Why I’m Giving Up Dessert For The Month Of May

Y’all I’m doing a different mini challenge for every month of 2018? 

Well, it’s May, and that means it’s time to give up sugar. #yikes.

I planned this way back in January, and to be honest, I’ve been dreading it for four months! Ha! That’s how hooked I am on sugar! But for the month of May, I won’t be eating dessert. And I need all the encouragement, please.

This is why I’m giving up sugar for the month of May:

• Because I don’t want to feel like I need to have a certain type of food/drink to find my happiness. (Right now, around 2 pm every day, I feel that way about sugar. I have to get my “sugar fix” to feel happy, haha! Sugar is quite literally addicting, and I’ve known for a while that I need to hit the reset button.
• Because May seemed like a good month to do that; it’s warmer, so smoothies and green tea and fruit and sparkling water are extra refreshing replacements for cookies and hot cocoa and cake and muffins.
• But mostly, because my body is telling me it’s time to do this, and I’m trying to listen to my body and treat it the way it wants to be treated.

I won’t be eating:

• White processed sugar (desserts like cookies, cupcakes, brownies, ice cream, pastries like muffins, scones, donuts, or drinks like soda or hot cocoa.)
• Sugar substitutes (splenda, stevia, aspartame, etc.)
• Desserts that are sweetened with “healthy” sugars (fruit juice, maple syrup, organic sugar.)

I will be eating:

• Whole, raw fruit.
• Dried fruit (raisins, dates.)
• Gluten (not giving up bread this month, although it is a form of sugar.)
• Alcohol (again, it has (fermented) sugar in it, but I also don’t want to be miserable all month.)
• Kombucha (kinda like alcohol in that it has fermented sugar, but I don’t feel addicted to kombucha in the way that I am to chocolate chip cookies.)
  

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Sugar is the one area in my diet where I actually feel a bit out of control at the moment. The difficult thing is that I’m not unhappy with my weight or my energy levels, so making this decision is kinda hard! I could certainly go on eating the way I eat and probably be ok…. But I’d like to be able to treat sugar the same way I treat other things that I love, like pizza, wine, pad thai, pasta, beer, or lattes: I enjoy them, but I don’t need them.

On Thursday (tomorrow) I’m going to be doing a 1-day juice cleanse from Juice Austin. They reached out and asked if they could give me one for free, and I was kinda like, “uh, hello! PERFECT timing for a juice cleanse!” I’ll have info about that all over my instagram account tomorrow!

Have you ever done a sugar cleanse? 

Any tips for me?