:: Red Velvet Cupcakes ~ week 7 sugar-free ::

I've cleared Week 7 and am so ready for my final week!!

People have been asking me what my plan is for once I finish this detox. Will I continue steering clear of sugar? The plan, for the most part (and those are the key words), is that, yes. The most painful part of these 8 weeks is the inability to 'give in', even for a friend who's slaved in the kitchen all day, a birthday party cake, family special occasion, etc... These 8 weeks are about re-setting my body, so it was very important that I didn't 'cheat'. But in general, ordinary life, I want to be able to say, "Ok, this deserves an exception." Hopefully I will be able to keep it like that!

One thing I have learnt so far, is that there are just billions of delish things to fill your life with, without needing sugar! Besides succulent roast chicken dinners, spicy wedges with sour cream, coconut-fried fish, cheesy cauliflower bakes and most savoury foods all being allowed (people seem to forget it's just no sugar, not no food!), there are just countless sweet creations available too. My hands-down favourite this week, were these:

.red velvet mud cupcakes.

Secret ingredient to these moist, sticky, sweet, luxurious cupcakes?

.beetroot.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I Quit Sugar - The Chocolate Cookbook 

by Sarah Wilson

2 large beetroot, grated raw (don’t bother peeling, I threw mine in the Thermomix to 'grate')

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoons vanilla powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch sea salt

1 1/2 cups almond meal

4 tablespoons raw cacao powder 

3 tablespoons softened coconut oil (or light olive oil)

1/4 cup rice malt syrup

1 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 170 C and line a cupcake tin with 12 cupcake cases. Blend all ingredients (in
a blender or with a stick blender) until it’s a smooth batter, then divide between the 12 cases
and cook for 40 minutes.

I topped with spreadable creamcheese, whipped with a couple of Tablespoons of rice malt syrup. Absolutely the perfect way to finish them off. Full of good fats to fill & satiate you. Beetroot are naturally sweet too! But do they taste like beetroot? Well, not really. Jase said he could just sense something 'different' about them, but not enough to turn him away from eating quite a few! They are super moist and brownie-like.

This recipe came from The Chocolate Cookbook, part of the I Quit Sugar series. I won't be posting any more recipes from this cookbook due to copyright, but it's only $16 for your own e-copy, so head over and get one! All the recipes are really incredible, and "do-able" for the average pantry!

:: week 6 sugar-free ::

Ahhh last week (Week 6) was a nice one! Here I was allowed to add a bit of sweetness back into my life after 3 weeks of absolutely none (besides that sugar-yogurt-cheat-bloat-fail). Things like fruit (1-2 pieces a day) are back in, along with things sweetened with stevia & rice malt syrup.

I went straight to the to the top with Sarah Wilson's Crunchy Nut Cheesecake.

This beautiful baked cheesecake has a base of hazelnuts & almonds set with butter. The filling is cream cheese (some homemade by letting homemade yogurt drain in cheesecloth), some coconut oil & cream, dash of vanilla, and sweetened with rice malt syrup. After making the batter for the filling, I licked the bowl completely clean (naturally) and thought to myself, "Oo that's sweet... might put less rice malt syrup than recommended next time." But when Jase was given a piece, he said he liked the texture but it wasn't sweet enough, so didn't want any more! So my taste buds have obviously recalibrated.

Second on the sweet menu was the Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate.

my. word.

Mighty, mighty good. This is a can of coconut milk simmered with raw cacao powder, pure peanut butter, a pinch of salt & rice malt syrup. It was a very filling cup of chocolatey wonder. Definitely doing this again when I need a chocolate knock-out.

Even with these yummy delights, last week was also a really hard week. My entire family were here for it and brought so many treats with them. Including a giant box of Anvers (a quaint chocolate factory in Tassie, the best ever) fudge 'seconds' (*sad face*). I've kept some for when the detox is up and I decide to have a cheat day. But boy oh boy, there was more than one occasion where I came this close to just 'doing it' and eating a piece of fudge, or brownie... I'm actually very surprised I didn't.

TWO WEEKS TO GO!! I actually still have a sweet tooth (did you figure that out?) which is supposed to be gone by the end of the detox. But, there are still two weeks to go, so I'll wait it out and see where my sweet tooth sits by the end.

And WELCOME to Karen, Jessica, Kimmie & Sarah who have all bought the book and going to give the detox a go! That's all it takes guys.. not a life-long commitment to leave sugar out of your life, but a "give it a go" attitude. You will see how you feel at the end, and work out what foods you might then want to leave out of your life.

:: week 5/6 sugar-free ::

Week 5 is done and I'm so excited to enter Week 6, because now the 'no-sweetness-whatsoever' part is over, and I can start adding in small amounts of healthy sweetness back into my life. 1 piece of fruit a day, things sweetened with stevia, and rice malt syrup. It's really important that I don't go nuts now, though the point is that by this stage I'm not supposed to be feeling the need for regular sweet treats.

