L’Enclume

Hello all!

Well, this week, in the run up to giving up sugar, I’ve found it easy giving up all foods – mainly due to being sick for two days straight! Hurrah! (urgh)

This weekend saw a visit to The Lakes (a first for me) and to the Michelin star restaurant L’Enclume for a 17 course extraveganza. Which means, in the run up to tomorrow, I’ve had a 17 course meal, sticky toffee pudding at Alberts in Didsbury and an Easter egg my mum promised not to buy me but couldn’t resist. 

To be honest, I’m looking forward to having an excuse to say ..

No!

…to all things sugary and indulgent. In preparation, I’ve already checked out a bread recipe which I can chuck together from things in the house, and after being persuaded by the free Kindle sample, bought Pure, White and Deadly: How Sugar is Killing us and what we can do to stop it by John Yudkin & Robert Lustig. 

The support from family and friends has been amazing – I was a bit embarrassed telling people what I was going to do, I’m always the first to caution people against such extreme diet changes, but everyone has been brilliant. 

Having such support has made me more determined to do this, document it and see it though. So much so, I had a nightmare that I’d eaten a KitKat for breakfast on Monday and woke up completely devastated by my dream-self! 

Now to decide what my Last Supper will be! 

Recommended Daily Allowance of Sugar?

So there I was, telling everyone that the recommended daily intake of sugar for a woman is 20 grams, when I stumbled upon this….This packet of Walkers Sunbites says that the guideline daily amount of sugar for a woman is 90 grams! That’s 4 and a half Cadbury Creme Eggs! That’s when I thought:

Gosh, have I been telling everyone it’s 20grams (one Cadbury Creme Egg) when in fact it’s 90grams!

Where did I get the 20 gram thing from?

1. The NHS claims it’s 50g for a woman
2. LiveStrong.com claims women should limit their intake to 30g a day
3. GDA Labelling suggests it’s 90g per day for women
4. Wiki says it’s 40g a day, no more
5. At My Fitness Pal it sits around the 26g mark!

So, with the recommendations ranging from 26grams a day for women, and a whopping 90grams a day – what do we actually go with?! Hashtag CONFUSED!

It’s only three and a half days till I start my 30 day challenge and I still don’t know my limits. Answers on a post card! I suspect some labelling food people might use the highest recommendation (90g) so that their percentage on the front looks a lot lower….

If we used the lowest recommendation (26g) – it would make this packet of ‘healthy’ crisps nearer to 10% of the daily intake, rather than 2%.

Hopefully, before Monday, I will have a conclusive answer from someone?

In other news….

I’ve been asked recently;

What exactly will you do?

So, here’s a little run down of the challenge. All ‘added’ sugars, and refined sugars are out. So any labelling that shows the following:

• glucose
• sucrose
• maltose
• corn syrup
• honey
• hydrolysed starch
• invert sugar
• fructose

…is out. This will include a lot of white bread, all chocolate and sweet treats. I’ll also be declining all ‘concentrated’ fruit juices, with or without added sugar and all sweeteners (as they can act just like sugar in the body and on insulin levels)

In a nut shell, I’ll only be eating naturally occurring sugars i.e. fruit, milk, some cheeses and will only consume my recommend daily allowance in those. Whatever that may be come Monday!!

Welcome to Naureen who has decided to join me in my challenge!

Chocolate Brownies!!

I made a batch of chocolate brownies last night. I used 550g of sugar! Wow. Though I used golden sugar which stated it was ‘unrefined’ on the packet – but I’m not entirely sure I’ll be ploughing into a bag of that when my challenge starts. But it just goes to show, sugar isn’t just sugar. It comes in all forms, and what is good and what is bad? I’ll avoid brownies, that’s for sure, and stick to naturally sweet fruits for my fix. But if someone was told that only refined sugar was bad, they might be tempted by a brownie thinking it was good for them!

 

Wow – pandora’s box, or what?

A week to go!

Today it dawned on me the challenge ahead. I had a chat with some lovely folk at work who have sponsored me –

You know bread has sugar in?

Even yogurt has sugar in.

Hmm. In pure panic, I saw no other option than to eat half an Easter egg and a creme egg.  One week and counting, I will be giving up sugar (refined) for the Just Giving 30 Day Challenge.