I tried to cut every trace of sugar from my diet for a week — here’s what happened
After discovering that even the strictest sugar-free diets aren’t actually free of sugar, I decided to see if it’s possible to cut every trace of sugar from my diet.
I’m a sucker for a good health trend.
Even if it sounds incredibly stupid, I’ll generally try anything once — especially if it promises to make me feel invincible.
A case in point? Sugar-free diets.
They’re said to erase wrinkles, dissolve love handles, fill you with energy, boost mental clarity and reduce your risk of virtually every disease known to man. Who could resist?
Not me.
Last year, I tried a sugar-free diet. And while I managed to stick to it for 6 months, all feelings of smugness were quickly wiped out by the words of friends who insisted the whole thing was an epic waste of time.
“Sugar’s everywhere,” they said. “There’s no way your diet is actually sugar free.”
And they were right.
Look beyond the marketing hype and you’ll find that every alleged sugar-free diet isn’t free of sugar at all.
They never ask you to cut out all sugar — just refined sugar (that’s added sugar, white carbs and other processed foods).
Curious to see if I could hack life with no sugar whatsoever, I decided to go sugar free again, but this time, I’d do it properly. And that meant eating absolutely no sugar — added, natural or anything else.
So, what happened?
Lesson 1: You can’t trust ingredient lists
My initial plan was to keep things simple: check all food labels and eat nothing with any type of sugar in the ingredients list.
But a quick Google search for all alternative names for sugar soon revealed I’d need to watch out for more than 50 words, including: anhydrous dextrose, brown sugar, cane crystals, cane sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, corn syrup solids, crystal dextrose, evaporated cane juice, fructose, fructose sweetener, fruit juice concentrates, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, lactose, liquid fructose, maltose, malt syrup, maple syrup, molasses, pancake syrup, raw sugar, sugar, syrup and white sugar.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
It turns out there are also dozens of less common sugar-based ingredients, including: carbitol, concentrated fruit juice, diglycerides, disaccharides, evaporated cane juice, erythritol, Florida crystals, fructooligosaccharides, galactose, glucitol, glucosamine, hexitol, inversol, isomalt, maltodextrin, malted barley, maltose, mannitol, nectars, pentose, raisin syrup, ribose rice syrup, rice malt, rice syrup solids, sorbitol, sorghum, sucanat, xylitol and xylose.
With so many alternative names for sugar (and the fact that an ingredients list gives zero indication of the amount of sugar that’s naturally in a food item), I could see I’d have to approach my war on sugar differently.
Lesson 2: You have to cut out a lot of food groups to avoid sugar
So, I decided to ditch the ingredients list and check the nutritional breakdown on food labels instead.
Common sense told me I didn’t need to check the labels of certain foods that were obviously full of sugar. That meant staying away from all naturally sweet foods — bye bye chocolate, desserts, and even healthy options like fruit and root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, beets).
Given that all carbs (complex and simple) are made of glucose, I also knew I needed to cut out all carbs for the week — so no rice, bread, potatoes, pulses and grains like quinoa and amaranth.
In fact, before going out of my way to read any food labels, it was clear that all I could potentially eat was pure protein (that’s fish, seafood and tofu — I don’t eat eggs, meat or dairy), pure fats and leafy vegetables — basically a pescetarian-based ketogenic diet (a high-fat, moderate-protein diet that’s said to be good for brain health).
Lesson 3: Following a sugar-free diet isn’t cheap
Determined to see this through, I started day 1 of sugar-free living with a trip to the supermarket. First, I filled my basket with a couple of bags of kale, rocket and rainbow chard. Then I added 2 sea bass fillets, 2 fillets of salmon and 2 small packets of prawns for protein. Next came fats in the form of a bag of cashew nuts, a jar of unsweetened almond butter, 4 avocados, a jar of olives, and olive, coconut and avocado oil.
Garlic, sea salt, tamari and pure dried herbs would be my seasoning for the week, since spice mixes all contained a shocking amount of sugar (some were close to 50% sugar). And other foods I’d been counting on for flavour, like pure miso paste (fermented soybeans) and seaweed, weren’t allowed because their food labels suggested they contained 6% and 3% sugar, respectively — who knew?
“This is going to be a week of bland food,” I muttered, thinking things couldn’t get worse.
They did.
It turns out that sugar-free eating isn’t just bland, it’s also VERY expensive. My half-filled basket of a bit of fish, avocados, green veg, nuts and oil came in at just under £55.
Lesson 4: Going 100% sugar free is near impossible
Breakfast time was long gone by the time I got home from the supermarket, so I dove straight into making my first sugar-free lunch: pan-fried sea bass with garlicky rainbow chard.
While I’d previously been confident that fish was pure protein, I was suddenly hit with paranoia and flipped the pack of fresh sea bass fillets around to double check the label.
Ingredients: 100% Sea Bass. Carbohydrates, of which sugars: <0.5 g sugar per 100 g.
