the kids and took them home to nap. For lunch, I made some more pancakes (this time with the baking powder) and they were okay. The first batch didn't taste great but the second batch tasted a lot better. I ended making a lot of pancakes to send with all the kids for the weekend.I didn't have time to make the lunch I wanted to make.

I planned on using nap time to finish packing but Madeline needed to cuddle. So I fell asleep, too. It wasn't a bad thing and it only lasted an hour. But it definitely threw me off.

My biggest worry is what do we eat when we go out of town? It's not like we expect other people to cater to a challenge we are having. It isn't an allergy but it is a healthier way to live. I had asked on the challenge event page and got no response ( I HATE THAT) which was a bummer. It makes me feel alone in a sense.

With everything in its place, we head down to Lexington. I snacked on a lettuce and fruit salad with black olives and raw organic sunflower seeds. It was actually good, in a weird way. A little sweet and salt! Tim snacked on somethings else, I can't remember what it was.

When we arrived, Jim and Valerie had taken the time to prepare us a no-refined sugar meal! Delicious mashed potatoes, green beans and pork-chops. Why haven't I been able to think of simple and filling meals like that? Because in my head this might be more complicated than it actually is! It's not about finding the most complicated ingredients that cost a small fortune, it's more about finding those basic healthy foods and spicing them up a little.

Day 3 No Refined Sugar Challenge

Day 3 didn't start off the way I want (are you starting to see a trend?) Madeline had a fever and was uncomfortable all early morning. I wrestled with debating whether to take them to swim classes anyway (it was the first one) because I'm pretty sure it's just because of teething. Then I thought I could just put her in child watch instead of the water so Carson could still have his lesson and well, that was selfish in case she really was sick. In the end, I decided not to go and missed the play date too.

The kids were STARVING. Not really, you know what I mean. We started out with pancakes, the recipe that HFFG provided. Not that I followed the recipe completely. I just dumped ingredients in a bowl and mixed them up. Well, minus the baking powder, because guess who didn't have any? Me. They were flat pancakes topped lightly with real maple syrup. The babes LOVED them. Actually, they ate all of them.  There were like a dozen.

I decided to go ahead and do my grocery shopping. I got almost everything on my list and discovered a few things. Almost everything was in the organic section at Kroger Marketplace. They have a honey and peanut butter and almond butter tap. That's kind of awesome. All it is is honey (nothing added, from a local farmer), ground peanuts and ground almonds. I really like the containers they provide. It looks like what sour cream comes in except it is clear. They had little bears for honey but I decided to put my honey in the same kind. Maybe so I can spoon it better? I'm not sure if it will be easier but I'd like to see!

Something else I learned is that just because it's organic doesn't mean it's going to work for this challenge. What are the guidelines for organic anyway? All the stuff had refined sugar in it. How is that okay? Does it really matter if it's an organic refined sugar?

A lady my age saw me shopping and very shyly came up to me and asked about a few things in my cart. Of course, I didn't know the answer to them. I have come across this a few times in the past few years (making a choice to do something good like this or cloth diapers and having people see it and pick my brain). I decided then and there I was just going to humble myself. I told her about the HFFG challenge and what our plans are for our diet in the future and that I really didn't know much about this and that but I'm trying to figure it out along the way. She had some interesting things in her cart, too and I asked her about those, mostly almond milk. I've been tampering with the idea of just switching over to almond milk because I can't find goats milk. Turns out, she has twins (they were in the cart, probably 3 years old) and she was distressed because she nursed them for a year (WOW!) and her doctor made her put them on cow's milk, with which they had a lot of problems with. She researched and decided to switch to almond milk and they've done excellent since.

It's nice that you can start making small changes in your life and influence other people.

Have you ever had Golden Crisp cereal? It's one of my favorites and it is definitely on the no-no list. I found little puffs that don't have any thing else added. I think I am going to experiment baking the with honey and/or maple syrup to see if I can possibly make a healthier version of my favorite cereal. I also picked up little poof balls. I don't know what they are, I'll have to look. I have seen them in granola bars before, and I'm contemplating trying to do that.

I didn't get to eat until around 2 pm. It just wasn't in the cards for me. But when I did, I crashed afterwards! Is that normal for this kind of challenge? What's my body doing?

