The no sugar challenge is five consecutive days with no added sugar and no sugar substitutes: nothing in your coffee or tea, no dessert, no candy, no ice cream, no sugary drinks — though whole fruit stays on the menu. We are deep into the Physical Friday summer challenges, and this week is a nutritional one. It is easy to do, easier not to do, and that is exactly the kind of habit that moves the needle. Five days. Can you do it?
Listen now: press play in the player above and follow along.
The challenge is no added sugar and no sugar substitutes for five consecutive days. That means no sugar or sweetener in your coffee or tea, no dessert, no ice cream, no candy, no sugary soft drinks, and no obviously sugar-loaded foods like most cereals. Fruit is fine, because that sugar comes packaged in the food itself — the rule is that you do not add sugar to anything and you do not choose sugary treats. Pick any five days, but they need to be consecutive to complete the challenge.
No. You can eat fruit on this challenge. The sugar in fruit is naturally part of the food, and the challenge targets added sugar: the spoonful in your coffee, the dessert after dinner, the candy bar, the ice cream, the sugary soda, and sugar substitutes too. If you have to add it, sprinkle it, or pick it specifically because it is sweet, it is out for five days. If it grows that way, it is in.
Because most people have heard for years that sugar might not be great for them, but have never actually taken five days off of it to find out. This is a low-risk experiment. Maybe you finish the five days and decide you would rather have the sugar — fine. Maybe instead you sleep better and feel better across the board, and now you know something real about your own body instead of repeating something you heard. Five days is enough to feel a genuine difference either way.
It is completely different from person to person. Some people breeze through this challenge and barely notice, and some people have a genuinely hard time for the first couple of days, which tells you something on its own. The challenge is easy to do, but it is easier not to do it, and in my experience those are exactly the habits that make the biggest difference. You can pick your five days strategically, but they have to be five in a row.
The summer series is a string of five-day experiments built on Bruce Lee's rule: absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own. Before this one we did fifteen minutes of meditation or three rounds of Wim Hof breathing, then a gallon of water every day for five days, then thirty minutes of exercise or a finisher added to every workout. Each week you keep what helped and throw away what did not, and many listeners stack the challenges on top of each other.
Here are the rules exactly as I laid them out on the show:
I go through the gray areas and what I am personally cutting in the episode.
Everybody loves sugar. It tastes awesome. Almost everybody has also heard they should probably watch their intake, without ever actually testing it. A lot of people have never gone five days without added sugar in their adult lives, which means they genuinely do not know how they would feel. This challenge is the low-risk way to find out. I explain how to read your own results honestly in the episode, so press play in the player above.
Every challenge this summer runs on the Bruce Lee quote: absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own. We have already tried meditation, a gallon of water a day, and added exercise. Maybe you kept some and threw some away — that is exactly how it is supposed to work. I share where I have landed on the earlier challenges in the episode, so press play in the player above.
Some people will breeze through this and some will have a surprisingly rough first couple of days, and both results tell you something about your relationship with sugar. The interesting part comes around day three or four, when sleep and energy start to shift for a lot of people. I am doing the challenge right alongside you and reporting back, so press play in the player above and then text me how it goes.
I am just as curious about this one as you are. I do not know exactly how five days off sugar will treat me this time, and that honest uncertainty is the whole spirit of the summer challenges.
This week, then: no added sugar, no substitutes, five days in a row. I think you can do it, and I am going to give it a shot myself. Press play in the player above for the full rules and the story so far.
Physical Friday is my weekly fitness series for fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen — the training, nutrition, and mindset to stay in the game for life. Watch and listen to every Physical Friday episode from Tom Rowland.
Bruce Lee · Wim Hof breathing · summer challenges · added sugar · sugar substitutes · nutrition experiments · gallon of water challenge · hydration · sleep quality · habit building
I'm Tom Rowland, a professional fishing guide based in the Florida Keys, host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, and the longtime host of the Saltwater Experience television show. On the podcast's Physical Friday series I share the training, nutrition, and mindset work I use to stay strong for a life outdoors, so fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen can keep doing what they love for as long as possible.
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