Was nothing safe? Even pure fish has tiny amounts of natural sugar in it?!
In a panic, I frantically started reading the labels of the other foods I’d bought under the illusion that they were sugar free. Hopefully the sea bass was my only oversight.
It wasn’t.
I’d made nearly £55 worth of oversights.
According to their nutrition labels, the rainbow chard had 1.1 g sugar per 100 g, a serving of 10 olives had 0.2 g of sugar, the cashew nuts had 6 g of sugar per 100 g, avocados had just under 1 g of sugar per 100 g, tofu had 0.7 g sugar per 100 g and even a teaspoon of garlic had a little sugar (0.03 g) in it.
The only food I’d bought that was truly 100% sugar free was oil.
Wow.
Results of a low-sugar diet
I like a challenge, but I also know when to draw the line.
Rather than throw in the towel completely, I decided to pivot my experiment and focus on eating a low-sugar — rather than no-sugar — diet for a week.
The first step was figuring out just how low in sugar I could safely go, while still eating 3 proper meals (and eating until I was full).
The answer was 20 g a day — the same amount of sugar in a medium apple. I could have gone lower by eating nothing but protein, but the aim of this experiment was to see if eating absolutely no sugar is doable in real life.
Here’s what happened over the course of the week.
Day 1
I was absolutely starving. I clocked 20 g of sugar by sticking to fish, tofu and green veg for all my meals. By the end of the day I was desperate for something more substantial (by that I mean carbs)… but I made it.
Day 2
This was a hard day. I stuck to 20 g of sugar again, and while I felt physically fine, boy did I miss carbs. But I wasn’t dreaming about luxurious carbs, like cakes and cookies. I was in pure survival mode — all I wanted was a spoon of rice or an apple to top up my sugar reserves.
Days 3 to 5
On waking up on day 3, I was hit with a tsunami of physical symptoms. I had no appetite and had started to dread mealtimes. Kale and prawns were officially the enemy and I ate every bite of every meal with resentment.
Why did I think this would be a good idea? And why had I been stupid enough to tell people what I was doing?
I knew I’d never live down quitting after 3 days, so I consoled myself by adding some contraband, in the form of bell peppers, to my meals. With half a medium red pepper containing 2.4 g of sugar, I knew eating just 1 pepper would push my daily sugar intake up to 25 g, but I no longer cared.
Physically, I felt tired, cold and foggy headed. The brain uses glucose as its main source of fuel, so it’s no wonder I felt that way — I was literally running on empty. But I also knew that when the brain is starved of glucose, it soon switches to using ketones (a type of acid made by the liver) and that’s when mental sharpness and a rise in energy kicks in.
I just had to wait things out.
Day 6
Finally, it happened and I woke up feeling the best I had since starting the experiment. Don’t get me wrong, I was nowhere near back to my sugar-filled self, but I definitely had a little more energy and didn’t feel cold and shivery anymore. I was even starting to enjoy my meals again and had discovered tiny hacks to make my diet more exciting (like making fat bombs — mixing cacao powder with almond butter and coconut oil to make a kind of sweet chocolate truffle).
My biggest mistake was getting too cocky and trying to exercise. After just 10 minutes on a stationary bike, it was clear I was running way too low on energy to manage a workout. My legs felt heavy and weak, and I felt a little spaced out, so I cut my workout short.
Day 7
Day 7 was the best day of the week. It may have been because the finish line was in sight or perhaps my body was now running on ketones — whatever the reason, I felt pretty good. At one point, I even considered carrying on with a sugar-free diet for longer (spoiler: I didn’t).
What I learned
Cutting out sugar completely from your diet is HARD (by that I really mean, near impossible) and you’ll probably miss out on a lot of nutrients unless you add extra supplements to your diet. As my shopping list showed, I couldn’t eat so many nutritious foods, like beans, chickpeas, fruit, root vegetables, wild rice, quinoa, nuts and so much more.
It’s also pretty miserable — unless you’re one of those rare people who get absolutely no pleasure from eating.
Yes, eating too much sugar isn’t great for your health, but that doesn’t actually apply to all sugar. The increased risk of conditions like diabetes, obesity and heart disease — linked to eating sugar — relates to free sugars in food, NOT all sugar, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
And if you’re wondering what makes some sugars ‘free’, the WHO defines ‘free sugars’ as all sugars added to a food, plus those naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices.
So, what’s the take-home message?
Cutting down on sugar has its benefits, but you don’t need to wage an all-out war on all sugar to reap these benefits.
Read more about the benefits of cutting out sugar and how to do it safely and then treat yourself to some carbs.
You can bet your life that’s exactly what I’m doing right now.
Wanna learn more about health trends and habits that actually work? Visit Healthily’s homepage.
This article is intended for informational purposes only. Healthily does not take any responsibility for its medical accuracy. Speak to your doctor before starting any practices described in this article. Never disregard, avoid or delay getting medical advice from your doctor or another qualified healthcare professional because of something in this article.
