Today, April 23rd, was the start of a month long chal­lenge to go with­out any added sugar (nat­ural or processed) inspired by The Gra­cious Pantry!

I just thought this was such a great idea! See the post that inspired me here! 

So I’m re-posing the chal­lenge, the Cause Fit­ness way, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons (some of which are the same rea­sons TGP started the challenge):

1. Sugar is a poi­son (con­tributes to numer­ous dis­eases, pre­ma­ture aging, etc):
2. In case you missed this, find more info here, in my post for Q&A Tues­day: Is Sugar Bad for Me?
3. Sugar is sneaky (it’s in every­thing): Processed foods, fla­vored drinks, fruit, etc.
4. Arti­fi­cial sug­ars ‘reward’ your sweet crav­ing the same way real sug­ars do too, but with engi­neered taste (chemicals).

No added sugar of any kind, or foods that con­tain any added sug­ars (nat­ural or not) sim­ple rules as fol­lows (I mod­i­fied some of the orig­i­nal rules to fit the Cause Fit­ness Nutri­tion 101 philosophies):

• ELIMINATE ALL ADDED SUGAR: This includes nat­ural sug­ars (honey, molasses, maple syrup, agave, etc., in other words, any­thing sweet tast­ing that isn’t fruit). This also includes any and all arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers. Note: There will be nat­u­rally occur­ring sug­ars in foods like milk and yogurt as well as in starchy carbs (yams, for exam­ple) and fruit. If you’re eat­ing for opti­mal health, you’re already avoid­ing dairy, and fruit, while still sugar, is okay in small amounts (ide­ally, timed opti­mally first thing in the morn­ing or imme­di­ately post work­out when your body can use it most read­ily). That said, when you read a nutri­tion label, read list of ingre­di­ents rather than obsess­ing about the per­cent­age of sugar  or grams of sugar per serving.
• Take a qual­ity Multivitamin/mineral daily. When you elim­i­nate large por­tions of any habit­ual diet, nutri­ents lost becomes a con­cern. Granted, when remov­ing sugar, it’s not that great a con­cern as there is very lit­tle nutri­ent value in sugar itself, or any processed/packaged food or drink that con­tains added sugar. But this is a nec­es­sary habit to keep (or start) regardless.
• Drink plenty of fresh water daily to flush tox­ins. Sugar is a toxin. Help detox your body by drink­ing a min­i­mum of 8–12 glasses of water daily. I rec­om­mend ~3L or approx­i­mately 96 oz of water as a daily goal.

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In health, and God bless,

Rachel Eliz­a­beth