Gallery of the I Quit Sugar 8 Week Program: Winter and Spring 2015

Just photos of the food (because isn’t the food what it’s all about!?) from the 2015 Winter and Spring rounds of the I Quit Sugar 8 Week Program. For more information on my experience of the program, click here. Continue reading →

#1 – A Simplicious Challenge: Cooking 306 Recipes

I love cookbooks. I own nearly 80 of them (including around 25 eBooks) – and I would own a lot more if I gave into every whim and desire I had to buy them. I also have a large collection of food magazines. But despite my fondness, or perhaps because of it, I have a bad habit of cooking only a handful of recipes from each book – returning to the same, familiar and appealing ones, while ignoring the recipes I think I won’t like.

Because of this, I’ve always fancied the idea of doing a Julie and Julia style challenge: to deliberately cook every single recipe in a cookbook. If ever a book was worthy of this challenge, I reckon Simplicious by Sarah Wilson is the one, with a whopping 306 recipes.

As soon I as started flicking through this book, the idea of doing this challenge started to grow on me. I was a bit worried I would do my usual: go straight to the gummy lollies and chocolate cardamom tarts, and never look back to the veggie-packed salads and meaty stews. Ultimately though, it wasn’t just the appealing recipes that encouraged me to consider this challenge. Continue reading →

#5: Review of the I Quit Sugar 8 Week Program (Jan – March 2015)

This is a review of my second round of the I Quit Sugar 8 Week Program, which I completed between January and March this year. I did the program again to ‘reset’ my body in the new year, and to have two months of nutritious recipes laid out for me. My Mum did the program for the first time, so we did many of our Sunday cook-ups together and had fun comparing our experiences of the meals.

I didn’t do the program to ‘quit sugar’ again, as I had continued living a low-fructose lifestyle since first completing the program in July last year. However, doing it again allowed me to realise how much easier it has become to live a low-sugar life, and to enjoy other aspects of the program that I was less focused on last time, while in the midst of sugar cravings: learning new ways to cook, cutting down on caffeine – a surprising outcome – and thinking about new ways to use leftovers. I realised too, that I really do feel my best during the program, when I am planning and eating nutrient-dense meals with loads of vegetables, and making food a priority, instead of letting it slide in favour of all the other things that need to get done. Continue reading →