Suddenly, I Quit Sugar is everywhere. Tube ads, articles… maybe I’m just noticing it more because I’m following the programme, but it does seem that it’s the new kid on the food fad block.

I actually didn’t come to it through any of the marketing, but through a very good friend who tried it. I wasn’t immediately convinced, but recognised that I do suffer from poor impulse control and tendencies to binge when around sugary foods – including fruit.

Still, I had questions. For example:

• Isn’t fruit sugar good sugar, as long as you eat the whole fruit? (We all know that thing about fruit juice being high sugar without the fibre, right?)
• Isn’t it magical thinking to claim that quitting sugar will be the answer to various health woes?
• How is it even possible to live without sugar?
• Isn’t it rather difficult for anyone on a restricted income to carry out this kind of diet?

So, I thought the best thing to do was read the book, and once I’d done that I was happy to try the programme. Sarah Wilson’s story is necessarily personal, but she does draw on actual research to make her case – and certainly there is something disturbing about the massive volumes of sugar we consume on a daily basis. I also have PCOS, which goes hand in hand with insulin resistance, and a close relative with Type II diabetes. So, no matter what, I needed to reduce my sugar intake, and if starting out by going (more or less) cold turkey on fructose – the only kind of sugar Wilson really sets her sights on – was the way to do it, then I was going to give it a try.

I’m now into my fifth week of an eight week programme, and in that time I’ve had no chocolate, cake, biscuits, table sugar, added-sugar drinks or sweetened processed foods. I’ve had very limited fruit intake, but substantially larger vegetable intake (and I was no salad-avoider before this). Once in a while I have looked lingeringly on a dessert and sometimes I’ve overdosed on fat instead (hellloooo, cheese!), but mostly I’ve kept to an unprocessed, whole food heavy diet. And, to be honest, it’s not been that difficult – once you step off the sugar rollercoaster, it does become easier to resist it.

Here’s what I’ve found so far:

• The book and programme themselves are actually very non-specific. Apart from stating things to avoid (and the real cold turkey phase doesn’t hit until about week 3), there are no meal plans. There’s no insistence on what you should eat, but shedloads of recipes that could help. I feel much closer to following a Health at Every Size type approach, because I’m choosing my food mainly based on what tastes good and appeals to me.
• Some of the suggestions I have simply ignored. I don’t judge anyone who wants to follow Wilson’s advice to beat sugar cravings with a spoonful of coconut oil straight from the jar, but I can’t say I find any delight in the thought of downing something the consistency of petroleum jelly. I like some coconut milk based meals but I’m not that big a fan, so I’ve had to adapt. I simply cannot stomach porridge made with 125ml of coconut milk and use less than half of that per bowl of pumpkin porridge, upping the pumpkin content instead. It means I’m full for a bit less long, but I actually couldn’t finish the first bowl when I made it to the recipe. I also leave off the toasted coconut flakes – too much!
• There are times when the science gets woolly and that annoys me and makes me question the overall methodology; while it’s true that there might well be some physical symptoms that reflect the adjustment from one diet to another (I’ve experienced some myself), suggesting that this is ‘toxins leaving the body’ sounds, frankly, a bit woo for my liking. On one occasion where I had a meal out and likely ate some sugary sauces, I did find my digestive system reacting negatively.
• I have lost some weight, presumably because when you replace sugar with fats you feel full faster and therefore eat less overall. Out of curiosity, I’ve been on and off tracking what I ate, and my caloric intake is definitely lower than usual even though I’ve been making no effort to restrict it, or even looking at how many calories anything contains.
• Over time, sugary foods start to look less appealing. Some restaurant desserts were harder to resist because they’re so beautifully made and really nice chocolate and / or ice cream will probably never stop being appealing, at least to me. But when you’ve committed to low sugar, breaking that promise to yourself means you feel like it had better be worth it – and be the best confection you can get your hands on.
• It IS expensive – the fact that I reference unprocessed whole foods and restaurant meals should indicate that. I reject the term ‘clean eating’ on several counts; firstly, when a phrase means something different to each person who uses it, it means nothing to anyone, and secondly the implication that anyone not eating like me is ‘dirty’ is pretty obnoxious. There are times when this programme seems as exclusive as so-called ‘clean eating’. No, it’s not impossible to follow on a lower budget, and the slow cooker book in particular will help with batch cooking and family meals. Still, it would be a lot more effort – effort I can’t imagine it would always be a priority to make. So I recognise that to be able to carry this out is a pretty privileged activity.

I still don’t have the answers to all my questions. I’m now more or less convinced that fruit intake is fine provided it’s kept to two small servings per day, but that fructose in general does have strange body effects (I’ve always wondered, for example, why bananas are supposed to be filling when they make me ravenously hungry, and the high fructose content does explain that). I recognise that yes, it is tricky to do this on a restricted income but no, it’s not impossible to keep sugar intake to a reasonable level all other things being equal. The jury is still very much out on the health conditions; while diet clearly can impact, and help prevent, various conditions, I think it’s unquestionably risky to claim that giving up or eating a particular foodstuff is going to be the Solution To All Health Woes. So I choose to continue taking that particular claim with a large pinch of salt.

It will be interesting to see what happens after the eight weeks, and whether the habit really is broken for life – particularly as Wilson does advocate testing yourself afterwards by trying out sugary foods. I can but report back in a few weeks…