If it appears that lately I’ve been bubbling over with words, its because I’m feeling fantastic.
Better than I have in years. MANY MANY years.
Over the Christmas break I began to do a lot of research on sugar and it’s effects on the body.
I read something that made me go hmmmm.
When your body is processing the food we eat, it breaks it down into little chains of thingys and molecules and other strange sounding things. I don’t begin to be able to explain it properly, but what I got from the article was the idea that your body breaks everything down into its essential elements of the food you are eating.
We have not evolved over the last several thousand years to eat a lot of grains, sugars and processed foods. Until the 20th century, the average amount of sugar a person would eat over the year was a pound. Now, the figure per person is closer to 150lbs. Crazy isn’t it.
One would have to be blind to not see the rising rates of obesity. To be bombarded by advertising encouraging people to loose weight, and their miracle cure. I wanted to research it. I began reading tons of books, watching lectures and following the research.
The biggest “aha” moment came for me when I watched Sugar: The Bitter Truth. It’s a lecture given by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology.
Dr. Lustig does a fantastic job of explaining the scientific process of how sugar and HFCS is processed in the body and why it is so destructive. To be frank, your body considers it a toxin. Anyone who is still in the dark about exactly how carbohydrates in general (sugar and HFCS specifically) botches-up the blood chemistry and ramps-up the body’s fat storage mechanisms, needs to watch this.
What hit home for me, is the idea that your body does break down all foods into their simplest form. Namely sugars. Now, some foods have more easily accessible sugars than others, proteins, while also broken down into sugars require fat to break them down further. Easily accesible sugars, mainly carbs are easy to digest into glucose (sugar) to use as fuel. So even that serving of whole grain toast, or brown rice….however many carbs are in that serving…your body doesn’t know the difference between a few teaspoons of sugar or its equivilant in carbs.
There are 12 carbs in a tablespoon of sugar. There are 22 carbs in a 1/2 cup of brown rice. Your body only sees the rice as about 2 tablespoons of sugar. Your body reacts with an insulin spike, which means no fat burning for a while.
All of this started to make sense.
Even when I ate healthy, my carbohydrate load was likely too high for me to effectively loose weight.
From the research I’ve done, I concluded that sugar was a bad thing for me. People in general, but I think that certain people can handle it better than others.
For me, too much and I go on a sweets binge. MY body is lazy in that it looks for quick and easy access to sugars.
Now, beyond that new leap in understanding, I also watched another video/lecture by Dr. Randy Blaylock on sugar and neurodevelopment. I was bombarded by information on how sugar affects behavior. Causes depression, acting out, addiction behaviors and a whole host of other things that I won’t go into here.
When we got back from Edmonton, the first thing I did was cut out Emily’s apple juice. Once we got over that hump of addiction (holy crap, detox!), she’s a very different kid. I really notice behavior changes when she gets too much sugar now- a few bites of a cupcake can send her into a tizzy.
I then, bravely cut out all sugar and caffine about mid January out of my own diet.
Oh the migraine. It was hell. I craaaaved sugar.
After that hump I did ok, I didn’t have as much energy as I was expecting, but I was OK.
Then came the Halifax trade show, and I ended up slipping into bad habits, and a big depression due to “healthy” food not being available to me. I really noticed how my moods were directly related to the types of food I was eating. I was much more sensitive to sugar all of a sudden. I noticed that when I had a little sugar, I had big cravings for more. I noticed that if I had too many carbs, my mood dropped, my energy plummeted, I had bad dreams and I was….bitchy, filled with anxiety and even shakey. Hence the late night “woe is me” post on the last day of the show.
Since doing another round of cutting out the sugar (over the weekend) I feel like a different person. I notice myself smiling more. For no reason! I’m happier, I’m more patient, I have much more energy than ever before and of course there is the bonus of the pounds coming off the scale.
Once I get back from France/UK I will have to get back into running again, or at least doing weights to speed the weight loss along.
I’m eating as we were made too. Fresh foods, non processed, no sugar except for naturally occurring ones.
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