I'm going into my third month now on this going sugar little journey, and I can tell you this, my taste buds sure have changed quite a bit. In fact, there are some sweet foods I used to eat/drink all the time, and now I take a couple bites or sips and it's just too sweet for me. My taste buds are literally reacting to all the sugar, and it's making me cringy. I find it utterly amazing how the body can acclimate once you start working with it...and in my case, slowly doing a wean versus going cold turkey.
Here's a good example of what is too sweet to me now. Back in January, every day I would drink 1-2 16oz bottles of Sweet Leaf Tea. I love the tea because they have organic versions, the flavors are awesome, and admittedly, I find the picture of the sweet granny on the label endearing. I'd actually call it Sweet Grandma Tea.
One bottle contains 2 servings, so that comes to a total of 32g of sugar for the Plain Original Flavor. The Raspberry and Peach have 36g, and my former favorite the Half & Half (lemonade and tea) has a whopping 48g of sugar per 16oz bottle. If I stick to my, 25g/day of sugars goal, then just about half that bottle of the Half & Half is my entire day's worth of sugar.
Cutting back 12g/day just in drinks
I have a hard time even drinking the Original flavor Sweet Leaf tea now. In fact, I got a bottle the other day and had to add some water to it to help make it taste less sweet. Whole Foods had a sale on organic Steaz iced teas, and so I got a bunch because one can at 16oz is also 2 servings, but the sugar content is 20g of sugar for the whole bottle. Cutting back from 32g to 20g for 16oz of flavored iced tea is a significant change. So now, I've moved from Sweet Leaf to Steaz for teas. The folks at Steaz are really nice too. I wrote about them back in 2008 because I liked how they focused on diversity and fair trade.
I've also been drinking more sparkling waters because I love the carbonation minus all the sugars. The hardest part for me in this whole sugar weaning thing has been cutting down the sugars in my drinks because in the 80g/day of sugars I used to consume, more than half of those grams came from drinks alone. I'd rather be eating my sugar than drinking it.
Going into month 3 on the sugar wean, I've also noticed some odd but good cravings. One morning I woke up and craved kale. I've been on a bit of a kale binge lately. On another morning, I woke up and craved fiber. Yeah, I actually craved fiber, and honestly, it was the weirdest thing because normally I'll crave bready sugary things like pancakes or muffins. So to satisfy my morning fiber craving, I went and got a box of Whole Foods 365 brand High Fiber cereal. I threw in some walnuts and dried cherries to the cereal for added protein, MUFAs, and some sweet.
My desire for cookies and cakes has dropped too. The cravings are not totally gone but I'd guess they are over 50% gone which is much better progress in 3 months than I expected. I believe this sugar wean is going pretty smooth now because I'm doing it slowly over time, and working with my taste buds as they change. It's really exciting to get to a point where you know your body is enjoying the changes for better health.
So, how has your sugar weaning week been going? Notice any changes in the taste buds too?
