I Gave Up Sugar For 3 Weeks – This is What Happened

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

On December 11th, I made the decision to give up sugar – no cookies, no desserts, no fruit, no sugar.

You see, I am an all or nothing type of person – and it was getting to the point where I was just eating WAY too much sugar, and I was NOT feeling good. I would have constant energy lows and highs, was feeling lethargic, and could just feel that it was too much.

So I made a decision, although it was hard and just gave it all up.

In this post I will share with you what I went through and how I feel now, 3 weeks later.

Initially, the first 4 or 5 days, were by far the hardest. I felt like I had ZERO energy, and it was a struggle to do anything. I love going for walks everyday, and my walks felt like they were about 20 times harder than usual (we have some steep hills here) and I almost broke a few times. I had some crazy cravings for sugar and it was pure will power not to give in.

I also heavily increased my water intake, and decreased my portion sizes – I wanted to detox and figured if I was going to give up sugar, it’s the perfect time to get healthier and more scheduled with my meals.

All or nothing, right? 🙂

So those initial few days were the toughest but pretty much immediately following these first few days, I saw myself losing weight.

One thing I noticed right away too was I was a lot less bloated, and the poofiness (is that a word?) around my eyes practically went away.

My skin began to clear up, and I began looking younger – the lines around my eyes were drastically reduced and I felt all around much lighter and way more energized.

As I continued, I found that I woke up much faster, slept better and found that I had a lot more mental clarity which helped me to become even more productive.

Ideas were flowing through my head much more and I felt better all around – I also continued to lose weight.

So many of these results, I expected but there were some changes that surprised me.

Food began to taste different – I could pick up different flavours and could smell food better as well.

My teeth got whiter, and also there was much less ‘residue’ on them – I would run my tongue over my teeth and it felt very different, like they were much CLEANER (although my toothbrushing habits had not changed).

Before starting this diet, I found that my skin itched a lot and I had a lot of issues with dryness – but during the past three weeks, my skin irritations went away and my skin began to feel much more supple and hydrated (I did increase my water intake as well, which I know affected this too).

After the first few days of constant cravings and massive hunger pangs, gradually my feeling of hunger subsided and I began to feel satiated after eating without any cravings afterwards. My appetite also DRASTICALLY decreased.

I find now that I am much more aware of what my body needs – not like a “craving’ but something deeper that I couldn’t detect before. I find myself enjoying my food, but also eating from necessity of what my body actually needs because I can now detect it better.

Truly, if you listen to your body, it will tell you what it needs, and I realized that too much sugar in my diet, masked my ability to detect what it needed because of the constant cravings for sugar.

So here I am 3 weeks later, feeling great – I wanted to see what it would be like so I had some desserts and cookies today, and I honestly didn’t really much enjoy them.

The sugar addiction is gone.

Starting tomorrow I am taking on a new challenge – I will be continuing with my sugar free diet, scheduled meals, and I am going to begin running and working out regularly.

When I gave up sugar, I had been training but stopped for the past three weeks, only continuing with my walks and morning Chi-Kung practice but that’s about it. Now that I feel great when it comes to diet, time to take my strength and fitness to the next level!

I am excited to see the changes I will make in the next 3 weeks.

Just goes to show, a LOT can happen and change in just 21 days.

Another challenge I am taking is a 21 Day Blogging Challenge – I’m going to be sharing tons of stories, adventures, lifestyle design tips and hacks, and a whole ton of other life-altering, weird and sometimes random posts.

I am not very much interested in resolutions but rather commitments – and these are my commitments for the next 3 weeks.

It just so happens we also just began a new year and I would love to know…

What are YOUR commitments over the next 21 days?

Much love,

Kat 😉