Giving Up Sugar.

[andy-hughes]

Rather than continuing to worry my wonderful wife, I have decided to give up sugar.

Advice varies, but rather than reduce gradually, which for me would be worse, I have gone cold turkey, and had no sugar in tea for a week now.

I keep being told i will get used to the taste, but it tastes as vile now as it did on day one - so i wonder, is it possible not to get used to the taste of tea without sugar?

I am giving it six weeks, and if there is no change, I will return to one of my major pleasures - a nice cup of tea.

Any experiences and / or advice welcome.

[Mosaic]

Like you I prefer sweetened tea, but for years - decades - I've used Tesco sweeteners which I actually prefer as they don't 'coat your tongue' in the way that sugared tea seems to.
I also put the sweeteners in porridge if I'm making it, and in fact we don't have a bag of sugar in the house at all, unless someone is planning to bake something that needs sugar.
You don't need to go cold turkey. Be kind to yourself. It's a question of slowly adapting and the same goes for reducing your salt intake - you wouldn't expect to go from a salty crsip lover to a no-salt-at a-ll diet in one step, so why expect it to work with your sweet craving?

[mazie]

LOL....I'm afraid I'm with B00 on this one Andy

[Baldric]

I gave up sugar in '09 when told I was Diabetic, went cold turkey, wasn't easy, took a couple of months to get used to it even though I never really have had a sweet tooth, don't even think about it nowadays.
You can do it !

[Baby_Sham]

Ha! Oh, I completely agree. I hate sweet tea. Vile!

I was just clutching at straws and thinking of a healthy alternative for Andy.

Whilst I'm no big fan of sugar, I don't really see why there's such a fuss over two cups a day.
Maybe swap it for crack, see how she likes that! :P (joke. It was a joke)

[Booldawg]

Not taken sugar in my tea for years. Takes more than 1 week Andy, may 2 -3. But after that you wont be able to have sugar in it again; even half a teaspoon.

[Hypognosis]

//I have decided that i will give it six weeks, and if it's no better, I will return to sugar,//

This is where dieters can sometimes wrong.

If you cut an item out (2.5 x 7 = 17.5 teaspoons a week - don't ask me how many calories that is) your appetite will attempt to compensate for the loss. You might up your intake of meat, veg or bread by an amount that's too small to notice but, over the 6 weeks, becomes habitual.

If you then restart the old behaviour *and* maintain the adjusted interim behaviour then your total energy intake has increased and you'll gain weight. Barely perceptible gains, but they accumulate over longer periods, as everyone who wondered where their middle-aged spread came from knows, to their cost. ;-)

[Huderon]

If it tastes vile now, wait till the six weeks are up and have tea with sugar - it will taste a lot worse than tea without

[shinymanone]

I replaced sugar, with honey, many years ago. Love it!

[andy-hughes]

shinymanone - I know people use honey as a substitute, but personally, I regard honey as the spawn of the devil!

I loathe everything about it - the smell, the taste, the touch of it when it gets on my hands - ugh!

It is a considerable measure of my boundless love for the present Mrs Hughes that I make her porridge with honey every morning for her breakfast.

[Scarlett]

Why are you giving up sugar- and has it helped you with any health problems? I feel awful if I have sugar and after 2 weeks of not having any I was fine. No cravings. I started off having a bit of honey and porridge and some grapes or dates if I had a sugar craving but gradually it settled and then went away. Do you have coffee without sugar? That's nicer!