Midyear Reset: One Month Sugar Detox

As far as detoxes go, this one in this article featuring Dr. Robert Lustig seems reasonable and challenging, but not TOO hard. It’s designed to help you break up with sugar. You basically do a low carb diet for the first three days, then slowly add in other stuff.

Wes read Dr. Lustig’s book, Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease a while back and became convinced of the toxic impact of all the added sugar in our diet. We’ve also had friends with some pretty tricky autoimmune issues who have been vastly helped as they’ve eliminated added sugar.

But sugar is everywhere and very hard to avoid. Also, it tastes really good.

That’s where intentionality and structure can be really helpful.

The first three days of the detox are fairly simple:

Days 1- 3: no added sugars — but also no fruits, no starchy vegetables (such as corn, peas, sweet potatoes and butternut squash), no dairy, no grains and no alcohol. No artificial sweeteners.

“For example, breakfast can include three eggs, any style; lunch can include up to 6 ounces of poultry, fish or tofu and a green salad, and dinner is basically a larger version of lunch, though steamed vegetables such as broccoli, kale and spinach can be eaten in place of salad. Snacks include an ounce of nuts and sliced peppers with hummus. Beverages include water, unsweetened tea and black coffee.”

For many of you, a sugar detox does not make sense right now. You are on vacation. You are on a pilgrimage. But for the rest of us, why not a midyear health reset? Who wants to do this with me?

Detox starts on July 1.

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By the way, the photo is of some almonds on my desk at work. I’m planning to eat more than that on this detox.