Thirty days

My body has trouble processing foods with flour in them, like bread, pasta, crackers, bagels, pie crusts, scones, muffins, and some soups and sauces. How do I know this? Because when I eat those sorts of foods, my stomach expands between one and two inches, and my fasting blood sugar in the morning is higher than normal. So as much as I love these things - truly, I have an unhealthy attachment to sugary baked goods - they do not make my body happy nor healthy and I have decided to get them out of my life.

Along with eliminating all flour from my foods, I'm also breaking my obsession with eating something sweet after dinner/before bed. Even if I have sufficient calories for one of these treats, it doesn't help my overnight fasting blood sugar when I eat so late.

field of violets
Violets, by William, via Flickr
Finally, I'm declaring something I've been trying to incorporate into my food plan for a while now: I don't need to eat anything with more than 20 grams of sugar per serving. I could probably squash that down to 10 or fewer grams per serving but I really love my morning cup of flavored Greek yogurt with 12 grams, plus the Larabars that I love (my favorites are Key Lime Pie, Lemon Bar, Coconut Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, and Pecan Pie) have between 16 and 20 grams of sugar per bar and I don't want to give them up, either. So, 20 or fewer grams of sugar per serving for everything that goes in my mouth.

I'm committing to giving this approach to eating a try for the next month because that feels long enough that I should be able to evaluate how my body feels and whether I want to continue with these eating guidelines, tweak them a little, or toss them completely. I'll check in here periodically to document how it's going and how I feel.

Have any of you given up flour and/or foods high in sugar? If so, how did you find it and did you do it for a fixed period of time or as part of a longer term strategy to improve your health?

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