I've had my moments (especially when with friends) where I really wondered what I was doing as they all ate their way through blocks of chocolate, but at the end of the evening it was a good feeling to know that I'd only eaten yogurt, nuts & homemade cheese biscuits & crackers for 'dessert'. They all understood though, and thought I was very brave (I wasn't feeling the bravery but had to stick it out by that stage lol).

The timing for Week 6 couldn't be better, with my whole family up here from Tasmania for a week! Most of them are meeting their nephew and grandson for the first time. I welcomed their arrival with a sugar-free celebratory cheesecake from "I Quit Sugar." Oh it was beautiful.

Other recipes I tried from the book this week were:

.parsnip fries tossed in almond butter.

(surprisingly amazing)

 

.curry coconut chicken meatballs.

(no flour/breadcrumbs)

If you want to know the fast answer on why we need to quit the sugar fructose as opposed to glucose (what rice malt syrup is), and also the top 5 things you should cut out of your diet (highest in sugar/fructose), then click and read this quick link. It's by Sarah Wilson, the author of "I Quit Sugar" and she has so much valuable information for all of us.

I will be posting a photo of the cheesecake after I slice myself another piece tonight. Mmm-mmmmm!!

:: week 4 sugar-free ::

Unfortunately this post has been in 'drafts' for so long that I'm halfway through Week 5. But here's Week 4's summary anyways.

I have just completed Week 4 of this 8 Week Sugar Detox plan that I'm following, from Sarah Wilson's book "I Quit Sugar." 

I can't believe it's been 4 weeks since I've had chocolate...cake...icecream...sweet slice...and now it's been 2 weeks since I've had any fruit either. And guess what? I'm alive! Very much alive actually. I feel super, particularly in the gut. My belly feels smooth and flat (besides a bit of leftover baby-belly-softness) and barely ever bloated; which is such an unusual feeling for me!

I have to say I've had a couple of hard moments this last week though. One time was last Saturday night as Jase and I settled down for a movie. He went to the freezer and dished himself up a big bowl of Connoisseur vanilla icecream (divine stuff, if you've never tried it!) and sat down next to me. Now generally I don't mind him eating stuff around me that I can't have. Hey, it's me who gets to feel awesome! But this time, I had these weird angry feelings suddenly rise up inside. I wasn't angry at Jase. Something, which I 'm sure was a withdrawal symptom, made me furious that I couldn't have a bowl of that. And I wanted it. Usually I don't care... it was just icecream. But this time, I wanted it. My bowl of yogurt just wasn't doing the job! So I forcefully averted my eyes and slowly the rage went away.

It's been a great chance to try new recipes, not that we ate any lunch/dinner meals that had sugar in them anyway, but IQS has some really great recipe ideas. One of my absolute favourites were the Buckwheat Crepes, with smoked ham & mozzarella. So, so, so amazing.

{buckwheat crepes with quinoa, cauli, pumpkin & parmesan on the side}

{cauli-crust pizza. recipe here}

{Fennel 'detox' Soup. recipe in "I Quit Sugar"}

So I'm halfway done. Cheated once, with some yogurt I thought might be natural but I didn't want to check. Because I like Gippsland yogurt way too much. So it turned out it had sugar in it, and I bloated up like a balloon within the hour.

And so the food continues...

:: week 3 sugar free ::

So here I go, commencing my third week of the sugar detox. This is where the weaning process ends, and the absolutely-no-sugar-in-body starts. So for the next 3 weeks, I won't be eating any fruit. 

Sounds a bit silly, but when you realize that an apple can contain about 7 teaspoons of sugar (fructose, which is the sugar that makes us fat) it gets a bit scary! It kind of makes sense to me though, because in the past when I've tried to be 'healthy' and just have fruit for lunch, I find I don't lose any weight at all. In fact, I usually still end up bloated and gain a bit of weight! Once the detox is up, I will go back to fruit, but only 1-2 pieces a day.

Did you know that when we eat things that are sweetened with glucose, nearly every cell in our body can use it, so it's usually "burned up" immediately after consumption. But when we eat things that are sweetened with fructose (table sugar is 50% fructose/50% glucose), our liver is responsible for metabolising it, and it's usually too much for the liver to handle - and it turns it to fat. So when we have a big bowl of fruit salad, sure we might be getting Vitamin C... some fiber... etc, but the amount of sugar that our liver gets hit with mostly gets converted into fat cells.

Veggies are full of all the same vitamins & minerals as fruit, so I won't be missing out! And I've been very satisfied snacking on things like this below. Yes, that's cream cheese.

:: homemade chickpea crackers ::

(gluten-free, vegan, have the snap of a high quality cracker, and tasty!)

:: week 2 sugar-free ::

So I have survived my first week of my sugar detox! My only confession is licking the icecream scoop after dishing up a heavenly dessert for some guests on Friday night, of rustic apple tart, white chocolate custard & vanilla Connoisseur icecream. So I had some self control, yeah?

