Ep #155: 40 Days Sugar-Free: What We Learned as a Family

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, Episode #155. Could you and your family give up added sugar for 40 days? We did, and let me tell you what we learned.

This is the Strong Is a Mindset podcast, where you’ll learn how to build both a strong body and a strong mind by eating, moving, and thinking. I’m your host Physician, Personal Trainer, Certified Health Coach and Certified Life Coach, Carrie Holland. 

Hey, how are you? What’s new? What’s good? So, what’s good here? Well, this episode is a little different today. I’m going to share with you an experiment that our whole family took on. I’m going to tell you about how our family did a sugar-free experiment. How we gave up all added sugar for Lent, what we learned, what stuck with us now two months later, and most importantly, what you can do with this. So, I want you to walk away with tangible insights and ideas from this episode.

And so before I even get into this, let me add some disclaimers, okay? The purpose of this episode is not to vilify sugar. If you’ve been around here at all, you know what I will tell you about food. Nothing is off limits, including added sugar, okay? I eat sugar. I eat Cheetos. I eat deli meat occasionally, and my clients do too. Nothing is off limits. But with that being said, I do want to recognize and put a spotlight on the fact that added sugar is literally everywhere, and most of us are eating way more of it than we think. And this experiment that our family did really enlightened all four of us to just how much sugar we were eating.

And so before I even get into how we went about it and what we learned, let me just first hit it on the head. Why does this even matter? Why should you care about added sugar and that it is found in so many foods? Well, first, to be clear, remember that not all sugar is the same. There are natural sugars found in fruits, vegetables, and some dairy, and those sugars occur naturally, and natural sugars are not the problem.

So certainly, if you have a health condition like diabetes, you may need to be conscientious of how much fruit and other natural sugars you’re consuming, but what I’m talking about today is the sugar that is added to your foods to make them more palatable. I’m referring to the sugar that is not naturally occurring in food. So this type of sugar is a problem because it’s associated with weight gain, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and liver problems like fatty liver disease.

So added sugar has calories, but it has no nutrients. That’s where the term empty calories comes from. You’re taking in calories by eating sugar-sweetened foods, but you’re not getting any nutrients from them. You’re getting sweetness, but you’re not getting any vitamins, minerals, or fiber. So this is in contrast to eating an apple, for example, which yes, is sweet, but it also gives you vitamins, minerals, and fiber. So when you have the apple, you’re getting natural sugars, but you’re also getting all the other good things out of the apple that you’re not going to get from a teaspoon of white table sugar.

And most importantly, remember that your body does not need added sugar. So again, to clarify, your body needs some sugar in order to function properly, but it doesn’t need added sugar. Your body needs sugar in the form of glucose to provide energy to your body cells. But your body is super smart and it can produce the glucose it needs by breaking down other food sources like protein, carbs, and fat. So your body does not need added sugar, okay? That’s a really important thing to remember. And that’s why there’s no recommended minimum requirement for added sugar. You know how I talk about protein and recommended daily intake of protein? I talk about all the time.

Well, that does not exist for sugar. There is no recommended daily intake of sugar because your body doesn’t require added sugar. So instead, various authorities have proposed maximums or daily upper limits for how much sugar we should be consuming. So if you go to the dietary guidelines for Americans, they recommend no added sugar for children younger than two. And then for children over two and adults, the recommendation is that added sugars make up less than 10% of your total daily calories.

So that means if you’re following a 2,000-calorie diet, the maximum recommended consumption of sugar is 50 grams or 12.5 tablespoons, and that amounts to about 200 calories. The American Heart Association is even more conservative and suggests even less. So 37.5 grams per day for men and 25 grams per day for women.

And I’m listing these amounts in grams because that’s how added sugar is typically listed on your nutrition labels so you can start looking at this. And it is really easy to hit the maximum recommended sugar intake with one can of regular soda and a Pop-Tart. So as an aside, that would put you at a total of 69 grams of sugar. Okay? And my point in sharing this is that if you start reading labels, you will see that it’s really easy to surpass 50 grams of sugar in practically no time at all.

