Let's start with some quick hitting, practical points for you, in case you're in a hurry -
1. I think sugar takes a while to quit for most people, and some preparation.
2. Start slowly learning foods you like and trying new healthy foods to find a mix you like. When you go to the store, try one new healthy food to see if it suits you each time.
3. You're going to need to replace all the sugary and junk food you eat. Quitting isn't enough - you need something else to take its place.
4. Consider tracking your energy levels throughout the day for a few weeks and what you eat. It takes a bit of effort, but it's massively worthwhile effort. You'll learn what you respond to and have a massively higher quality of life.
5. Control your environment at first when you're getting into the swing of things.
6. Learn more on the topic from smart people. I recommend Dr. Lustig's video.
7. Like anything, don't beat yourself up over it when you slip. Success is a gradual, incremental progress. I like having a "Challenges" section and daily tracking, and would recommend that.
So, I've Pretty Much Beaten Sugar...
Sugar is in a lot of stuff, and it's really bad for you. It's hard to quit. But you'll be much healthier, with better energy and vitality if you do.
Back in 2009, I knew I wanted to entirely quit sugar someday. But I knew this would be tricky and take some preparation. It would take some large lifestyle shifts, choice shifts, habit shifts.
Also, I'm really happy I quit liquor and intoxicants back in 2006, but it does mean I'll never know some of the liquors I didn't try. That's a minor point, it doesn't matter at all compared to the gain from quitting. But I figured, sugar is going to take a while to quit, so I might as well try all sorts of desserts and cakes and things before quitting.
So I enjoyed in 2009, and started scaling down in 2010. Actually, it's not enough to scale down - you also have to scale up the things you do eat.
I think people miss that point. If your diet is 20% junk food that you buy when you're in a hurry, you can't just quit it. That's not realistic. What are you going to eat instead when you're in a hurry? You'd either need to redesign your life so you don't need fast meals, or have better fast choices you're in the habit of choosing.
I started adding fruit and vegetables to my diet, but it was actually surprisingly hard. I wasn't in the habit of doing it. What I did was whenever I went to a convenience store or grocery store to buy normal stuff, I'd spend some time searching to see if there's something healthy I could try out. Dried fruit like raisins? Nuts? Hard boiled eggs? Various vegetables?
What to order in restaurants?
It's not on my newest time/habit/life tracking, but I was tracking my energy levels a few months ago and seeing what the effects of different food had on my feelings, energy levels, work output, and creativity a few hours later. I started noticing patterns.
Some of this might be universal, some of it is probably me-specific. Dairy leaves me drained, for instance. Turns out, fresh fruit goes over really well. Also, I know people bash carbs, but I love glucose-based carbs. Rice, oatmeal, brown bread. They've got lots of calories in them, but I love them and get an energy boost from it and work well on days I'm carb-heavy, so long as I've also got some protein and good fat. Tuna on brown rice is my favorite.
I started tracking how often I'd have sugar. Eventually, I added a "Challenge" - challenges are questions I answer at the end of the day to do a quick evaluate of the day.
Here's my current Challenges:
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CHALLENGES:
Did I start the day in my planner instead of online?
Did I only check email when I was ready to write back immediately?
Did I clear my active to do list before any screwing around?
Did I avoid getting into arguments with idiots online?
Did I only check a site once, then done with it?
Did I prioritize books/good learning instead of mindless surfing?
Did I avoid sugary food?
Did I make war on procrastination?
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Lately, the answer has been "Yes" for a long time. I'm just not slipping up any more.
When I was first getting into the habit, I was trying to control my environment a lot more. I'd refuse cookies/cakes/sweets, and try to not have them near me. Now it's not even bothering me, I do some thinking and work in Highland Coffee, and they bring a cookie with my coffee every time -
Doesn't even bother me. The cookie's sitting there, I'm not even tempted to eat it.
This is a pretty standard breakfast for me these days -
I'd also strongly recommend this video. I was turned on to it by Paul Graham. I don't normally watch videos, but it's pretty amazing - Dr. Lustig is a captivating and knowledgeable speaker, talking about a valuable topic.
