We’ve been eating along the EAT-Lancet guidelines for how to eat for us to feed 10+ billion people healthily and not destroy what’s left of the Earth’s surface biofilm for a little bit more than six weeks now.  Spouse has settled into the low red meat groove and doesn’t seem to realize that the six weeks he committed to is over (and I’m not going to clue him in).

Except for eating way too much rolled oats seed bread than is good for the well-being of my intestines (Psyllium husks, phew…), my life hasn’t changed terribly dramatically, except for one thing.

Sugar.

For health’s sake, the EAT-Lancet limit is 30 g of sugar per day per person. Although I am a super picky eater who HATES most processed foods (like those canned or jarred pasta sauces full of sugar, etc) and I am a diet Coke-aholic, I was sucking down way more than 30 g of sugar a day every day. I like my sweets. I’m pretty sure that all 17-20 net extra lbs I’ve accumulated over the last exactly 20 years can all be boiled down to cakes, cookies, and candy (mostly candy) I’ve eaten, most of it in the last handful of years.

30 grams of sugar is something like five six-gram hard candies/cough drops, or five ten-gram Hallorenkugeln (explained below), or one (57 g) Snicker’s bar.

I blame Spouse for the extreme sugar consumption I’ve done over the last few years. We do the weekly shopping together and he always dumps multiple packages of gummi bears, Toffifee, and these little chocolate covered balls of super sweet known as Hallorenkugeln into the shopping cart. Alas, where sweets are concerned, my point of willpower is at the grocery store. I could walk past all the ice cream, cakes, cookies, and candy and not buy a bit of it, no problem! But once that stuff is at home in my house it is my job to consume it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I will not rest until I am done.

But now, thanks to EAT-Lancet, save for the extremely occasional one box of Hallorenkugeln exception, Spouse buys no sweets beyond a packet of sugar-free Fisherman’s Friends (which I will not touch with a ten foot pole because YUCK!). My only solace is drizzling a teaspoonful of molasses over my breakfast apple + oats + almonds (for the iron, of course) and that doesn’t deliver anywhere near 30 g of sugar.

The result? I’ve finally not just stopped craving sugar, I’ve lost most of my interest in it. And my complexion has cleared up for the first time since I turned twelve or thirteen back in the early 1980s.

But Spouse? That jerk. Without any other effort at all than not eating 500-1000 kcal of chocolate or gummi bears every night, he has lost 2 kgs. That’s nearly 5 lbs.

Show off. I’m also not eating 500-1000 kcal of candy a day, but the needle on the scale hasn’t budged at all. (On the other hand, it has maybe stopped creeping upwards; it’s hard to say.) But I guess you can’t win them all.