[spoiler title=’Video Transcript’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’] in order to make intermittent fasting easier I cut out sugary drinks in today’s video I’m gonna talk about why and how that worked so intermittent fasting when you are in your fasting window sugary drinks are a definite no-no like you can’t do that because it raises your blood sugar and basically it breaks the fast so I knew I couldn’t have sugary drinks during that time but my thought process was I really want to have different drinks besides just water during my fasting time I knew that if I could have a little bit of variety that would help me to stick with it for the long term so the big problem was is I loved sugary drinks the the sweeter the better in my opinion so like for example in my sweet tea it was a cup and a half of sugar for a gallon which is basically as much sugar as there is in soda so there was that I drank sugar in my coffee like a tablespoon in a cup of coffee and I loved cokes so I knew that I needed to change that but the question was like how do you do it and I had done it in the past like I would I would say well I’m not just I’m just gonna not have cokes or I’m gonna not have sweet tea I’m just gonna drink water well that gets boring after a while and I didn’t want to do artificial sweeteners the big reason for that was I had read some research that basically said you know it makes you hungrier and I certainly noticed that with my own experience if I drink a diet coke with like say you know a fast food meal I’m hungrier at the end of the meal and same thing with sweetened drinks too I noticed I tended to eat more when I had you know sweet tea with my meal so I thought okay if I can just eliminate the sugar maybe that will help so this time I was determined okay when I do this I want to do it right so that it’s a permanent change it’s not just a temporary thing I wanted to really learn how to like these drinks and so that’s the attitude I had I’m gonna learn how to like it so the way I learned how to like drinks that aren’t sweet is I just gradually eliminated the sugar and I’m talking slowly too like for example with the tea I started making it instead of a cup and a half of sugar I did it with a cup and a third of sugar and then a cup of sugar and then when I get used to it I would do three quarters of a cup and all the way down like you know down to a half and then it was not very sweet at all and then I thought okay I can cut it out completely same thing with my coffee every time I waited until I was used to it until I really had started to enjoying it to start cutting it even further that gradual process helped me to really start to taste the drink that I was drinking instead of just saying oh that’s not sweet enough you know it was like okay I’m used to this and I’ll you know cut it back and what I noticed was I really do enjoy it now I was one of those people like I hated it when you know if somebody brought me unsweet tea it was just it was disgusting but I found that that’s really all about your expectations if you’re expecting you know something to be sweet when it’s unsweetened it’s gonna taste gross but it’s not that you won’t ever like unsweetened tea so this made intermittent fasting much easier because I was able to have some variety in my day even though I wasn’t consuming any calories that could have unsweetened tea I could have coffee I use half and half which technically has calories in it but it doesn’t have any sugar and for me it still works and I also drink things like La Croix which is not sweetened at all it doesn’t have any artificial sweeteners it’s just a soda that’s not sweetened it’s like a sparkling water with basically just natural flavorings but no sugar no sweeteners at all this again was a gradual process for me I started trying to cut down my sugar my drinks starting in 2015 I think it took me several months to really get to the point where I was enjoying sugar free drinks and that whole process of just weaning myself down again it was gradual so that I could start to really enjoy it every time I went to enjoy it before I cut further so if you’ve eliminated sugar let me know in the comments how did you do it have you in found that you enjoy sugar free drinks or do you miss them thanks for watching be sure to LIKE comment and subscribe down below [/spoiler]
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Video Recap
Technically, you can have sugary drinks during your eating window when you’re doing intermittent fasting, but during the fasting window it’s a definite no-no. I decided to cut out sugary drinks so that I’d learn to like unsweetened drinks, which I could then have during my fasting window, to give my fasting life some variety.
My Key to Success: Baby Steps!
In the past I had temporarily cut out sweet drinks, but I always went back to drinking the sweet stuff. But in 2015 I changed that permanently by slowly weaning myself off of sugar, and then replacing the sweetened version with a non sweetened version that I had learned to truly enjoy:
Instead of sweet tea, unsweetened tea.
Instead of Cokes, La Croix.
Instead of coffee with cream and sugar, coffee with just cream. (And by cream I mean real half and half. Beware that many times that “low fat” half and half has sugar added).
I believe that being able to have this kind of variety really helped me stick with Intermittent Fasting, especially during the early days.