I Cut Out Sugar and Processed Foods for 15 Years: My Experience and Results

In this post, I want to share some background on how our tastes have evolved over the years and how we learned to appreciate the subtleties of foods that are highlighted in this site.

Family photo (Oct 2020) of one of the few times we made homemade pasta. From left to right, me, Mary Beth, Michael, Emma, and Matthew.

I read a LinkedIn post recently from Azadeh Gharehgozlou where she described what happens to your body when you stop eating sugar for 14 days. The host of benefits are too many to list, but you can read about them here. Within that post, in the comments section, she shared a common question around “Isn’t fruit sugar too”?

Her post got me thinking about all of the times my mom would try to get me to eat sweet potatoes, peas, and asparagus and I would turn my nose up at it as a kid. I ate some basic vegetables like corn and broccoli, and I was a bit better on fruit with oranges, apples, bananas, and watermelon but beyond that, I was pretty limited.

A vendor at a farmers' market in Kauai making a pure sugar cane drink. This is real unprocessed sugar. Michael actually thought it was a bit too sweet and he wound up mixing it with something else.

Like most kids, I loved cookies and other sweets and that was a good portion of my diet. Don’t get me wrong, I still love chocolate chip cookies, but I don’t eat 5 of them each afternoon like I did when I was a kid.

Although as an adult, especially in my 20’s, I can’t say I was much better. I remember vividly shopping with Mary Beth when we were first married and waiting to buy the Oreo’s when they were buy 1, get 1 free (we would buy 4 as a result of the sale). Each bag of Oreo’s would last about a week between the two of us, but sometimes quicker. We didn’t think anything of it and that buying process lasted well into our 20’s and early 30’s.

Then something changed. Our oldest son, Matthew, at an early age was diagnosed with Aspergers, which now is called High Functioning Autism. Mary Beth dove into learning more about how food could affect his attitude and mood. We actually had an experience a bit earlier when we noticed his mood issues. We typically take an annual trip to Aruba where we have timeshare, and in one of our first trips, Matthew, age 1 at the time, didn’t like the milk we had to buy so we did without it for the week.

We noticed as the week went by, his mood started to improve, and he wasn’t as fussy. When we got back home, we introduced milk again not thinking anything of it, only to quickly see his mood flipped back to being agitated. Being agitated was the norm with him but we never understood why. We then started digging into the milk casein (protein) was the most likely culprit. We immediately cut out milk from his diet and his mood started to improve. Over the years, we had to do this a few different times, typically with foods he loved the most, and unfortunately foods that were seemingly good for him like peanut butter. While he was never allergic to any of the foods, there was definitely a sensitivity to them that caused his mood to fluctuate.

Then another big event happened. A few years after Matthew’s diagnosis, which was a constant battle in and of itself with the mood swings, Mary Beth got diagnosed with a benign tumor in her inner ear canal, called Acoustic Neuroma. There are some very famous people who have had this as well including Mark Ruffalo, the late Pat Summitt, who was the legendary women’s college basketball coach, and Kelly Stafford.

After Mary Beth’s surgery, she had debilitating headaches, and as a result started to cut out things like sugar and soda from her diet (her headaches are well under control now). In a bit of solidarity, I did the same but while she cut out soda cold turkey, my process was a bit slower over time. I used to drink a can of soda every night at dinner (and had been ever since I was a kid). I went from every night to 5 nights a week to 3 nights, to 1 night, to zero.

Two unexpected things happened as a result of my lack of soda (and subsequently reduction in processed sugars like Oreos). Those vegetables that my mom had been trying to get me to eat ever since I was a kid started to get introduced into my diet. It didn’t happen overnight but the actual real foods that I was eating on a regular basis anyway started to taste better. I then became a bit more adventurous and started to try things like sweet potatoes, asparagus, beans, and even fresh peas. All foods I would stick my nose up at for 40 years. The second and more surprising this was my lips weren’t chapped anymore. I haven’t really used lip balm in 15 years but used to use it all the time when I was drinking soda.

Mary Beth apple picking

Over time, I started to eat more and more whole foods and less and less processed foods. My family gets a bit annoyed at me that I have a strong discipline where I can eat just 1 potato chip and bypass the Oreos if I see them. Although I still love (and eat) chocolate chip cookies, ice cream, and other sweets but these are typically freshly made, not processed.

Even after doing research for 20 years now on different foods and their effects, we are still learning. Mary Beth had shared recently that the smoothies she was drinking was making her bloated and not feeling good. Coincidently, Azadeh Gharehgozlou had another post about protein bars and the reason why people are experiencing the same symptoms as Mary Beth. It was the way some of the proteins were processed. Five years ago, I changed my breakfast from a "healthy” cereal and milk to a smoothie, and I started to notice me feeling much better.

Emma helping make eggplant parmesan from 2011.

Since I am always on a quest to improve, over the years, I started to experiment with lots of things in my smoothies including fresh turmeric and fresh ginger to chickpeas and black beans. I am currently now working to figure out how I can replace my 20 grams of protein from the protein powder with other more natural sources like adding both black beans and chickpeas at the same time (it doesn't taste bad but it has a bit of a neutral taste that I am still working on to get a bit of flavor back).

If I was to offer one tip, it is not to start introducing healthy foods first but maybe start eliminating certain foods, whether it be soda, Oreos, potato chips, or something similar.

This is a long story to share but it was because of these experiences, from Matthew’s autism diagnosis and Mary Beth’s surgery that started the change to improving our health. If you are interested, here are a few links for more information. 

Steve's TEDx Talk- How Drinking Olive Oil and Curiosity Changed My Life

Matthew's TEDx Talk- Navigating Life with Autism

Cover photo from Boston Public Library