It seems that a few of you have strayed from the challenge already and some of you forsee that you may stray in the near future.
Well, you all put your name down to give up sugar for the month, not just when it suits you, so there must be a punishment for every deviation from the plan.
I am not going to enforce this on you, I will just hope that I can guilt you into enforcing on yourself. Being accountable to others is an awesome way to stay focussed, but a self inflicted puishment is another great way to back yourself up.
Every time you eat or drink something that is not allowed, I want you to do burpees.
Starting from today, your first indescretion shall recieve 5 burpees. Every subsequent deviation from the challenge you should double your amount of burpees.
So, your second indescretion shall recieve 10 burpees. Your third is 20 burpees and so on. If you manage to stray 5 times, you will be doing 80 burpees.
Now I know that you have to be disciplined enough to inflict these burpees on yourselves, but here is the main rule.
Each item you eat or drink something wrong is 1 indescretion. So don’t think oh well, I have to do burpees for this, I may as well drink 5 beers and make the most of it. NO, that would be 5 mistakes right there and that would be 5 + 10 + 20 + 40 + 80 burpees. Get it!
I am doing this for your own good.
To be honest with you, I am so proud of how well you have done so far, but it is only the first week and I want you to succeed for the entire month.
By the end of this month, hopefully your tastebuds will have changed and you will no longer want sugar in your caffeine, you will be out of the habit of a sweet after dinner and you will have an understanding of what a healthy balanced meal consists of and tatses like.
Please feel free to send me any photos of your burpees if they have to take place or even post them on the facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=285890880354

MOST IMPORTANTLY, don’t let this discourage you from documenting your mistakes for others to see. I want you all to be honest with yourself and others. Your honesty and diligence is more important than the burpees, but hey.. you will burn off some of the sugar during the burpees!!!

Good luck:)

Ok, so it has been a shaky start to the month for a few of you, but all in all, you are doing great!

Tough call to start 2 days before Melbourne cup, but I am absolutely positive that those of you who did drink and eat junk, certainly ate and drank much less than you would have otherwise. So that, to me is a success.

I am also very happy to say that 2 people who are not even on the challenge have said to me that they now realise how much sugar they are consuming and are actively cutting down. Again, that is a success story to me.

Good luck with the rest of the week and the weekend:)

Here’s a few things that work for me on the go or at work. The main thing is to be prepared. Don’t rely on takeaway. Not only is it expensive, it is low in nutritional value and sometimes when you get to a food court, the big mac can smell better than the chicken salad sandwich, which means if you are not disciplined, you could be tucking into a big mac more often than not.

Poached eggs at work – I put boiling water into a cereal bowl, crack in 2 eggs and put in the microwave for 1min 15 seconds. Drain off the water and eat.

Protein shake bircher muesli – I mix up a berry protein shake and add my serving of rolled oats. Leave over night and drink it down on the way to work.

Sandwiches for lunch – I always keep cheese in the fridge at work. I bring a whole tomato and cucumber from home. I poach a whole chicken and pull of the meat and use for sandwiches. You could make this at home and bring it in, but I make it on the spot to keep it fresh.

poached chicken salad sandwich

Have you got any tips you’d like to share?

I grew up in a household that always ate healthy food. I was always encouraged to eat lots of fruit during the day, dinner would always be salad or vegetables sometimes with meat, sometimes without. We always drank filtered water. Cereals like cocopops would be on birthdays or Christmas. I would have weetbix or cornflakes. Bread was always wholemeal. Mc Donalds was once every couple of months at best. KFC was once a year at best.

But, every night after dinner we would tuck into a dessert of some kind. I would eat ice lollies and ice creams during the day. Mum would always bring home a cake of some sort when she went shopping. There was always some sort of biscuits in the cupboard and remember those weetbix and cornflakes I ate every morning, they were dredged in sugar to give them flavour.

So you can see there is this idea that is common in many families that sugar can form part of a healthy diet and it’s not bad for you. So long as you eat your veggies, you can eat your chocolate cake.

I don’t regret for one minute being brought up to eat healthy food, but I had developed these habits around sugar hits and those sort of habits are hard to break.

Up until 3 years ago, I still ate sweets during the day and night. A nice healthy tuna and salad sandwich finished off with a cupcake. I felt I had deserved it for having such a healthy lunch. I would be preparing stir fried chicken and veg for dinner whilst Hannah was baking the cookies for after.