It's actually been surprisingly easy so far. Not because I don't usually have a lot of sugar on a regular day either, but because I'm making sure I make hearty meals for breakkie, lunch & dinner, as well as having lots of protein-dense snacks around. I worked out that I probably saved my body of 50 teaspoons of sugar last week alone. And that's just from cutting back my fruit intake to about 2 pieces a day, skipping that dessert I mentioned above, not having a bowl of icecream on Saturday night with Jase & not snacking on any chocolate during the week days. Scary!

So Sunday morning I reckon I experienced my first 'withdrawal' symptoms. I woke up and felt slightly dizzy, nauseous and like I was 'starving', even though I think I have eaten more since being on this diet than ever. So I made myself a massive bowl of quinoa porridge with half a banana, lots of cinnamon & almond milk. It was so good. And an egg muffin just to make sure. I felt better after that.

One of the uh-mazing snacks that I've started making are these genius egg & bacon muffins. The recipe comes in Sarah Wilson's book "I Quit Sugar" (she's so awesome, with down-to-earth, easy ideas!). Let me tell you why they are so awesome. 

1) You can use scrappy bacon. I buy the 1kg bag from Aldi which is only $5! 

2) You line the muffin paper with the bacon scraps so it's pretty tight. This way the

egg doesn't stick to the paper like it always does. They pop right out!

3) You just crack a whole egg in each one & sprinkle some herbs/grated cheese. Bake at 200c for 15 mins (put them in for an extra 5-10 mins with just the bacon initally if you like your bacon crispy).

4) Oh, and hubby will actually warm them up for himself and eat breakfast.

Cheap, tasty, full of protein and can be made in advance! Take to work! No excuses!

:: on quitting sugar... for good ::

I have been toying with the idea of completely giving up sugar for a while now. In fact, Jase and I had it on our diaries to 'give it our best shot' after I'd finished all the chocolate in the house, and after he had finished all the Jarrah coffee sachets. 

It's not that we aren't already pretty healthy eaters already. I barely bake with sugar, except when expecting guests and we don't do desserts much ourselves after dinner. But, we do do chocolate. And we do do the odd icecream. And Jase does do a lot of those powdered-sugar-laden-coffee-combos. Sure it might not be a lot compared to your average Aussie, but the point actually is (*takes deep breath*), we shouldn't be eating any.

Soooo much easier said than done. 

It's not about weight gain. It's not about bad teeth and stinky breath. It's not even about bloating or cellulite. It's all the hidden things. Stuff that goes on, on the inside of our bodies that should truly have us fleeing from the stuff. Did you know....

Sugar/fructose:

• Inhibits our immune system, making it harder to fight off viruses and infections
• Upsets the mineral balance in our bodies, causing deficiencies as well as interfering with mineral absorption (makes taking them multivitamins pretty irrelevant sometimes...)
• Messes with fertility
• Speeds up the aging process (Hey yeah we all want that! Pass the chockie!)
• Has been connected to the development of cancers of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, lung, gallbladder and stomach
• Is linked to dementia
• Causes an acidic digestive tract, indigestion and malabsorption
• can cause a rapid rise in adrenaline, as well as hyperactivity, anxiety and loss of concentration

 The research is growing to show sugar is indeed poisoning us. Studies are proving sugar to be the biggest cause of fatty liver, which leads to insulin resistance. This then causes metabolic syndrome, which is now being seen as the biggest precursor to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

It's making us sick! Sugar isn't just a bunch of naughty, empty calories. Some leading scientists are saying it's responsible for 35 million annual deaths worldwide.

(above information from "I Quit Sugar" by Sarah Wilson)

This book, "I Quit Sugar" is selling out. I went to BigW where it was on special and there were none left! After 10mins of searching, I turned away disappointed and suddenly spotted one all alone on a shelf.

Sarah Wilson provides an 8 week rescue plan, completely thought through to make your transition to a sugar-free lifestyle a whole heap easier. You can't just 'drop it', you need to replace it with lots of the things that satisfy, mainly, proteins. She has simple recipes with everyday ingredients. And I secretly love that she does dairy.

So no, all the chocolate is not out of the house. And I have an unfinished tub of Halva that I've been spooning my way through. But it's all got to wait, because a friend of mine kicked me in the rear and has got me going through this detox plan, starting this week. Doing it with a buddy is a great idea, so it's game on.

Actually this plan also bans all fruit, which I don't agree with as a lifestyle. But this detox plan is about killing our need (yes, we are all addicted to sugar!) for something sweet. Whether it's a 'healthy' sweet or not. We want to crave stuff that's going to give us life and make us feel 

AWESOME.

As Sarah says, "We don't respond well to 'restrictive thinking'. You're doing this not because you have to, but because it might make you feel better."

I'll be blogging a bit of my journey as I go. Say hello to my breakfast this morning, and my very first ever poached egg! Quite a bit of fun actually.

I can do this!