Over the last couple of years, I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with diet. I’ve done things such as near elimination of refined sugars and reducing my intake of carbohydrates to see what effects it has. I’ve also added intermittent fasting where I go between 12-16 hours, and sometimes longer, between dinner and my first meal of the day.

One item that intrigued me was fasting. A good friend had done 48-hour fasts and talked about the benefits that it offered. 48 hours seemed like a long time to go without eating as I had never gone much beyond a day between meals. After doing some research, and watching an interesting documentary, The Science of Fasting (available on Amazon Prime), I decided to give it a shot. Here’s my experience, what I learned, and whether it is something I’ll attempt again.

Before reading further, be aware that this is not medical advice by any stretch of the imagination. I am not a doctor nor am I a nutritionist. This is just a recounting of my experience and what I learned that should be used purely for your informational purposes.

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I’ve found that the best way to stay on track with my fitness and diet routines is to set goals, and then to state them publicly. Having measurable goals keeps me focused, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with setting up a bit of accountability to go along with them.

In 2018, I had three primary goals – working out, walking, and diet. Three priorities is a good number and about the most I can focus on at one time.

For the most part, the year went really well. Here’s a look back at the year that was, and a look forward at the goals for 2019.

Just like years past, I had three primary fitness goals for 2017 around working out, activity, and diet. 2017 didn’t go quite as I would have liked due to a number of planned and unplanned circumstances. There was travel for work, an extended vacation, and the gym I frequent closed 3 weeks for remodeling. The loss of my furry companion in November didn’t help either.

I’m not suggesting or saying that 2017 was a disaster, it just wasn’t as good as 2016. For 2018, I’m going to make a few minor adjustments, set a couple of stretch goals, and make it happen!

Let’s take a look at 2017, and then set the goals for this year.

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Over the past couple of years, I’ve come to believe that refined sugars are one of the worst things we can put into our bodies. When you investigate the nutritional value of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and other sweeteners, you find that it’s zero, if not negative. These sweeteners are used to enhance food flavor and are highly addictive. They also create resistance to hunger suppressing hormones in the body resulting in the never-ending hunger cycles and insatiable pantry raids almost all of us have experienced. Food companies understand the flavor enhancement and addictive nature of the substance and employ food chemists to optimize the level of added sugars. Their job is to determine the right amount of sweetener to add that enhances flavor but doesn’t make it too sweet for our tastes. If you don’t believe it, just look at the amount of sugar per serving in something as benign as tomato sauce. Then start looking at nearly every processed or packaged food. If you’re eating it from a box or a bag, there’s a very high probability that some sweetener has been added to it.

With this in mind, about 18 months ago I decided it was to take a stand against sugar. I didn’t eliminate all sugar, but I significantly cut back on how much sugar I consumed on a daily basis. I cut out my morning packaged orange juice routine, starting making homemade tomato sauce (which tastes way better than what you get out of a jar), and became aware of the sugar content of everything I was eating. When you start reading labels, you’re floored by how many things have sugar in them. Even things you would never suspect contain sugar, such as a box of whole grain crackers, have some type of sweetener added.

What inspired me to run this experiment? I wanted to see if it would have any affect on my weight. It’s not that I was overweight, but I felt like I could afford to lose 5-10 pounds to get to a more optimal weight for my body type. I also wanted to see how it would affect my blood test results. Luckily, I decided to start having blood tests done annually when I turned 40, so I had six years of results to compare against.

Here are the results from 18 months of limited sugar, and what’s next.

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