About 4 years ago, I decided that based on advice from nutritionist friends, I would limit my sweets to after dinner at night. This was a massive shift and also very beneficial. It’s like a smoker going from a pack a day to 5 smokes a day.

About 3 years ago, I decided to only eat sweets on weekends. Again a massive improvement. I was listening to a guy named Paul Chek who at the time was taking the fitness industry by storm. He said sugar is poison in the body and whilst I agreed to some degree, I didn’t bother to do my own research, I just decided to cut back a bit.

Over the years, I have heard enough to make me want to stop eating sugar all together. I have done my research and I know sugar is very bad for you and it makes you fat, but in all honesty I made the decision to eliminate as much sugar from my diet as possible when I completed my CrossFit cert in May 2009. I was in a room with guys and girls who made it a priority to not eat sugar and they spoke a lot about the ill effects sugar has on the body. They were fit, healthy and ripped. I wasn’t fat by any means, but I knew I could rip up a bit and improve my health, so I made a vow not to eat sugar for as long as I could. This was a big call for me. People would ask me if I was never going to eat sugar again. I told them I would love to say yes, but realistically that is not true. I am going to not eat sugar for as long as possible. then I will eat it as little as possible.

I went for 2 months with no sugar. Everytime I wanted some sugar I thought of those guys and what they spoke about and I thought about their eating habits. It actually wasn’t hard. The problem is that when you eat sugar you want more, so if you can get through the first week, you should be fine. I don’t kid myself with Christmas around the corner, Hannah and I have a tradition of making rocky road for our friends and family and a ginger bread house for Christmas day, but I can tell you I am going no sugar until nearly Christmas time and then back on the wagon straight after New year and whilst that is not perfect 365 days a year, it is realistic and a huge improvement.

I don’t have a problem with lashing out on special occasions, the main thing is to determine what is a real special occasion – your birthday or anniversary or a holiday you have been planning for months OR is it just Friday night out with friends or a hard day at work or Sunday friends come over. I could probably create a so called “special occasion” weekly if I had to in order to justify my weakness. But I would rather be fit and healthy.

My reasons for not eating sugar are not weight related at all, they are health related. So if I can do it and I don’t need to lose fat, it is even more important for you if you need to lose bodyfat.

If you’ve got anything you’d like to share, please feel free to write it in the comments.

I am just going to tell you guys what I take and why I take it.

I feel great all the time and I rarely get sick. I am a normal weight and I don’t do anything extreme. I exercise most days at a high intensity. I eat healthy and try to minimise sugar and I take these 4 supplements regularly.

1) Juice Plus: Fruit and vegetable capsules. I don’t care how much fruit and veg you or I eat, you need more. We get all of our vitamins and minerals from fruit and veg and this is how we build strong immune systems to fight against disease and illness.

Multivitamins are a waste of money, they are manufactued in a factory and you pee them out. You shouldn’t be trying to isolate any particular vitamins and feed them to your body. Juice plus is a whole food supplement, meaning it is 16 fruits and vegetables dehydrated and stuck into a gelatine capsule without the sugar.

Where to get it – Contact me and I will get it from my nutritionist for you. It’s not cheap, but it’s cheaper than a coffee a day and so worth every cent.

When to take it – Daily

2) Protein powder: Optimum nutrition – Natural 100% whey protein, strawberry or vanilla flavour. The chocolate is gross.

Many of us don’t get enough protein in our diets, so a protein power can be a great option. It also makes for a low calorie, low carbohydrate snack. It is quick and easy to prepare if you don;t have time to prepare a snack at work.

Most protein powders are full of so many chemicals and weird ingredients, this is the most natural one I have found on the market. In fact it’s all natural.

Where to get it – I buy it from a website called vitaminking.com. It is a lot cheaper than the shops and they send it to your door for $5 http://www.vitaminking.com.au/100-natural-whey-protein-by-optimum.html

When to take it – Up to your indiviual needs.

3) Fish oil capsules: Any reputable brand should be ok. Fish oil is great for brain function, joint function and maintaining healthy cholesterol levels and fighting against coronary heart disease.

Where to get it – Your local supermarket or health food store. You can get bulk containers which makes it fairly cheap.

When to take it - Daily

4) Psylium husk: This is just fibre. Your body won’t digest it, it will absorb water and pass through your colon and pick up lots of crap on it’s way out the other end. Great for cleaning out your colon and fighting against bowel cancer. 

Where to get it – Your local supermarket or health food store. Buy a large bag for about $6 which will last for ages.

