TOMORROW's CHALLENGE!

Tomorrow is Sugar Free Day!!


See my previous blog entry for more details.


Dare to join us!

Some Really Good Reasons to Avoid Sugar

I thought I would post a quick note about why we should all be avoiding sugar. Most people know that excess sugar can lead to weight gain and problems with cavities.

However, possibly more serious effects of sugar result from the inflammation that excess sugar causes. Inflammation within the body is linked to various diseases such as arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, Crohn's, Alzheimer's, asthma, heart disease and 'clogging of the arteries' to name just a few. Excess sugar consumption also increases your cholesterol and can lead to osteoporosis. Of course, sugar is not the only culprit, but it's a BIG one.

So, why not spare yourself some future health problems by reducing your sugar intake. Try one day without sugar - Wednesday June 1st, 2011.


Life can still be sweet without sugar! (maybe even sweeter...)

JUNE 1ST is SUGAR FREE DAY!

   Go 'sugar-free' on Wednesday June 1st. And before you ask, this does NOT mean that you should stock up on artificially sweetened food - that's even worse, in my opinion.


The guidelines are simple:
1) Eat whole, unprocessed foods as much as possible.
2) Stay away from foods that have refined sugar (most boxed foods). Look for ingredients that end with the letters 'ose' such as glucose and dextrose.
3) Natural sweeteners are optional. These would include honey, agave, black strap molasses and maple syrup. If you really want to go 'all out', try to avoid all sweeteners unless they occur in their whole form (think FRUIT!).
4) Avoid white sugar, brown sugar, high fructose corn syrup.


Really, the whole point is to get you to think about how much sugar you're putting into your body each day and to read food labels. You might be surprised to see how much sugar is added to processed foods, even food that you don't consider to be 'sweet' like some salad dressings or deli meat.  Most people know that when reading the ingredient list, the items are listed from highest amount to the lowest amount. So naturally, you would assume that a product is low in sugar if sugar is near the end of that list. However, the manufacturers use a little trick: they sweeten a product with several different sweeteners so that they can be used in smaller amounts and therefore included in the latter part of the ingredient list. Sneaky...


Join us on Wednesday June 1st and keep that white sugar out of your body for one day.
Feel free to add your comments about your experience.


Good luck and good health!

New Challenge

OK. The next challenge is much shorter - only 1 day- but you may find it somewhat more difficult than trying to drink 8 cups of water per day.

Can you go a whole day without eating any processed sugar?

Join us on June 1st for this no-sugar challenge and share your progress on this blog.

Check back early next week for 'the rules'.

See you then!