10 Positive Results from Giving Up Sugar for 90 Days

Sugar is literally everywhere. Hidden added sugars aside, the number of sweet treats we are bombarded with on a day-to-day basis is almost mind-boggling. While the thought of giving up sugar is probably daunting, there are several reasons why making the leap to leave sweet treats behind for good is worth it. When I first gave up refined sugar in April 2014, I knew I had a problem. I didn’t realize the positive changes that were to follow upon taking the leap of removing it from my life. As scary as taking the plunge was, it was so worth it. The following ten things happened to me as a direct result of cutting out refined sugar.

One: Weight Loss

Your results may vary, but I literally lost 7.5 lbs those first two weeks and was down 13 pounds in about 5 weeks. I made no other dietary or exercise changes at this point. That being said, I had been eating A LOT of sugar, had a lot of weight to lose, and a lot of it was probably water weight from simply cutting out those carbohydrates. Regardless, I made that one change that had almost immediate and positive effects on my body, which felt really good.

For the next two years, when I wasn’t eating sugar, I lost about 75 pounds, and for the first time, my weight was much easier to manage, and the weight stayed off. Part of me thought it might have been because I was eating fewer calories, but it wasn’t for another few years that I learned the role of insulin in this. The short version of the story is sugar spikes our insulin, and insulin stores fat and makes it so that we can’t burn the fat we already have stored while it’s in our system. Insulin is a fat-storing hormone. An increase in insulin is going to lead to more fat being stored and less fat being burned.

While I have fought the battle of staying sugar-free since then (which is why I am creating this resource to help others with what I have learned along the way!), the times when I have kept the sugar away is when the weight falls off and stays off. When the sugar comes back, so does the weight.

Two: Save Money

Sugar is my drug. While cheaper than most abused substances, I was still using it, and to do so, I often would need to buy it. Sugar is one of those crazy addictions where we can get ourselves a hit at church, a school event, or even the office, but chances are, you’re still going to be buying it for yourself, too. I don’t even want to think about how much money I wasted on sugary beverages or treats. Doing so did nothing except make my addiction worse, ruin my health, and wasted my money.

Food, especially sugar, has always been the most difficult category of my budget to control my spending. Not wasting money on sugar makes controlling that part of my budget so much easier. That’s just the short-term view, though. It’s one thing to look at your monthly spending and see ridiculous food spending. It’s another thing to later look at your spending and see even more money be used up monthly with extra doctor visits and medications to treat your diabetes and other diseases and conditions related to obesity. And with the cardiovascular risks associated with excess sugar consumption…I don’t even want to think about the expenses caused by a heart attack. You get the picture.

Three: Less Gas and Bloating

We’ll just embrace the awkward with this one, and I’ll just be the one to point out that sugar causes gas. There are bacteria in your gut that loves sugar, and when you eat it, the bacteria goes hog wild and releases gases that are now your problem. Yes, there are healthy foods that do this, too, but why make it worse? (And side note – if a particular food that routinely makes you gassy and uncomfortable, even if there is a nutritional benefit to it, it’s okay not to eat that food.)

Four: Less Inflammation

This year, I made the bad decision to try to eat sugar to “prove I could control it” again. (Last time for that. I get it now.) While it set me up for another round of relapse, it taught me something extremely valuable – the inflammation that comes from eating sugar. I severely sprained my ankle about 9 months prior and was still having minor occasional discomfort in the affected area. However, after eating one slice of cake, that injury swelled up within an hour and was causing significant pain again. That’s when I learned how inflammatory sugar is and went on to do more research about it.

My ankle within an hour of eating sugar for the first time in six months

Aside from the benefit of making weight management much easier, preventing inflammation is my other primary “why” for living a sugar-free lifestyle. Many diseases, including ones that run in my family, are caused/exacerbated by high levels of constant inflammation. No thanks. Pretty sure that treat is not worth the pain, expense, and decreased quality/length of life that comes from those conditions.   Even in the short term, though, the inflammation and swelling in all of my joints that sugar causes are enough of a reason to avoid it and is often what I now tell people about why I can’t eat sugar: because it is 100% true. (That, and I’m an addict, but you know…)

My ankle back at the normal size the next day.