When to take it – 1 teaspoon mixed in a glass of water daily for the first couple of weeks. By then you should be somewhat cleaned out, so 2 – 3 times a week should be fine from then on. If you aren’t noticing much difference when you go to the toilet, try a tablespoon instead.

There you have it, other than that, eat plenty of veggies and salad and lean protein, some fruit, nuts and grains. Drink plenty of filtered water, move daily and sleep well.

This is an example of what you could eat and still be considerably reducing your sugar intake. You don’t have to follow it to the letter, but it can help if you are stuck for things to eat.

This food plan is totally managable. There is nothing drastic on there, just healthy eating.
What you will notice is the lack of:
*So called healthy breakfast cereals
*Bread several times a day
*Various bread products – only mutligrain types are allowed, soy linseed is the best.
*High calorie no nutrient spread for bread
*Lots of pasta and rice dishes. Any pasta meal should be a large salad with a small pasta. Generally pasta is the main item with a small salad on the side, but not here!
*Biscuits or muffin for morning/afternoon tea.
*Fruit on it’s own. Should be with nuts or protein shake.
*Dessert – it is only a habit. Brush your teeth after dinner.
*High sugar yogurts. If you can find one that has less than 10g sugar per 100g yogurt, then you can eat it. About 100 – 150g is a fair portion size.

Note:
All meats should be lean, I do not want you to increase your saturated fat intake.
Olive oil dressings on salads are best.
Getting good fats from Olive/flaxseed oils, nuts and fish are great.

This is where you will note your mistakes. Enter all blunders in the comments on this Blog. Thanks.

Here are the participants for NOSUGARVEMBER. 

On day 1 we have 17 starters. Well done guys and girls.

I am updating now on day 7 and we have 20 people. Awesome!

Cassandra K
Christie C
Darrin P
Genevieve S
Jane S
Jessie K
Jo J
Jovana P
Kelly P
Kirsty D
Kristin R
Leonie
Louise W
Luke C
Matt B
Monika P
Peta S
Rachel N
Sheena C
Tori E

It is not too late to put your name down. It is much easier to stick to something if you are accountable to others for your actions.

Feel free to join any time this month, the earlier the better, but I would never stop anyone from taking action to improve their health.

Well, it’s day 1 of nosugarvember. Good luck to everyone who has undertaken the challenge. You will see that giving up sugar is not that hard and it will make you feel great!

I will post a 7 day food plan, supplements that I take, some recipes I make and my sugar story, so stay tuned…

Good luck everyone and don’t forget, any stuff up, be it big or small, it goes on the blog as comments on the NOSUGARVEMBER stuff ups page. Also, if you are on the facebook group, write it up there too. If you are not, here is the link to join. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=285890880354

Good luck again and remember, when you are craving something sweet, it is all in your head, find a distraction and you will soon forget about the craving.

With summer fast approaching, everybody starts to panic about getting their winter bodies out. Most of us had grand intentions over the past few months of getting in great shape and some of us have. Unfortunately though many of us have slipped up far too aften and the results we should have achieved didn’t come to fruition.

Add to this, the party season approaching in December and we have a recipe for 1 piece costumes at the beach and ankle length skirts for the girls. Guys, that 6 pack you dreamed of sporting at the beach this year looks more like a keg than a 6 pack.

But, there is hope. Make November your best month to date!

Join the No sugar challenge!

Here’s the rules:

All rules apply for the entire month of November. 

When you mess up, which I am sure you will, at least once. You have to write down what you did on the blog for everyone to see. This alone will help to keep you on track. There is nothing like being accountable to keep you on track, let alone being accountable to everyone in the challenge!

No refined sugar at all.

No sugar in tea or coffee.

No artificial sweeteners either! 

No cakes, chocolates, lollies, soft drinks etc

No bottled fruit juice

No alcohol

No dried fruit

Only 2 serves of fruit per day

No sweetened yogurt

No white potato

Only mulitgrain bread if you must have bread

Only basmati rice if you must have rice

Pasta no more than twice a week

If you follow this, you are sure to trim away the bodyfat. I don’t like to make outrageous comments, but I am positive if you follow these rules, you will get leaner!

It really doesn’t take that long to change your tastebuds and reduce the amount of sugar in your diet. Try it for 30 days and see how you feel. Other than being thinner and healthier, I bet you won’t crave it as much either!

If you are keen to join the challenge, enter your name in the comments and any other info you might like to add and then consider yourself part of the challenge.

I hope by the 31st October we have a large list of names to join the challenge.