So again, my goal for this podcast is not to say sugar is bad, don’t eat it, okay? No. Instead, my goal is to help you see that one, added sugar really is everywhere, and two, show you how one family, my family, managed without added sugar and what we learned from this experiment, and help you consider what you might do differently in your own life if added sugar is making up too much of your nutrition. All right? So let’s go.

Here’s where this came from. The idea to do this experiment was not even mine. My oldest son decided on it. So in our house, we typically give up dessert for Lent, as most of us in this house have a sweet tooth, and it’s a good challenge. But this year, my son had learned more about nutrition at school. Specifically about the role of added sugar in so many processed foods, and he decided that he was going to give it up.

So, when he shared that he was giving up added sugar at dinner one night, Adam and I said, “Hey, we’ll do it with you.” And upon hearing this, my youngest declared he was not going to be the only one in the family not participating, and the decision was made. So we were all going all in. And after this decision, we made it a team effort. It was actually pretty fun. We decided that if we’re going to do this, we’re going all in, and we’re going to go cold turkey.

So the night before we started, we went through the pantry together and literally cleaned out everything in it and removed anything that had added sugar. And that right there, that was eye-opening in itself. By the time we were done cleaning out the pantry, we had two huge bins full of foods with added sugar that we stashed in our guest bedroom closet. And of course, there was candy in the bins. There were also granola bars, and my favorite peanut butter Kashi cereal. Those I was prepared for.

But there were loads of other things that I was not prepared to stick in that bin, like the sandwich bread that we use for our kids’ lunches. The chicken tinga mix that I loved for repurposing our chicken breasts. The sauce we used in our chicken, rice, and veggie bowls. The panko breadcrumbs we used to bread our tilapia. It was really surprising to me to see just how many of the foods that we ate regularly had added sugar in them. And so we also cleared out our refrigerator, and that meant the chocolate milk was done. The flavored Greek yogurts, also done. Ketchup was done. All of these items were either dumped if they were open, given away, or taken to the backup fridge to get them out of sight.

And so then, when all was said and done and we finished the purge, our pantry was extremely bare. Not so much the fridge, but the pantry was empty enough that both my kids could climb in and hide on the bottom shelf. And that was when our experiment hit its first roadblock before we even got started. And that was, what in the heck are we going to eat?

So we realized, yes, while we had gotten rid of a lot of sauces and mixes, it was also most of our snack foods that were out. And so then we were left with the challenge of coming up with snacks for our kids and for us. So, we had to figure out what to do. So instead of some of our usual granola bars, we got Larabars, which are literally made with nothing more than dates and nuts and fruit. So we chose the Larabars that didn’t have add-ins like chocolate chips in them.

We also purchased ridiculous amounts of dried fruit, like every kind of dried fruit you can imagine. And a lot of nuts. And popcorn. And natural peanut butter. So Costco has their own version with zero sugar. And of course, we also loaded up with fresh fruit and vegetables. So, our snacks shifted quite a bit, but they shifted for the better, and we traded the processed stuff for more whole foods. The other roadblock we encountered before we got started was finding replacements for foods that we eat commonly. So, the bread that we used for the boys’ sandwiches, that was out. So we searched the bakery at the grocery store and found a sourdough loaf with way less ingredients and no sugar.

The breakfast smoothies that we were making for the boys with sweetened protein powder, well, those were gone too. So we replaced those with smoothie bowls made with frozen fruit and milk. And my youngest Noah got really good at perfecting the consistency of his smoothie bowls. And we also started making more eggs for breakfast for my oldest son. So the other food that was out was cereal, and that was probably the hardest to manage.

So in our house, we have an 8 p.m. cereal convention where all four of us have a small bowl of cereal. The household favorite up until this experiment was the Kashi peanut butter cereal, but obviously that was no longer in the cards. So, I did some label reading at the grocery store and found that plain shredded wheat has no added sugar. And Grape-Nuts also has no added sugar. And I know what you’re thinking. Who in the world eats plain shredded wheat and Grape-Nuts? Well, we did.