I'm not being too fanatical yet about avoiding sauces that might have sugar in it, things like that. But sweets are at zero, and sugary-ish things are near there too. The exception would be if I was dehydrated and low energy immediately following an intense workout - then one sugary drink before healthy high calorie food would be okay. But I haven't even been doing that lately.
Recap, practical advice -
1. I think sugar takes a while to quit for most people, and some preparation.
2. Start slowly learning foods you like, and trying new healthy foods to find a mix you like.
3. You're going to need to replace all the sugary and junk food you eat. Quitting isn't enough - you need something else to take its place.
4. Consider tracking your energy levels throughout the day for a few weeks and what you eat. It takes a bit of effort, but it's massively worthwhile effort. You'll learn what you respond to and have a massively higher quality of life.
5. Control your environment at first when you're getting into the swing of things.
6. Learn more on the topic from smart people. I recommend Dr. Lustig's video.
7. Like anything, don't beat yourself up over it when you slip. Success is a gradual, incremental progress. I like having a "Challenges" section and daily tracking, and would recommend that.
If you want tracking, "The Evolution of My Time/Habit/Life Tracking" is a pretty good place to start. Or "What Gets Measured Gets Managed" which explains why and how this works.
Godspeed if you want to scale your sugar down or eliminate it - I'm feeling pretty good, my energy is up, my work rate and creativity is up, and general quality of life goes well. I don't know if and when I'll become more absolute and be fanatical about sugar cooked into things, but I'm happy with the progress I've made to date.
Read Next
On Refining Diet
I eat pretty well and take pretty good care of myself. But it's taken quite a while to get here - before 2006, I had a pretty standard American diet. Lots of pizza, junk food, fast food, liquor, soda, sweets, etc. I smoked cigarettes, cigars, sheesha, and other kinds of tobacco.
Since then I've refined my diet and I eat pretty well. I have more energy, feel better, look better, and God willing, I'll live a lot longer as a result. It's a gradual process though, and I'm still improving. There's a few things I use to do it:
First, I'm all about incremental improvement - I think trying to crash change your diet is unlikely to work unless you have immense amounts of willpower and self-discipline. If you do have these Herculean amounts of will and discipline, you know who you are and don't need my advice. If you're more mortal, then you'll want to pick one or two things to be refining in your diet at a time.
Second, there's two ways I quit food or habits I don't like - "hard quitting" (cold turkey) and "soft quitting" (gradually reduce my consumption and eventually eliminate it). I pick which of these routes to go based on how convenient it is to quit something outright and if there's any detox process. If there's detox (like there was with nicotine), I think it's better to just get it over with once instead of constantly feeling deprived as your body re-adjusts to its new biochemical levels. The most successful method for quitting smoking is cold turkey, isn't it? Something like 80% of successful attempts to quit smoking are cold turkey? I don't have the statistics onhand, but that's the general idea. Quitting something like sugar, bad oils, or excess salt might be easier to do incrementally, since you need to replace the consumption with something else.
Which brings us to third point - I actively introduce new good behaviors before and during the time I quit something. Now, I don't know if the following is a good strategy, but it's what I did - when I started cutting down the sweets I ate, I increased my consumption of the kinds of salty foods I already ate: Chips, french fries, nuts, etc. Later I cut the salt content back. I don't know if that's a good habit, but it's worked okay for me. I also try to actively introduce fruits and vegetables before I quit something - it's hard to go from no fiber food that's highly processed to stimulate you immediately to fruits and vegetables. Fruit tastes bland compared to ice cream. So I introduce fruits and vegetables first, get comfortable with them, then increase my consumption of them as I decrease or eliminate bad consumption.
MaxDiet Week: Sugars, Carbs, and What They Mean for Your Weekend
On Tynan
Everything you eat is primarily made up of three macronutrients, or building blocks: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
Today I'm going to focus on what I've learned about carbohydrates, because they make up the bulk of most people's diets and they offer the biggest opportunity for diet improvement.