Well, ending the sugar free challenge on Halloween was definitely not one of my smartest ideas. This post should actually be called ‘The Sugar High’ or ‘The Sugar Crash’ rather.

Let’s not dwell on the sugar binge that occurred last night (candies, pizza and beer) and again this morning (pancakes and maple syrup for breakfast)… Here is a glimpse on my final week of The Sugar Free Challenge and my general conclusions from the whole experience.

Week 3, sugar free

This week went much smoother than Week 2 but still not quiet as smooth in comparison to how well Week 1 went.

Aside from Tuesday when Dan marinated Salmon with a winning, sugar-filled combination of brown sugar and soy sauce (eye roll!!), I stuck to the sugar free diet for the final week of the challenge.

I stuck with easy snacks that required little preparation – nuts, almond butter on rice cakes and fruit. Lunches involved homemade soup, salad or leftovers from dinner.

My favourite meal of the day is breakfast though and this Portobello mushroom and egg combo was by far the winning meal of the week. It’s one of those meals that seem like a treat even though it is full of healthy ingredients. And when you’re cutting back on treats… a meal like this definitely helps.

I was able to resist the bake sale at work and just barely made it through the week. Knowing the end of the challenge was near and also having slipped up pretty majorly on Tuesday, my motivation to finish the sugar free week was dragging.

It’s not that I was craving sugar so badly that I couldn’t wait to eat it again… I just found that restricting my diet for so long was really starting to wear down my drive. It wasn’t enjoyable anymore.

This brings me into my conclusions of the sugar free lifestyle…

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Well it has certainly been a learning curve. I’ve become so much more aware of how many things have sugar as a key ingredient in them and also how many things have a decent percentage of sugar making up carbohydrates.

This week I didn’t eat anything with refined sugar, no fruit and no processed carbs. My diet involved a handful of dense carbohydrates a day (quinoa or basmati rice), eggs, meat, non processed cheeses, nuts/seeds/beans and lots of vegetables.

Why no fruit? The idea is to adjust my palate to crave sugar less; just as our palates have been conditioned to crave sugar… they can be conditioned to crave it less… It’s truly amazing how many things in life can be boiled down to habit.

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