Something I have failed to mention is about meat. Meat is expensive and I don't think having it everyday is healthy. Tim craves meat a lot and so does Carson. We have spent most of the week going without meat. That was intentional BECAUSE all the frozen meat I have does have sugar added and like I said before, meat is expensive.  We decided to have meatless Monday's and then we decided that we should probably go half the week without meat (not days in a row, but every other day or MORE without meat). I'm not sure how to get iron and other nutrients that meat provides without it yet but I am going to figure it out. I do want to prepare more fish (is that meat???) but I don't want the mercury to become a problem(is that even truly a problem?)


Breakfast: flat pancakes
Lunch:fruit/vegetables (we were on the go)
Dinner: Potatoes, onion, Mushroom Bake, Meatballs, and something else I can't recall
Snack: sliced apples, shake, yogurt w/granola, nuts, kale chips

Day 2 of No Refined Sugar

I may have been overreaching to think I could get up so early and make all of these fabulous breakfast items. We started off by being quite lethargic, and tired (is that the same thing?).
I put that goat yogurt in bowls for Carson and Madeline and topped it with the granola. They hated it. Madeline gave me the stink eye and splashed around in it and Carson basically told me he'd rather be put to bed than eat it! I should have known better! They would have loved it plain.

Lesson learned!

We watched a movie and it was showing a kid eating buttered bread and Carson started chanting for BREAD BREAD BREAD. The problem is, I don't have any bread without added sugar. There's a recipe provided by HFFG that I'm going to try tomorrow. Carson was hungry but refused to eat anything I offered. He's going to have to learn how to adjust like everyone else in the house!

Negative side affects: 

Kids having diarrhea from too much fruit, but it doesn't take much and it never really has. They have a sweet tooth and I've always had what I thought were healthier versions of sweet foods laying around and snacks to munch on. But I haven't felt comfortable having snacks yesterday and today. If I can get used to what we're doing, then I can build up a stash of munchies and easier to grab foods. Consequently, I put them in disposable diapers when this happens and it ends up costing a lot (but I have such a hard time getting the diapers stripped so I'd rather just disposable diaper). Plus, Madeline is getting some more teeth in, so that doesn't help!

Canker Sores- I expected them, but I didn't know that Sehara and Carson would get them, too. Actually, they aren't really caused by the fruits and vegetables(the acid in the them), they only happen now when I get a cut in my mouth (bite myself or sharp food) and then the acid goes to town on it. They will lessen when we get more creative with food and add things.

I think what would have been nice to be provided with a grocery list. I know that sounds silly and can get complicated because what if you don't like something on there or are allergic, but I have no clue where to start looking for food or what food to buy! Just a little step in the right direction, you know? I see all this information and it's a lot to process. I mean, I like a lot of information, but maybe at some point there should be some steps broken down. This is where you start. Start by getting these basic things, make these recipes (closer to what you're used to, but still healthy and in the guidelines so people won't get scared and fail), continue on with adding these, etc. and so forth. 

Here's what I have bought so far (that I bought specifically for this, some I would have bought anyway and others I wouldn't have or wanted to and just wouldn't have gotten to):

-Rolled Oats. I had no clue what it meant to buy them "rolled" so I got what I usually got and turns out it's already rolled for me (ha!) and the only ingredient was 100% rolled oats- Quaker at Kroger

-Raw Honey, scary looking and I don't know how to use it

-Real Honey with Honey as the only ingredient, not local but I just learned where to get some of that so that's what I'm going to do

-Real Maple Syrup, Linda's husband makes it

-Coconut Oil, already had it, but I think I don't have the right kind(I need Unrefined Coconut Oil)

-Olive Oil

-Pineapple

-Cantaloupe

-Apples

-Onions

-Fresh Garlic

-Tomatoes

-Quinoa

-Stevia, without Maltodextrin (be careful! I saw three options at Kroger with THE SAME LABEL and two of the had maltodextrin added, one didn't)

-Unsweetened Cocoa (baking) powder

-Goat Yogurt 

-Real orange Juice, literally orange juice

-Filtered Water

-Coconut Water

-Kale

-Collard Greens (fresh)

-Summer Squash

-Big Carrots

-Celery

-Mushrooms

-Sea Salt

Need to Get:

-Almond Butter

-Almond Flour

-Active Dry or Instant Yeast

-Vital Wheat Gluten(I don't even know what this is)

-Flour(white whole wheat or whole wheat pastry)

-Zucchini
-Dates, pitted
-Bananas
-Plain Yogurt
-Goat Yogurt
-Nuts
-Ground Ginger
-Shredded unsweetened coconut

I have a much more in depth one I don't mind sharing.

