Month 9: No Sugar

With April in the books it's time to begin another challenge, and for this month we've decided to try out what we expect to be the toughest one on the list: No added sugar for 30 days

(For those interested in our compiled rankings of beers from April's challenge, they will be published shortly. Turns out drinking half a beer a day is more of a challenge than we initially thought, we're both pretty tired of beer)

We first became inspired to try out this idea after having dinner with some family friends and hearing about their own month long experience forgoing all* sugar and starches. Inspiration began creeping in as the raving began. Some benefits included:

• Better sleep at night
• Few hunger cravings
• Improved mood
• Sustained energy throughout the day
• Weight loss (duh)
• One of them even went from taking several ibuprofen every day for joint and muscle pain to needing zero because the pain was gone! 

*we did hear about at least one entire pizza binge, no biggie

Obviously due to this month's challenge selection, we were inspired, therefore we are denying ourselves all forms of added/artificial sugar this month (we'll still eat fruit, etc. but nothing that has "sugar" as an ingredient). We learned last month these challenges are a lot more fun when others participate, so if you'd like to participate on any level let us know! (chances are you've already had sugar in the month of May, lucky for you May has 31 days in it, so it's not too late to get in those 30 days without sugar)

The real challenge is having day 31 not look like this:

Image: Chris van Dyck via Flickr