Online editor Manon decided not to eat sugar for a hundred days. Besides spending an incredible amount of time reading labels, two things happened that she couldn't have predicted.
When I decided a year ago to go without sugar for 100 days as an experiment, I am an avid reader of labels. That is not easy, because the letters are extremely small and without reading glasses I can't see anything. Looking for sugar, I found no fewer than twenty names for sugar. Such as 'skimmed milk powder' and 'malt extract'. I avoid them all these days.
The reason to live sugarless was the documentary Fedup. A tiny message in the newspaper pointed me to the documentary. I looked in disbelief at the amount of sugar in our foods. No wonder I've been overweight for years. I've been a vegetarian for thirty years and all those nice veggie burgers I get from the supermarket are full of sugar. There is sugar in my tortilla shells , in the vegan mayonnaise that I buy and in the almond milk I put in my coffee.
A hundred days ago I decided to start reading labels. Within a few weeks I knew exactly which mustard I could buy, and which chips were without sugar. I could hardly find simple things like breadcrumbs and pickles without sugar. And even most bread turned out to contain sugar.
From the moment I started eating sugar free, two things happened that I could not have predicted. The first was that I slept very deeply. Now I've always been a good sleeper, but this time it was like I was in a coma, that's how deep I slept. The second effect – and that was less fun – was that my taste changed. Even a glass of tap water suddenly tasted like 7-Up. Everything was sweet. As if my taste buds needed to be reprogrammed.
There was also a nice effect, fortunately, and that was that I lost four kilos in a week. Five kilos that, incidentally, just came back in the following weeks.
Those first weeks without sugar felt like I was being reprogrammed. It undeniably had a huge effect, while I had expected little from it beforehand. Everything is now back to normal. I have my old weight back, water tastes like water again and I sleep like a baby again. Now I have the advantage that I have never had a sweet tooth, but since I eat without sugar I see how much sugar is around me. When I travel by train, I jokingly read the labels of AH-To-GO. Only the carrots in plastic have no added sugar, but otherwise contains o-ver-ral sugar. And all day long I have to give thanks for pieces of cake, candies, chewing gum and chocolate. I may have thanked you for that in the past, but only now do I see how much it is offered to me.
After a few months I gave in. There was a party, there was Tiramisu (I loooooove Tiramisu ) and there were very nice sweet drinks with homemade cookies. One party and my body was screaming for sugar. Like a thirsty man in the desert who has been without water for a while, I wanted sugar so badly.
It was still quite difficult for me to go back to my sugar-free life. It seemed my body kept asking for sugar.
I wish those four pounds I lost in a week had gone forever. That didn't happen. Still, there's an important reason why I went back to my sugar-free life. For years I had suffered from a few eczema spots. Red, itchy spots on my arm. At first I blame them on too much stress, but when the stress completely disappeared from my life, those spots remained. I went to the doctor, got creams and ointments with hormones, took baths full of bran, took all kinds of pills, even walked by the sea every day because I had heard that sea air is good for eczema. I gave up alcohol and coffee and – I was quite distraught – even washed my sheets and clothes with a different detergent each time. I read absolutely everything on the internet about eczema and followed every advice.
And then the sugar disappeared. I started my experiment out of curiosity, nothing more, but after a week I saw the eczema spots disappear and after two weeks every spot was gone. They never came back. I wish I could say I feel reborn. I can not do that. I'm just the same as before, but without crazy red spots. And without sugar.
Text:Manon Sikkel/ Image:Getty Images
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