Published on December 31, 2024 3:30 AM GMT
I recently tried giving up sweets for two weeks. In early December Iattended a conference,which meant a break from my normal routine. After a few days Irealized this was the longest I'd gone without eating any sweets in2-3 decades. After getting home I decided to go a bit longer to seeif anything interesting happened. Would my focus be better? Bettersleep? Would I feel healthier? Would I stop missing them?
While I started by accident, if I was going to keep doing this Ineeded a system: what counts as a sweet? I decided to use the samesystem we use with the kids:no desserts or other things that are about being sweet. The sweetestthing I was still eating was probably bran flakes for breakfast, at 6gper serving. [1]
I did pretty quickly stop feeling a drive to eat sweet things. Whichwas kind of neat: normally I do feel compelled to eat something sweetafter lunch and again after dinner. But I didn't feel better: themain change I noticed was that I had less energy in the afternoons andmaybe made more mistakes at work. I also think I was a mildly worse Goplayer, though any comparisons here are going to be unreliable sinceI'm just playing one other person (my dad) over and over.
My main sweet consumption is ganache (a couple spoonfuls from a jar),usually after lunch or dinner. Perhaps the fat is helpful here? Ormaybe I'd become dependent on the caffeine in the chocolate? Probablynot, though: I'm guessing the amount I was eating came to ~15mg ofcaffeine, so only 8% to 15% of a typical coffee serving. Claude guessed this was too low to bedistinguishable from placebo, but I haven't looked in the literatureto verify.
When I restarted sweets I noticed pretty quickly that I felt better inthe afternoon, my Go playing was better, and also that I was sleepingslightly better. [2] I didn't notice any downsides. I suspect some ofthis pattern is that most sweets I eat (primarily ganache, followed byother products high in cream) have a pretty high ratio of fat tosugar? I do know that when I eat mostly-sugar sweets I don'tfeel great afterwards.
One place where I thought I might notice a change was weight, but that's a bitconfusing. I lost ~3%, mostly after restartingsweets. I don't know what to make of this; it's the oppositedirection of what I'd expect to see. But 3% is also pretty small, soI'm not going to read much into this.
My main takeaway here is that the way I've been eating is fine, andI'm not planning to change anything other than bringing some with menext time I travel to a conference.
[1] This is higher than would be ideal. I should see if I can find alower-sugar brand.
[2] Though still not great: since having kids (or just getting older)I haven't been able to sleep anywhere near as well as I could in mymid 20s and younger, even though my kids don't wake me up in the nightanymore. Mainly I wake up ~1hr before my body feels like it's hadenough sleep. It's nice to have the extra time, but I'd rather havethe sleep.
Comment via: facebook, mastodon, bluesky
Discuss
