If I were a betting person I would take on any overweight person, any sugar addict for sure, that you are eating the same few foods with very little variety. Most people have their fixes of choice, though they might be willing to venture into say new cookie territory, they try very few new foods. Our brains have latched on to the biggest bang for the buck foods and sees no reason to go far afield from those foods with the greatest sugar-fat-starch kick.  While I have been guilty of this, too, I always liked to try lots of different foods, though I always left room for dessert. (Dessert is an eating mindset I still work to get over.)

Now that I generally stay away from the unholy trinity of sugar-starch-artificial sweeteners, I find it is amazing how good some foods taste that I used to not pay  much attention to, especially in the vegetable arena. I try to buy mostly organic which makes a huge difference in root vegetables in particular; conventionally grow celery tends to be bitter since it  is mostly water it holds all that chemical taste from herbicides and pesticides, while organic celery is sweet and wonderful as a place for almond butter, soft cheeses, or in a light saute to serve alongside chicken or fish.  I now buy vegetables I used to ignore, like red swiss chard, and find they are mostly wonderful and very easy to prepare.

My partner  says he eats the green stuff first just to get it over with, but even he has complimented me on some new and interesting veggie dishes I’ve found in the last couple of years. He especially likes when I make ribbon noodles of summer or zucchini squash and top them with meatballs and marinara sauce. There is so much more that is tasty and healthy than sweets that tend to dull the palate as badly as smoking.

In this past weekend’s Wall Street Journal article by Barb Stuckey, she writes:

We also may be altering our brain chemistry by eating more and more sweeter and sweeter foods. New research shows that the excessive consumption of calorically dense foods changes the way that our brain responds to future foods. The effect is akin to a drug addict’s need for more and more heroin to satisfy his craving.     (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304840904577422761220716518.html?google_editors_picks=true)

To make this trying of new things a bit more exciting it’s a good idea to say: I’m going to try something new to eat this week!  This makes the routine business of eating more of an adventure, and nowadays all you have to do is type in your major ingredient into a search engine and come up with dozen tested recipes, or look through those great cookbooks you probably already have in your kitchen.

Also an advantage for you parents of young children:  My daughter’s favorite market has places in the produce section where you can weigh and label your own items;  she learned that her girls, starting about age 4-5, would eat anything they got to pick out weigh and label, thus they learned early to enjoy many vegetables and fruits most kids won’t touch. Now in their pre-teens years, they are far more adventurous eaters than most young people, certainly more than I was at that age.

Breaking out of the sweet rut , exercising our palates to new tastes, will open all kinds of new and healthy foods that will help keep us on our new path.

Yours in the adventure of new and better foods for our hungry bodies,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

I remember when Memorial Day was simply May 30th not the convenient holiday weekend; indeed, it was meant to be a day to memorialize, not a holiday. While I can appreciate it makes it easier to compact Memorial Day  into a weekend and not disrupt the middle of the week for honoring those who have served and died for this country, at the same time I think this undervalues the meaning of, and reason for, Memorial Day in the first place.

I hate war, wish no one ever had to go to war, but at the same time know that there are times when a person or a country must defend itself. Only two of the wars of the last hundred years have been of that variety, though. Still, my family has had, and has now, many people who have been part of the military, and for them, especially for those who died, I have a need in me to keep Memorial Day first about them, secondly a holiday weekend for heading to the shore.

Convenience is not what life is always best served by and relates to this blog in that the convenience of so much food in nearly every place we will find ourselves on any given day is partly responsible for the struggles more and more people are having with sugars-starch-artificial sweets. A bit of inconvenience presents a halt, a time to think, a bit of consideration before acting. If we are able to have the time to think a little bit before we rush headlong to buy and eat something we will quickly regret, then maybe we will have fewer of those episodes. I found that one of my best strategies has been to shop at specific times, and buy nothing that is not on my list. Never buy food at anything but at the grocery market or farmers market or online market. Never eat in any place that qualifies as a fast-food joint. Making food a bit less convenient makes me think more about what good food really is, and not simply a response to that “old” brain that wants carb foods because for most of human history they were hard to come by, but of course are very easy to come by nowadays.

So, stopping to remember what is important has a great deal of virtue, whether for something as heart heavy as soldiers serving, suffering, and dying, or the daily routines of life.

