The No-Empty-Calories-Challenge

Today I want to talk about one of my New Years resolutions...

... I told you back in this post in a sidenote that I have this little challenge going on for the year 2016. I will not eat any white flour nor any refined sugar during the entire lenght of year! Oh yes! Today I want to tell you a little bit more about this challenge and why I decided for it :) 

Maybe you have heard of the term acid-base-balance!? In case you havent, let me just tell you a little bit about it... our blood basically needs the right balance of acid and basic (alkaline) compounds to function properly. Kidneys and lungs work to keep the acid-base balance. So food is digested in our bodies and is broken down to a kind of ash residue, which determines alkaline vs acidic foods. This ash residue can be either neutral, acidic, or alkaline. In general alkaline foods contain higher amounts of potassium, calcium, magnesium, and iron, and will leave an alkaline ash, while acidic foods contain higher amounts of sulphur, phosphorus, and chlorine and leave an acid ash. 

Food such as meat, eggs, dairy products, sugar, coffee, white flour, and soda ar highly acidic! A diet high in acidics is responsible for various diseases such as arthrosis, gallstones, high blood pressure, depression, fatigue, etc. etc. etc.

Now as you may guess I am already doing pretty good eating loads of alkaline foods, since I am not eating any animal products (which are all highly acid). However, I still used to eat white flour and refined sugar from time to time. Because I want to get an even better balance when it comes to my acids and alkalines, I decided to stop eating refined sugar and white flour - for now I say for one year, maybe it will be forever after this one year :)  

Now that I wrote a little bit about the background let me continue with how the challenge went so far. First of all, leaving out the white flour and the refined sugar I realized that I end up leaving out all the empty calories, so this challenge somehow also became a no-empty-calories-challenge to me. Since January 1, everything I put into my body is rich in nutrients and can actually be used by my body - it does not stress my organism (as meat and dairy products, sugar, white flour, etc. do). Do you wanna now how I feel since?

Its been three weeks so far and I have to say that the first few days without sugar have been a little hard for me. Those of you who have babies too, you know how much you are craving energy when you are breastfeeding. And sugar is the fastest and easiest way to get energy. When I left out the sugar, I ate even more to get all the energy I need. The first few days this was difficult to me but now, three weeks later, I feel great with it! I do not have any cravings for sugar and I enjoy eating a loooooot of carbs to get the energy I need (without gaining any weight). I do not miss white flour at all, to be honest. I love my whole wheat pasta, my whole grain spelt pancakes and my whole grain bread. I need to find a place where they have whole wheat brezels though, cause I begin to miss pretzels ;) 

So I feel GREAT and I am happy that I decided for this challenge... but this does not mean that its easy or even possible not to eat refined sugar and white flour! Why? Let me tell you! 

In almost every processed product there is sugaar! Go to the wholefood shop and take any hummus, any vegetable broth, any sandwich spread - in every second of the products you will find SUGAR! So far I was not able to find a vegetable broth without sugar so I cannot say that I am doing perfect in my challenge, because I still use the broth. Also white flour - in Germany, when a bread is declared as "whole grain" it must only contain 80% whole grains so the 20% left is white flour in every second bread. Also, there is sugar in almost all breads. Hence, in case you do not do EVERYTHING by yourself, it is more or less impossible to go 100% sugar and white flour free! 

I realized from the first day on that I will not be able to make this challenge 100%. I do not yet know great alternatives to vegetable broth that do not contain sugar (any ideas?), I cannot bake my own bread every day (we do aorund once a week but sometimes we also buy organic whole grain bread) but I am getting better every day :) I am totally fine with the fact that I am not doing it 100% because I know that I do my best and I feel already a difference. Also I know that those traces of white flour and sugar will not have much impact on my acid-base balance nor on my intestinal flora (which is the second reason for who I do this challenge - a healthy intestinal flora is key to good health and wheat and sugar are destroying the healthy bacteria down there (as do animal products by the way))). 

By the way, there are of course also some processed foods who are very alkaline and I am definetly going to share a few with you on the blog throughout the year :) 
I will also share more background information on why sugar and white flour, next to animal products, are bad for your intestinal flora and for your health in general - so be ready for that ;) 

So far, I hope you enjoyed this post! Have you every thought about if your acids and alkalines are in balance? What do you think about my no-empty-calories-challenge? Could you do without refined sugar and white flour for a year or even longer? I would love to know!

Sending muuuuuch love!