Overflowing Kale Pre Chipped

Breakfast: Yogurt and granola

Lunch: Spaghetti with carrot and tomato sauce (added mushrooms, onions, fresh garlic, basil, oregano and parsley) Side of sliced summer squash, sliced long carrots and mushrooms.

Dinner: Leftovers

Snacks: Apples, Amazing shake made with frozen bananas, vanilla, coconut water, ice, orange juice and 2 tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder. Yummy.

My face looks skinnier today. I wasn't expecting that! Nice surprise.

I learned from a Healthy Family For God resource packet, concerning flour, that if the label doesn't say "whole" like "whole wheat" or "whole semolina", but rather says "enriched" or just "wheat" or unbleached, then it's processed. I knew about the enriched part, but I didn't know it HAS to say "whole".

Learn something new everyday!

Day 1 of No Refined Sugar

We started the Healthy Families for God no-refined sugar challenge today. I've been calm/mixed with anxious. I just hope I don't blow it by absently shoving something in my face. I've also discovered that I'm more likely to mess up on one of these challenges when I'm hungry. So, I'm trying my best to not be hungry. It was tough around lunch time, I didn't have time for breakfast but I don't really care. I guess it would make lunch easier and I was thinking about making a shake for breakfast and I may get to that. If I can wake up 30 minutes earlier then I think I could do it. That means I'll have to go to bed between 10 pm and midnight and I'm not sure how I can do that unless I 'm more efficient and use my time wisely between 8 and 10 pm (8 is the kid's bedtime and quite frankly I like to sit on my butt and do nothing with Tim).

I made a breakfast granola last night. It took forever! More than the time it said on the recipe instructions, and it made my house smell weird, like an old cinnamon spicey cat lady's house. The smell has finally left the building 12 hours later! The kids hated the granola. LOL I should have paid attention to it being loose granola, best to be served with something! But what? Every yogurt I have found has a forbidden sugar/sweetener in it. Well, I did find ONE brand, and it was yogurt made from goat's milk. I'm down with that. In fact, even more so than greek yogurts and the regular stuff. Sehara is snacking on that granola/yogurt mixture, plus strawberry's mixed in.

Sehara's Snack

I'm actually nervous about eating goat yogurt. But(added later on in the day), it's pretty good!

The biggest problem I'm having right now is getting confused with this challenge, and I mean that most everything I find is not just about no-refined sugars, it's about being Gluten free and dairy free and a few acronyms and abbreviations that I can't care enough about to look up! We don't really need to go gluten free (right now). As far as we know, we can handle it.  Separating GMO's and going organic matters, yes, taking out GMO's is more important but they seem to go hand in hand as far as I can tell. I have found some things that don't, though, which is good for me because those things don't cost as much.

Now, with all that being said, we are definitely willing and happy to make recipes that take all that other stuff out, AS long as it is easy, not costly,  filling, and good (won't know until after we try it).

I'm seriously considering taking a tylenol for my headache. I'm assuming that's a withdrawal symptom? Either the sugar or I haven't had as much caffeine, or both! Heck.

Ok, here's my list of today's surprising sugar-added foods:
-breakfast sausage
-frozen broccoli and cheese "healthy" steamable (ha)We usually buy fresh, but got lazy, joke's on us.
-seasoned frozen french fries (also, usually buy potatoes and cut them, blah blah)

Meals:

For Breakfast: Healthy Families for God's granola mix and fruit (pineapple and apple)
Lunch: Onion, Garlic, Kale and Eggs
Snack: Goat Yogurt, Granola Mix, Strawberry's
Dinner: Quinoa, Corn, Tomatoes, Kale Chips, Pineapple
Snack: Banana and orange shake with vanilla and unsweetened cocoa