Five: Fewer cravings

While there is a hump that is hard to get over, once you get over it after a week or two, the physical cravings for sugar begin to stop. (The psychological ones continue, which is why I am here for you with this blog, but even those get better with time.) The sugar monster will be awake, alert, and demanding more as long as you feed it. Once you decide to cut it off, it will get angry for a time, but eventually, it will fizzle out as long as it doesn’t receive any more sugar. (The important thing to realize is that it only goes into hibernation, and it WILL come back. Trust me on this one…)

Six: Less Hungry

When we’re not flooding our body with the simplest of carbohydrates that cause dramatic spikes in blood sugar that then lead to huge crashes, you don’t need to eat constantly throughout the day. Sugar is something that we often eat as a “pick me up” by itself, or even as mindless ingestion as a piece of hard candy from a coworker’s candy dish or even as buckets of tootsie rolls at my gym. This random consumption of sugar throughout your day does nothing but mess with your blood sugar, spike your insulin, make you extra hungry, and ultimately just cause you to gain weight.

Seven: Less Obsessing

When I am in the throws of my addiction, my thoughts will become stuck on getting my next fix. They spiral out of control. Sometimes even the smallest thing – an ad, someone’s social media post, or just my own brain, will start me on a downward spiral of obsessive thoughts of what I want my next hit to be after work. Where am I going to get it? What else am I going to get while I’m there? It’s bad. Being free from those obsessive and distracting thoughts helps me focus on the things that matter – working towards goals, building relationships, or just improving my health. I have so much valuable brain power and problem-solving skills, and it is a huge waste to spend it on thinking about sugar.

Eight: Better Sleep

Especially because many of my sugar binges happen at night (although I do not discriminate time of day), I find that it very much disrupts my sleep. However, it makes sense if you think about it because sugar is known for giving a “jolt” of energy. It doesn’t take any scientific study to know we reach for sugar when we’re feeling sluggish or tired in the middle of the day. Unfortunately, especially if you do that at night, that energy spike comes when you need to be going to bed. However, even when I eat sugar earlier in the day, I am more likely to be hungrier at night, tempting me to eat closer to bedtime, making it more difficult to get to sleep, and makes me more prone to getting acid reflux at night.

Additionally, I don’t feel my best when I eat sugar, and it’s always harder for me to get to good sleep if I don’t feel well.   The sleep/sugar connection is one of those feedback loops that will either work for your good or work against you. Not getting enough sleep very much can cause sugar cravings during the day. Eating sugar then leads to worse sleep at night, and the cycle continues. If you stop eating sugar, you will start sleeping better, AND THEN – you will stop getting the cravings caused by being too tired during the day. Breaking the cycle is the hardest part, but it is worth it.

Nine: A Change in Taste

About this time, if not before, real and natural fruits and vegetables will begin to taste extra sweet. Strange, right? Food that has not been processed by man but still in the form it is intended to be in nature will begin to make sense to your brain again. Sweet potatoes with a little grass-fed butter and some cinnamon will begin to qualify as dessert to your taste buds. The best way to get natural foods to taste amazing again is to quit the engineered hyper-palatable stuff. Really.

Ten: Increased Self-Confidence

To say that successfully being abstinent from sugar also feels good for the ego is an understatement. When you’ve got something like this that has been controlling you and causing you all the problems discussed above, and the associated feelings of shame – being in control of that makes me feel like Superwoman. I know I am doing something good for my current self and my future self. That feeling of self-confidence easily carries into other areas of my life. For example, this was the time when I taught myself how to run! I also was able to get up the courage to be in my first romantic relationship. I also interviewed for and accepted my first “real job” and felt super confident at the interview. I felt like I was giving my best self to the world and those around me.

When we have confidence and believe in ourselves, so many things can become ours.