#eatpretty15 week 2: Not So Sweet

Happy Monday my friends!! In my opinion, the most difficult week is now completed! Wahoo! How has it been for you so far? I’ve missed coffee dearly! Please give yourself a pat on the back if you’ve been faithful to the challenge this far. I’m so proud of you!

This weeks challenge should be a fairly easy for some of you- no sweets {refined sugar}. This means:

• No sugary beverages
• No desserts
• No ice cream
• No frozen yogurt
• No cookies
• No sugary pastries
• No chocolate (yes it deserves it’s own category)
• No candy

You get the picture. If you have a major sweet tooth, try replacing your usual dessert with some naturally sweet fruit like mango and strawberries. Or check out my recipe for Coconut Banana Chia Seed Pudding. Wait, so if that’s allowed can we have banana pudding or regular pudding? No. If you’ve ever made either of those you know that they are completely different than chia seed pudding.

So why is no sweets this weeks challenge? Unfortuntly for all us ladies who love a good desert, added sugar is the single worst ingredient in the modern diet. It can have harmful effects on metabolism and contribute to all sorts of diseases. Scientist believe that it is added sugar who is responsible for many, if not most of today’s health issues: the obesity epidemic; the dramatic increase in diabetes; memory troubles, cancer, heart disease, fertility problems and more. In the book Sugar Shock: How Sweets and Simple Carbs Can Derail Your Life- And How You Can Get Back On Track (I know its a mouthful of a title)- scientist even link added sugar to sexual dysfunction. The book is a bit extreme because eating sugar in moderation and while having an active lifestyle isn’t detrimental to our health. BUT it does bring up a great point that added sugar is not good for our bodies. Added sugars (like sucrose and high fructose corn syrup) contain a whole bunch of calories with NO essential nutrients. So think of this way- it would take you running a mile to burn off the one candy bar you ate. And the even worst part that I learned in my Metabolism class- the way our body breaks down excess sugar is it eventually turns it into fat. Keep in mind that all of this does NOT apply to fruit. It is almost impossible to overeat fructose by eating fruit. So like I said before, lets replaces the sugary desserts with delicious fruit this week. I posted some delicious healthy sweet idea on my Pinterest again this week if you’d like to re-pin them! My personal favorite treat is vanilla yogurt with fresh fruit on top. Right now I’m obsessing over The Epic Seeds Chia + Greek Yogurt combo. These little babies are packed (I mean super packed) with nutrients and taste heavenly. So yummy!

Still not sold on the whole too-much-sugar-is-bad-for-you theory? Well I strongly recommend you watching the documentary Fed Up. I recently watched this powerful film that focuses on childhood obesity. It talks a lot about added sugar and how it’s become America’s addicted to it.  Scientist have found that our brains react the same to added sugar as it does to cocaine {pictured below}. Crazy right? Although a very sad film, I found it fascinating how much America relies on added sugar.

I hope that I gave you a few solid reasons why we are giving up sweets for the week. If you still want to learn more, please feel free to email me! Or if you have any questions on what you can or can’t eat, email me! And for those of you who think these past 2 weeks have been easy breezy- don’t get to comfortable because we are about to pick it up in the next 2 weeks.

 

Xoxo,