I like Grape-Nuts at baseline, so this is not a stretch. But admittedly, I was not sure how it would go when my kids poured themselves a bowl of plain shredded wheat. My oldest, he was a little bit on the fence about it and started eating yogurt instead. And my youngest is still eating it even now. So the other replacement I made was trading in flavored Greek yogurt for plain Greek yogurt. That one was a little bit harder for me, but it gave me the opportunity to figure out how to get creative. So I’m currently on an oatmeal for breakfast kick, but oatmeal alone does not have enough protein for what I’m aiming for at breakfast.

So as a side note, a serving of Quaker Oats or half a cup of dry oatmeal, that’s five grams of protein. So, I mixed plain Greek yogurt with my oatmeal, and that added 18 grams of protein to my breakfast, which is much better. And then I added a serving of the Costco natural peanut butter, and that got me another eight grams. So that got me to 31 grams total of protein for breakfast. And when I found that I added other stuff to my yogurt like berries, it made the tang of the plain Greek yogurt less tangy.

And honestly, our lunches and dinners really didn’t change that much otherwise. We did end up pretty much with no sauces other than mustard, so that was hard, because most every other sauce on the shelf has sugar or sugar alcohol in it, including ketchup, which is a staple here. So, we either went without it, or if my kids really wanted it, they had a sugar-free version. But overall, we were able to find substitutions and replacements that were free of added sugar, that we actually liked, and that didn’t taste terrible.

So, the other roadblock that we ran into were cravings. But to be honest, it really wasn’t so bad. So for me, I have a love for Skippy peanut butter bites. And those obviously were out once this experiment started. And a few days in, I definitely could have handled a few of those peanut butter bites. My youngest, he also really likes peanut butter, and he loves Nature Valley peanut butter biscuits. So it took him a few days to get used to not having those in the pantry. Adam, he likes an occasional spoonful of Blue Bunny ice cream. Evan, he likes chocolate milk.

So we all had some foods we were initially craving. But we all waited it out. We didn’t die, and after a few days, it wasn’t a big deal at all. We had other food available. We ate fruit, we ate dried fruit, we ate our shredded wheat, and eventually the craving simmered down.

So one of the other surprising challenges that I noticed, which I was not expecting, was that I initially felt more hungry in the first few days after we cut out the sugar. My oldest son also noticed it too. And I didn’t know until I started digging that this is normal and can happen. And so here’s why.

So think about what happens when you eat foods with sugar, especially processed sugar. Your blood sugar spikes, and then it drops. And when your blood sugar drops, you feel hungry. When you cut out added sugar, your body takes time to adjust to more steady blood sugar levels, and in that transition, you may feel hungrier as your body recalibrates. And besides that, eating a lot of sugar over time can make your body’s natural fullness signals less effective. And when you take out added sugar, those signals may take a while to return to their normal state. So you might feel hungrier while your body adapts.

And additionally, your brain’s reward system may be used to certain amounts of sugar and the reward sensation that it provides. So, when you take that sugar away, you also take that reward sensation away, and it may cause your brain to crave that same feeling, leading you to feel hungry. So there are a number of reasons that could lead you to feel hungrier when you initially cut out added sugar, and my son and I definitely noticed it. It went away within a few days for both of us, and we were just fine. But it was definitely an unexpected challenge that I was not prepared for.

So, challenges aside, there were a few surprising outcomes we noticed as a result of this experiment. So first, I mentioned it a little already, but it was the realization that added sugar literally is almost everywhere. It was in foods that we were not expecting, like the breadcrumbs. It was pretty much in every sauce we were used to using, like ketchup, pasta sauce, and barbecue sauce. It was in our kids’ sandwich bread. It really is everywhere.

And unless you’re looking for it, you may not realize just how much you’re eating. So one of the outcomes for me anyway, as someone who shares grocery duty, was that I started really looking more critically at food labels to find where added sugar was sneaking into our food, and I chose alternatives that did not have sugar.

