Lise Harwin

On this last day of the EcoChallenge, I thought I'd share two quick reflections.

1. When you don't eat sugar for two weeks, you find other ways to distract yourself. Like doing an epic 1000 piece puzzle all about SUGAR!! I feel like I very responsibly channeled my energy into this project. Check it out for yourself.

P.S. I do feel like I accomplished too much to let it all go with Halloween candy this weekend. I'm going to take a final pledge to try not to eat Halloween candy at all...but if I absolutely can't resist eating one piece of my choice, I'll do it.

2. Letting go of items is always freeing. In the end, I was able to donate about 10 bags of stuff, which felt good. I will be entirely honest and say that I did donate a bit to Buffalo Exchange, which means that I have trade credit to buy more stuff...which admittedly defeats the purpose. But it just gives me a good excuse to start planning for EcoChallenge 2017!

Think not eating sugar is hard? Try doing it surrounded by Halloween candy!

In some ways, it's actually easier to be able to just say no across the board vs. eating a little here and there.

Things that have no sugar and are still delicious: A whole milk latte from Stumptown!

I promised I'd do a post about my second EcoChallenge -- de-cluttering my home. As I mentioned before, I'm trying to follow the basic tenet of Marie Kondo's book, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," which is to look at and hold each item to determine if it sparks joy. If it does, keep it. If it doesn't, let it go.

As someone who almost always shops used vs. new (an EcoChallenge for many!), I'm a sucker for a good deal. And, since there are so many good deals in thrift stores and on Craigslist, my house is well-stocked with stuff.

For this challenge, my goal is to get rid of one (or more) items each day, resulting in a solid Goodwill run to GIVE, not get. So far I have about three bags of donations going -- we'll see what I get to by the end of the challenge!

Purging underway!

Day 1 EcoChallenge no sugar Cafe Yumm bowl!

I'll be entirely honest -- I've done no sugar before. And, just to be clear, "no sugar" in my case means no organic cane sugar, no brown rice syrup, no honey, no agave, no anything else that remotely resembles sugar on a food label.

It all started when I read Eve Schaub's memoir, "A Year of No Sugar." I've always know that sweets are my Achilles heel, so I figured I'd give it a try. No set timeline, but using her basic rules: None of the things listed above; dextrose ok; a "special treat" once a month (to accommodate birthdays and whatnot); and one low sugar exception which, in Eve's case, this was wine.

I'm with Eve on this one -- for the purposes of this challenge, I won't be drinking hard alcohol, but will continue to have a limited amount of red wine.

Some things I discovered last time that will be helpful to me this time around and may be helpful to anyone else picking this challenge:

That's about it for food with labels. Everything else was fresh veggies, lots of fruit, protein, dairy, etc... Lots of spices and even some no sugar spice blends. There are spaghetti sauces out there with no sugar if you read labels. Polenta is great. The list goes on.

Basically, once you start reading labels, you figure out what doesn't have added sugar and you buy that. And your life adjusts accordingly. It's NOT THAT HARD.

Why do this again if I'm such an expert? Because, as should be no surprise, slacking happens. In the last few months, I've found myself tempted by treat jars and grabbing the brownie (though maybe only half of it) in the office kitchen. I need to get on track again and this is the perfect excuse.

So that's why I'm taking on the Eve Schaub-inspired "Two Weeks of No Sugar" EcoChallenge. I'll blog later about the Marie Kondo-inspired "Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" EcoChallenge!