Are you ready for a sugar-detox?

Making healthy choices is not always easy. All of us know that sugar in our diets is a bad idea. Yet breaking free of our daily morning fix seems like an impossible thing to achieve. With sugar in our tea, we can scale Everest and without it, we may end up murdering someone first thing on Monday morning, right? However, if you can succeed in phasing sugar out of your diet and replace it with something better and healthier, it can be a much easier experience. Here’s what happens to our bodies when we reduce sugar and replace it with something healthier like an artificial sweetener:

Initially, when you give up sugar, your body will react in the same manner as if you were giving up drugs. You will experience withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, decreased energy levels and gastrointestinal distress. Everyone does not experience this, but if you do, you can opt to eat a piece of fruit to help you out. These withdrawal symptoms generally fade away over a week and get replaced by cravings for certain types of sugary substances. These can be dealt with by ensuring that you incorporate healthy fats, proteins and fiber into your diet in sufficient quantities which will help you feel fuller for longer.

The third week is when you will begin to feel energized and see the pounds begin to melt off. The cravings are no longer there and the withdrawal symptoms have disappeared. You begin to enjoy the sugar-less lifestyle while your taste-buds become hyper-sensitive to anything sweet making it easier to resist all the sweets you earlier relied on. The final week is crucial. During this week, your fight with giving up sugar will be more of a psychological battle as your body has adapted to functioning with low levels of or no sugar by now. This is the period when you begin to remove sugar in its hidden form such as salad dressings, juices and instant food from your diet. The fifth week onwards is more of maintenance mode in the sense that you have overcome the physical and psychological battle with sugar and your system has undergone a complete sugar detox. Your energy levels are at an all time high, you feel reinvigorated and refreshed. You can have some sugar here and there now as long as you control the portions and stay away from added sugar.