And while I just mentioned that, one of the other outcomes of this experiment was that my kids have also started paying much closer attention to nutrition labels. When we’re at stores, they’ll pull random items off the shelves and look at the nutrition label. We were at a store just a few days ago, and while we were waiting in line to check out, we passed the drink cooler that’s filled with all the sodas, Gatorades, and the bottled coffee drinks.

So my son pulled out a 20-ounce bottle of regular Mountain Dew, and he made us all go around and guess how much added sugar was in it. And we were all totally off. We were all way too low. So for anyone wondering, a 20-ounce bottle of regular Mountain Dew has 77 grams of sugar in it. That’s 19 teaspoons of sugar. So, when you have a minute, and if you’re curious, go into your kitchen and measure out 19 teaspoons of table sugar. It is mind-blowing. And that is in one bottle of soda.

And all of this is to say, my kids are now much more cognizant of added sugar in foods. They look at the sugar in some of their favorite cereals and think twice before adding them to the grocery cart. And this is also where we had to be careful, because while having that awareness is great, and I’m so glad that my kids are paying attention to what they’re eating, I also recognize that this can be a slippery slope. I don’t want them to be afraid of sugar or to see sugar as a villain. And it’s not our expectation at all that our kids are not going to eat it.

But this experiment was an opportunity for us to reinforce the idea of moderation and being choosy about what, when, and how much added sugar we eat. We encourage them to keep paying attention and make intentional choices. Because we can’t, and we don’t want to, police every bite of food they eat.

So instead, I see my role as offering loads of healthy options for them, educating them, modeling moderation myself to them, and empowering them to practice making healthy decisions for themselves. So, the lesson here was most definitely not, don’t eat sugar. Instead, it was be aware of sugar and decide how much you’re going to have. And I hope that’s a lesson that stays with them.

All right. Another outcome of this experiment was that we all noticed food tasted better. Fruit and veggies, they tasted more real. The natural peanut butter without sugar in it. At first, when I started eating it, after eating Jif every day, at first, that natural peanut butter tasted so bland to me. There didn’t seem to be any flavor to it. But then, as days and weeks went on, I found that it tasted much better and more flavorful and more real.

And what’s interesting is that once the experiment was over, I opened up a jar of Jif, and I had just a little taste. And it did not taste right. And this is coming from someone who eats peanut butter every single day, and 95% of the time it was Jif up until now. And after this experiment, the Jif just doesn’t taste right to me anymore. It tastes sweet, but it doesn’t do it for me the way that it used to. And I definitely was not expecting that. And my kids also noticed that foods tasted better. We all got into fresh berries and realized how good they taste just by themselves, and it was really eye-opening. And there’s science to explain this too. It’s fascinating.

So, natural foods like fruit and vegetables, they will often taste better after you reduce added sugar intake because your taste buds become more sensitive to sweetness. So the natural sugars in these foods stand out more. So when you regularly eat a lot of sugar, your palate gets used to very sweet flavors, and that makes natural foods seem less sweet. But when you reduce your added sugar intake, your taste buds will reset. So the natural sweetness in fruits and veggies is more noticeable. And you may even find that foods that were previously very sweet now taste less palatable, like my Jif.

So, when all was said and done and the 40 days ended, I wanted to get everyone’s input and perspective on our family experiment. So I went around individually and asked my family members for their observations on going sugar-free. So, first, we all noted that doing this experiment together made it easier. I’m not sure how it would have gone if one of us decided to sit it out and eat candy and cookies and cereal while the rest of us were eating veggies and fruit.

So having the buy-in and commitment from all four of us made the experiment so much easier. And my husband noted that not having the sugary foods in plain sight made it easier. Taking all the foods out of the pantry and the fridge and moving them to our basement made it pretty easy to forget about them. We were both used to having something chocolatey after lunch, and after a few days of not having it, it was not a big deal. Not having chocolate in plain sight when you open the pantry makes it a lot easier to skip the chocolate. And it makes sense. You’re controlling your environment to make it work for you.

