Guest blog by Tom.
My partner Charlotte challenged me to take part in Cancer Research UK’s “Sugar Free February” in honour of my Grandmother, Betty Hunn. Betty, or Granny as she is known to my family, was diagnosed with breast cancer in December 2015. She had her first operation January 2016 and her second operation March 2016 – Since then she has had all good news and is doing very well. Charlotte knew full well that this would be a massive undertaking for me as I have quite a big sweet tooth and I am easily tempted by sweet things.
They say that everyone knows someone with cancer or knows someone who has had cancer, or knows someone who has sadly passed because of it. For me this wasn’t true; I didn’t have any connection to cancer, until Granny. I now have a much better respect for those going through it and for those who are supporting them, so this seemed like a brilliant way for me to help raise some money for such a worthy charity who have saved so many lives through critical research.
The challenge was simple; don’t eat sweet treats. This included chocolate, sweets, cakes, donuts, biscuits and ice cream. The challenge extended into drinks too. No hot chocolate obviously. I couldn’t have fizzy drinks either since they are full of the white stuff. I guess I could have had “coke zero” since it has no sugar content, but I thought that since I’m cutting out most fizzy drinks, I may as well do all of them. I even cut out squash to increase the challenge for myself.
At the start of the challenge I weighed 69 kilograms (10 stone 12 pounds for the imperial fans) and at the end of the task I was just over 67 kilograms, so a nice healthy difference of nearly 2 kilograms. Looking at food packaging for sugar content soon makes you aware of what you are putting into your body.
The first day was easy, I barely noticed any difference. In fact, week 1 was quite normal, with not a lot seeming to change in my day to day life. Week 2 is when I started to realise I couldn’t have sugar, things were not helped by my kids – They have a shelf in a cupboard filled with treats and every now and then I would be the one to get them out, as I hand over a small bag of Haribo, I found myself thinking “I could just sneak one, and nobody would even know”. I did manage to restrain myself, this happened quite frequently during February. By week 3 I was finding myself dreaming of sweets and chocolate in my sleep and by week 4 I was counting down the days until I could indulge again. The main thing I was craving the most throughout the whole event was some Cadbury’s chocolate.
It gave me great pleasure to announce the £148.62 raised through donations made by my family, staff and in-store customers – Thank you everybody!
