If any of you follow our Facebook Page (if you don’t shame on you!) you will know that I have been kicking around the idea of embarking on the 21-Day Sugar Detox by Diane Sanfillipo of Balanced Bites and the NY Times Bestselling book Practical Paleo. I am a huge fan of Diane’s and her work, I think Practical Paleo is one of the best nutrition books (Paleo or not) on the market today. I purchased the materials last week and read up on the program. Most of this I already had a good idea of but it was a great refresher and motivator. I read through the levels (1, 2 & 3… they’re increasingly more difficult/restrictive) and decided level 2 would be good for me to try. Then I slept on this decision and realized I selected level 2 because it very closely resembles my daily life. I normally had heavy whipping cream to my coffee in the morning and rely on butter as a cooking fat so this wouldn’t have been much of a stretch for me for the next 21 days and that’s not the point of a detox. Therefore, I decided to man up and really challenge myself with setting out to accomplish level 3.
I set out to take on this detox because I think it important to be able to not let food and cravings control your every move and thought. I have written before about my story and growing up as an overweight child in high school. Partly to blame for that weight was my intense love of sweets. I still to this day would give up every meal for ice cream: coffee ice cream for breakfast, rocky road for lunch, mint chocolate chip for dinner to cleanse the palate before a nice palate of ice cream cake for dessert. That is if sustaining myself on ice cream was healthy…sadly, this is not the case! While I try myself to eat a healthy whole foods diet there are times where food cravings rear their ugly head and sometimes I give into them. I think it is super important that as someone who does run a blog about healthy living and eating to nourish that fit lifestyle that this doesn’t make me or anyone else that does this super-human. I know a lot of prominent bloggers have been criticized for posting, eating or saying something that is not “Paleo” and this is nonsense. No one is 100% perfect,100% of the time. Embrace the slip and get back on your feet!
I also wanted to do the 21 Day Sugar Detox to be able to tell myself that I did it. Confession: I am horrible at challenges. If I’m told something is going to be off limits to me it somehow becomes the only thing I want to eat! I don’t know why this is the case. In fact, 2 days before this challenge all I could think about was the bag of apples and oranges I had bought for Kevin the previous weekend and how I should eat a few before I can’t have them for 3 weeks. Confession #2: I cut fruit out of my diet MONTHS ago! I will have maybe a piece of fruit a week, but for some reason this restriction had me laying awake last Thursday night. Silly thing the brain is!
I specifically choose this time period because I FINALLY had nothing going on for 3 weekends in a row. Like I mentioned above I am not good at challenges and I think trying to tell myself that I am going to do a 21 DSD over something like the Super Bowl (I have a party each year) or when I know that I’m going away for a friend’s bachelorette party in Atlantic City is counter productive. I don’t believe in setting yourself up for failure and trying to do a detox over an event that you know is going to just make things more difficult for you is not worth it. Thus knowing I had nothing going on for 21 days straight almost seemed like a sign (said friend’s wedding is on day 22)! I knew that if I didn’t take this opportunity to do the detox I would have been disappoint in myself. Thus, Saturday morning, March 2, 2013 I began my first 21 Day Sugar Detox!
I know that a lot of succeeding in challenges like these is being prepared! This being said after breakfast on the morning on day 1 I knew the one thing I had to find a substitute for was ketchup! I know this is pretty much an American staple and that most people don’t think much about what is in that little red bottle. Confession #3: I’m one of those people. I use ketchup in such little amounts (usually 1-2 tbsp with breakfast 4-5 days a week) that I never took much notice of the ingredients. I knew there was sugar in there but the little amounts I was consuming, I figured I had bigger fish to fry! So while eating breakfast on day one I happened just for shits and giggles look over the ingredients of the bottle in my fridge. Not only was high fructose corn syrup number 2 on the ingredients list but corn syrup was number 4. YES, 2 forms of corn syrup in the top 4 ingredients on the label. GROSS! I set out to find a substitute below is what I arrived at:
Paleo Ketchup*
Ingredients:
- 2 – 8 oz cans of tomato sauce
- 1- 6 oz can of tomato paste
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 3/4 tsp garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp onion powder
- 1/4 tsp allspice
- 1/8 tsp ground clove (I omitted because I didn’t have)
Instructions:
- Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and whisk together.
- In a medium sized sauce pan place sauce on medium-low for about 10 minutes.
- Allow to cool and enjoy!
*recipe courtesy of PaleoTable.com
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