So the other thing he noticed is that it really didn’t take long to not crave the sugar. Between not having the sugary stuff front and center or even available in the pantry and having plenty of other real whole foods to eat in its place, it wasn’t that big of a transition. And he also noticed that he was eating a lot more dried fruit, but he was also eating more fresh berries and other whole fresh fruits along with it. And his overall takeaway was that this was a positive experiment for our team.

So then I went to my youngest, who’s 10, and he had a number of observations that he wanted to share after our experience. And when I told him that this was research for the podcast and his input was going to be put live on air for all to hear, he found that he had a lot to say. So, his observations, and these are straight from his mouth, were, “I didn’t think we would be taking out so much food from the pantry when we started. We eat way too much sugar. It is annoying not having the things you’re used to, like peanut butter biscuits, but you get used to it. I feel healthier because I’m eating a lot of fruit. It’s going to make me healthier when I’m older. It feels good to eat real food.” And last but not least, “Smoothie bowls taste good.” And I would have to agree with all of his assessments. He got really good at the smoothie bowls.

And now my oldest, who’s 12, he is a man of fewer words. And so when I asked what he found after participating in our family experiment, he shared, and I quote, “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I think it will help me in sports to not have so much sugar. I poop a lot more. I eat a lot more nuts and dried fruit.” And that gave us an opportunity to talk about the effects of dried fruit on our colon.

So dried fruit is a concentrated source of fiber and sorbitol, and both of these can cause you to poop more often. So the fiber, that adds bulk to your stools, and the natural sorbitol found in dried fruit draws water into your gut to soften your stool and promote regular bowel movements. So I’m sure he’s glad that he shared that with me and got a science lesson out of the deal, but at least now he’ll think twice before reaching for his fifth handful of raisins in a day.

And that brings me to another interesting observation he made. He noticed that he was going into the pantry, assessing his options, and sometimes walking away empty-handed. Because we had a smaller variety of foods in the pantry and it was less snacky stuff overall, there were less things to grab. And I noticed him doing this a few times even during the course of our experiment, just staring kind of blindly into the pantry. And I would ask him if he was hungry and if he needed more food, and he would answer, “No.” And he called it out himself. He said he was bored.

So, that was totally unexpected, but it gave us an opportunity to talk about what else he could do besides eat when he was bored. It gave us the chance to talk about how boredom doesn’t mean head to the pantry for a snack. It gave us the chance to talk about allowing the feeling of boredom without having to do anything in response to it. So I used it as an opportunity to normalize feeling boredom because it’s natural and normal for all of us, and it doesn’t mean we have to eat. So, again, that was not something I was expecting as an outcome from this experiment, but it showed me that boredom and snacking can be linked even for kids.

So, I want to be careful about how I think and talk about this with him because I never want him to feel self-conscious about eating or feel like food is off limits or bad. But what I notice is that when we didn’t have a pantry full of hyper-palatable sugar-filled snacks, it created a natural pause. It gave him and me a chance to notice when we were reaching for food out of habit or boredom instead of hunger. And yes, we talked about this gently, making it clear that feeling bored is normal, and it doesn’t have to be fixed with food. And if he does want a snack, that’s okay too. We just have more options now that are real whole foods.

My goal wasn’t, and it isn’t, to restrict him or create rules, but to help him and really all of us build a little more awareness around eating. And honestly, that is the real win from this whole experience, that we’re all a little better at noticing, reflecting, and choosing. The other thing I’ll point out is that we did not give up sugar entirely.

During our experiment, there were family birthday parties, there were gatherings, there were school field trips. And we didn’t skip the food that was offered. We didn’t binge on sugar either. That was our choice, and we decided to eat what was in front of us, and we didn’t make a big deal out of it. We didn’t tell the kids, “Hey, don’t eat the cake at the birthday party.” We let them make their own choices. And sometimes they had the cake, and other times they didn’t. And honestly, that’s exactly what I want for them, for them to make their own choices and to make those choices conscientiously instead of having the cake just because. I want them to decide on purpose.

