Mar 2, 2021

🍭 Our Sugar Free February

How do you get a kid to go without sugar for a month?

You invite them on a family whole 30 foods challenge and have a blast trying to make new, delicious meals together!

As a radical unschooling family, Hope, 10, has full food freedom. Meaning, we never force, cajole or pressure her to eat or not eat things. We offer what we have, we indulge her cravings and her father and I lead by example.

Which leads us to January of this year.

I have some health issues (fibroids) and Hope and I were noticing weight gain in the last year. It's not something we focus on at all, weight, but mobility and energy were starting to affect our quality of life so I had been searching for some solutions. I discovered the whole 30 elimination diet while browsing online and it seemed to be able to work within our budget and suit our lifestyle. We're not the kind of family that diets, but when I brought this idea up to Hope and Jaze, they immediately were in, to my surprise. We were all looking for a shift.

So for the month of February, we did not consume: Sugar or Sweetener other than fruit

Grains, Pastas or Breads

Processed Foods

Legumes Alcohol (we don't drink)

Carrageenan, MSG, or Sulfites Baked Goods or Ready Made Snack Foods Dairy (we still consumed a small amount of organic, raw milk) There are a few exceptions that you can read about here and get all the info on how it works.

We did not restrict Hope in her raw milk drinking as it's doing great things for her body (and ours), and since this is a 30 day elimination diet for things that may be unhealthy, we felt comfortable making this exception.

We had a bit of a rough start thinking we'd prepped enough snacks but got caught up on day 3 or 4 and were quite happy by the first week. We ate lots of organic sausage, bacon, chicken and beef and we even found organic shrimp! Hope loved the white fish we tried from Nicholyn Farms, something we're eager to keep on our menu. We now have many more whole snack food options that each of us enjoy like raisins, date puree brownie batter balls, organic cashews, chicken and tuna salad, carrots and guacamole dip, sugar free nice cream and more. Hope tried new foods, liked some, didn't like others, and was totally committed to doing the whole month.

I think what we learned is we have a serious, chemical addiction to sugar and we were replacing what we needed to keep our bodies healthy with it far too often. The break from sugar was necessary to truly see it because of how it affects the brain. We are a quite low income family so it was a challenge to shift all our purchases, but change takes effort and time so it was well worth taking on!

Today we celebrate our accomplishment by having homemade pizza on thin sprouted whole wheat crust, organic sauce, raw cheese and organic beef and date puree brownies. We are going to eat guilt free and feel how our bodies react to our meal, either way. We'll keep adjusting our diet to make our taste buds AND our bodies healthy and happy!

THIS WEEK

We had super bed out and took full advantage of a movie night together. We all love superbed, our double and single mattresses from our bunk bed, laid side by side in our living room. Our apt is only about 500sq ft but we make it work. Hope LOVES who's line is it anyway, a favorite for super bed nights. Hope took some pics of our kitty Tananger, 13, and wanted a pic with her favorite toy, a stuffed ferret named Slinky, in their matching bandanas. I'll be doing a full blog post on this in the future but, full disclosure, Hope declined brushing her hair for a full year. A few weeks ago she wanted to work on it and we're over half done now. She's feeling great and we've all learned lots. To all those that worry you'll have to shave their head if they don't brush? There is Hope!

We got out to the barn, the forest and to the snow fort by our house that Jaze and Hope built together. Hope did lots of artwork, not a day went by without a drawing. Our besties stopped by before our second covid lockdown of the year and we took a shopping trip out to get groceries. There was the latest episode of Wandavision, Pokemon, Minecraft and Hope asked to prank Jaze so there was some freezing of underwear here and there. Our weekly online D&D session with our friends went awesomely and Hope enjoyed playing her character so much she asked Jaze to keep pretending with her after game. We have a borrowed a Ukulele from our local library on which Hope did some practicing, as well as stretching her vocal chords with lots of singing.

Subjects:

Geography, Task Management, Goal Setting, Home Management, Cooking, Team Work, Dramatic Arts, Musical Arts, Science, Math, Language Arts, Creative Thinking, Technology, Work Ethic, Comedy, Socialization, Body Care, Design, Style, Bonding, Respectful Relationships, Community Living, Nutrition, Social Studies, Finances, So Much More...

VIDEO

A clip from this week of Hope demonstrating, "The Leap of Faith".

Check out our FREE RESOURCES section for colouring pages and more!

Much Love Always, Wendy BOOKS, CLOTHING & MORE

About the Author

Wendy Elizabeth Hart - Author, Illustrator, is a radical unschooling, homesteading Mom of 2 amazing kids and wife of more than 10 years to her bff, Jaze. Together with their daughter Hope, 10, they live a life of daily discovery in rural Ontario, Canada and share it with the world to connect with other families in the unschooling community.