So this first week has been one of easing into the whole “no more sugar” idea.

We spent last Sunday planning – rejigging the weekly shopping list and planning everyday’s meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner). We also included a 6am wake-up to exercise for 20 minutes Monday to Thursday.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain. I live with my sister, her husband and my two precious nephews (aged 7 and 4).

All the adults work as well as run around after our “full-on and fabulous” little boys. They eat different meals from us and dinner is pretty early in the evening. The adults often feel the need to grab comfort snacks later in the evening! We either eat with them, everyone at the table for quality family time over a meal or sometimes we will eat later when they are in bed.

Anyway, suffice to say managing 5 people’s meals in this household requires some planning, especially when we are trying to break some old, bad habits.

So, step one was plan, plan and plan some more, right down to snacks. Sarah’s book really helped us here. This week we tried the Chia Puddings (page 80), the Coco-Nutty Granola (page 76) and the Potato Skins (page 152). All of these we will definitely use again – delicious, filling and comforting.

My favourite meal this week was my sister’s adaptation of a Dr Libby Weaver recipe from her book Real Food Kitchen – the roast vege salad (page 201). This is a great combination of kumara, carrot, capsicum, mushrooms, garlic, red onion, eggplant, zucchini and sausage meat all roasted in coconut oil with fresh thyme, flat leaf parsley, salt and pepper. When cooked toss through fresh baby spinach leafs, chopped up almonds and a little apple cider vinegar. Delicious! And that is what I’m having for lunch tomorrow. We have planned most dinners that way, with leftovers for lunch the next day.
When we looked at Sarah’s “rules” for week one we found that we were doing most of this already, or rather we knew we SHOULD be doing all this already. For us it was a week commitment to stay away from sugary, fizzy drinks, chocolates, lollies, baked goodies, as much processed food as possible and no high fructose fruit.

Discussing how we feel after this first week, nothing earth shattering to report. We definitely craved our comforts – mine being chocolate and ice cream, my sister’s being dried fruits and Coca Cola. But because we weren’t calorie counting or depriving ourselves we found there were other goodies to snack on. Cheese after dinner instead of dessert, lots of tea and popcorn are some examples.

It was tough getting up in the morning to workout even just to stumble down to the lounge, stick in a DVD, push play and jig around for a bit. However, we think on the whole we do feel better for it. So same again next week.

We have both struggled with feeling unwell this week but we are not sure we can put that down to detoxing? Being both of us quite hormonal at present and my sister with a streaming cold has meant we found it hard to figure out what was making us feel a bit blah.

Right, so week two begins. Our planning is complete, the shopping done. I’m about to head into the kitchen to try making a few snacks for the week ahead.

Our mantra this week is “replace sugar with fat”….. Let’s see how that turns out.