And I want to make it clear here if I haven’t already. Sugar is not the villain. Food is not good or bad. There is no moral value attached to what we eat. What matters is how you think about it, how you feel when you eat it, and how you balance your choices. I don’t want you, I don’t want my kids, I don’t want myself to fall into the trap of thinking that eating something with sugar makes you bad or weak, or that it’s something to hide or feel guilty about. Food is food. Sugar does not need to be your enemy. And what we learned through this experiment wasn’t that sugar is off limits. Instead, we learned that we have the power to make choices that feel good for us without guilt or shame. All right?

And so now that the experiment is over, I wanted to share with you where we are currently. We set out at the beginning to go 40 days without sugar. And if you know me at all, I’m not really into hacks or challenges or 30 days to whatever. So then, our whole family goes and does something like this, which I know might seem counter to what I have mentioned before on this podcast. But here’s what we did.

We addressed the question that naturally comes up when there are time-limited challenges like Lent or 30 days of fitness or 75 Hard or whatever time challenge you’ve tried. We answered the question, “And then what?” Because in my mind, if you’re going to take on any sort of program or challenge or time-limited hack, I want you to be prepared for what you will do once it’s over. And that means answering the question, “And then what?”

So, for us, our answer to “and then what” meant a number of things have changed as a result of our experiment. So for one, we stopped buying chocolate milk. We realized that we didn’t need it. We stopped buying sandwich bread that has sugar in it, and are now buying the bakery sourdough instead that has fewer ingredients and stuff in it. We stuck with a pasta sauce that has no sugar. We switched to the Costco natural peanut butter that has no sugar and tastes like liquid peanuts.

Our cereal selection has slimmed down quite a bit, and we still eat shredded wheat and Grape-Nuts. The only chip type of snacks that we have are popcorn or pretzels that aren’t made with sugar. So, my youngest son has resumed eating his beloved peanut butter biscuits and occasional candy, but other than that, his sugar consumption is overall pretty low. And the same is true for my oldest son.

He still eats dried fruit, though not as large of quantities as before. And honestly, he’s not digging into the pantry quite so often. He’s eating more yogurt and whole food snacks when he is hungry, which I think is overall positive. So, the “and then what” is that we’ve kept quite a few of the changes that we made permanent. We found substitutions that worked better for us, or we eliminated the sugar-containing foods altogether. And we resumed some foods that we really loved, but overall, our family’s sugar intake has gone down significantly.

So, here is the big takeaway from our family’s sugar-free experiment. It was not about cutting sugar out of our lives completely, and it definitely was not about labeling food as good or bad. Really, it was about becoming more aware. Of what we’re eating, why we’re eating it, and how food makes us feel. It was about making choices on purpose instead of on autopilot and making small shifts that felt sustainable.

I want my kids and myself to see food as just that, food, not as something to be feared or vilified, but as something to enjoy, to fuel our bodies, and to share in connection. And if that means sometimes having the cake at the party, so be it. The point is to choose with intention, not out of habit or guilt.

So, if you’re curious about trying something like this for yourself, consider it. Not because sugar is evil, but because awareness is empowering. You don’t have to do anything drastic. You can start by reading labels and see where added sugar sneaks into your day, and then experiment with a few swaps. You can keep this really simple. You can try it for a week or even a few days just to take notice. You might find that your tastes are changing and your choices are shifting as a result.

And at the end of the day, remember that it is not about eating perfectly, because honestly, that does not exist. Instead, it’s about eating in a way that feels good, tastes good, and moves you closer to your health and fitness goals. That is the real win here. All right?

And if you want help with this, let’s go. When you coach with me, you’ll practice making intentional choices about your food so you feel more in control and more confident. Check out my website, send me a message at www.CarrieHollandMD.com/contact, and let’s talk about how coaching will change your relationship with yourself and with food. All right? Thank you again for hanging out with me, and I’ll catch you again next week.

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You’ll also find strength training tips to help you train smarter and see real results. My goal is to help you get strong and this strength-training guide will help you do it. Go to CarrieHollandMD.com/build strength and check it out.

Thank you for listening to the Strong Is a Mindset podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build both a strong mind and a strong body by eating, moving, and most importantly, thinking, check out CarrieHollandMD.com.