Georgina Lunn

Written for Wise Wellness’ upcoming digital newsletter

A dramatic retelling of my month going without (artificial) sugar, chronicled from start to finish, preaching the highs, and not sugar-coating the lows. 

I embarked on this sugar-free journey for a few reasons – not so much to lose weight, but to see if it would help my gut, maybe clear up my skin, and ideally make me a glowing, digestive goddess. I set out to silence the doubters, chiefly the committee in my own head, and while I emerged mostly victorious, let’s just say the definition of success became… flexible.

Impending doom – that’s exactly how I felt facing the month ahead. But as the family’s worst cook (mostly due to pure impatience), I figured this was the perfect excuse to enlist as a culinary cadet. Fortunately, my go-to breakfast is ridiculously healthy – and completely free of artificial sugar. I’m talking acai mix, granola, organic honey, bee pollen, fruit, and almond butter. Honestly, I can’t tell if it genuinely tastes good or if I’m just high on the placebo of pretending my body is a temple. Nonetheless, getting into the routine of investing in this breakfast everyday in the name of health and work is what made me really think I’d survive the month. Hats off to anyone tackling the keto diet – whether by choice or because conditions like endometriosis leave you no other option, you deserve serious respect. 

I didn’t go full cold turkey on the snacking front – crisps and seaweed (shoutout to Itsu) were still very much on the table. My beloved acai bowl became more of a brunch (I love a lie-in), then I’d head to work, have a late-afternoon snack, and follow it up with a dinner substantial enough to silence the cravings.

Week 1 was a greatest hits compilation: salmon with potatoes and asparagus, melon and parma ham with feta, jacket potatoes in heavy rotation. Honestly, I was thriving. Turns out, giving up dessert is far easier than giving up meat – my father raised no herbivore.

The results? Well, here’s where things get a little tricky – and this article firmly plants itself as a diary entry, not a doctor’s note. I have gut issues that love to flare up under stress, and, as luck would have it, I also started new medication for my skin that same week. So while it was technically the start of my sugar-free journey, it was also the start of… other variables.

Yes, my digestion was suspiciously well-behaved and my skin looked clearer than it had in months – but whether to credit the diet, the meds, or the rare occurrence of me not being wildly stressed is anyone’s guess. Most likely? A beautifully chaotic cocktail of all three.

Week two did not end on a high. Well – technically, it did. A sugar high. An unplanned, unavoidable, entirely-not-my-fault incident occurred. It was my uncle’s 70th birthday party. The day began with erecting the largest marquee I’ve ever seen and quickly escalated into an episode of Grey’s Anatomy when an elderly guest collapsed mid-afternoon. Initially, we assumed sunstroke. Turns out he’d had a heart attack a month prior and somehow bounced back mid-chaos to sip beer with the lads and laugh like nothing happened. Icon.

Perhaps it was the brush with mortality that caught me off guard. The fragility of life distracted me from my mission, and before anyone could intervene, my hand had already reached for a (mini) strawberry tart. Mere milliseconds after swallowing, I froze – eyes wide, gently smacking my sister in the arm with the dramatic realisation that I had just undone a fortnight of virtuous restraint with one unthinking bite of buttery rebellion.

Naturally, I was so cross with myself that I made things worse (better?) by sampling the (mini) lemon cheesecake too – because if I was going to fall off the wagon, I wasn’t going to play favourites. And, in my defence, they were fruity, so technically that’s two of my five a day.

Despite this entirely accidental dietary transgression, I refused to let it derail everything I’d worked toward. I simply noted it as a statistical anomaly and carried on as usual – science over shame. In fact, it added a touch of intrigue to the experiment: two weeks in, a rogue sugar discrepancy offered the perfect opportunity to observe whether a small dose would trigger any sort of backlash. Luckily, it did not. Not even a blemish. Then again… they were mini.

Week 3 hit. I can’t go on. My mum, during a momentary lapse in memory, at my expense, brought home a tub of Caprice chocolate wafers. To avoid the torture, I made her hide them and promise she wouldn’t eat any in front of me. A key survival tactic in this experiment: out of sight, out of mind. But come 9pm, when it was time for my sweet treat, I roamed the kitchen like a sugar deprived raccoon, ransacking the house. The wafers were gone. Turns out, Mum heard out of sight, out of mind and raised it to out of tub, out of existence. Like a magician with a sweet tooth, she made 1200 calories disappear. I was devastated, but relieved in equal measure that I hadn’t made my restraint from the previous weeks redundant. 

Then here I was, week 4. The finale, the curtain call, the last hurrah. By this point, I had settled into the sugar-free groove with the resigned calm of someone who’s accepted their fate. The cravings dulled, the raccoon urges subsided, and I even started enjoying the smug sense of superiority that comes with saying “no thanks, I don’t eat sugar” at social events. Did I miss having my sweet treats? Constantly. Did I feel better? Yes. Was my gut behaving? Yes. Did my skin improve? I was literally complimented my strangers. Would I do it again? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves – my cheekbones remain tragically un-chiselled. Maybe if I paired it with a gym membership and broke up with crisps, I’d start to see some contour without makeup. But I will say this: I now walk past the biscuit aisle with confidence. Sometimes I even smile at them, we’ve made peace, I still talk to them, but now it’s more of a respectful nod than a desperate whisper. Growth.