For those we ought remember,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

There are probably many people who have over the course of some years of being overweight, and having exceedingly strong cravings of carbohydrates, who have become insulin resistant (IR); another term for the condition which Dr. Robert Atkins used is hyperinsulinemia. The short definition is that your body having been flooded with far too much insulin for too long is coming into pre-diabetes territory, a very bad place–but still a place from which you can recover. When the body gets in this place the cells will keep taking up fat, but won’t let it go, so you can be over-eating yet have no energy, feel tired and miserable because your body isn’t giving up its stored energy. Below is what Gary Taubes has written of the condition, and I will add more here as I come across it.

The main message is to get off the carbs, meaning less that 20-30g per day in order to force the body to start burning all that stored. The following comes from my Kindle edition of Good Calories, Bad Calories.

(Taubes, Gary (2007-09-25). Good Calories, Bad Calories (pp. 139-141). Anchor. Kindle Edition.)

In the early 1950s, clinical investigators began to characterize the physiological mechanisms that would underlie Cleave’s saccharine-disease hypothesis of chronic disease, and that could explain the appearance of diseases of civilization going back over a century—the basis, in effect, of this carbohydrate hypothesis. The research evolved in multiple threads that resulted in some of the most fundamental discoveries in heart-disease and diabetes research. Only in the late 1980s did they begin to come together, when the Stanford diabetologist Gerald Reaven proposed the name Syndrome X to describe the metabolic abnormalities common to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, all, at the very least, exacerbated by the consumption of sugar, flour, and other easily digestible carbohydrates. Syndrome X included elevated levels of the blood fats known as triglycerides; low levels of HDL cholesterol, now known as the good cholesterol; it included hypertension, and three phenomena that are considered precursors of adult-onset diabetes—chronically high levels of insulin (hyperinsulinemia), a condition known as insulin resistance (a relative insensitivity of cells to insulin), and the related condition of glucose intolerance (an inability to metabolize glucose properly). Over the years, other abnormalities have been added to this list: the presence of predominantly small, dense LDL particles, and high levels of a protein called fibrinogen that increases the likelihood of blood-clot formation. Elevated uric-acid concentrations in the blood, a precursor of gout, have been linked to Syndrome X, as has a state of chronic inflammation, marked by a high concentration in the blood of a protein known as C-reactive protein. In the last decade, Syndrome X has taken on a variety of names as authorities, institutions, and associations have slowly come to accept its validity. It is often referred to as insulin resistance syndrome. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute belatedly recognized the existence of Syndrome X in 2001, calling it metabolic syndrome. It has even been referred to as insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome X, or MSX, by those investigators attempting to cover all bases.*39 By any name, this metabolic syndrome is as much a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism as is adult-onset diabetes, and is certainly a consequence of the carbohydrate content of the diet, particularly, as Cleave would have predicted, such refined, easily digestible carbohydrates as sugar and white flour. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the evolving science of metabolic syndrome began to have any significant influence outside the field of diabetes, at which point the media finally began to take notice.†40 The potential implications of metabolic syndrome for heart disease and other chronic diseases have only just begun to be appreciated by the research community. As a result, a hypothesis that emerged from research in the 1950s as an alternative explanation for the high rates of heart disease in Western nations has been accepted by medical researchers and public-health authorities a half-century later as a minor modification to Keys’s dietary-fat/cholesterol hypothesis, even though this alternative hypothesis implies that Keys’s hypothesis is wrong. The bulk of the science is no longer controversial, but its potential significance has been minimized by the assumption that saturated fat is still the primary evil in modern diets.

In the early 1950s, clinical investigators began to characterize the physiological mechanisms that would underlie Cleave’s saccharine-disease hypothesis of chronic disease, and that could explain the appearance of diseases of civilization going back over a century—the basis, in effect, of this carbohydrate hypothesis. The research evolved in multiple threads that resulted in some of the most fundamental discoveries in heart-disease and diabetes research. Only in the late 1980s did they begin to come together, when the Stanford diabetologist Gerald Reaven proposed the name Syndrome X to describe the metabolic abnormalities common to obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, all, at the very least, exacerbated by the consumption of sugar, flour, and other easily digestible carbohydrates. Syndrome X included elevated levels of the blood fats known as triglycerides; low levels of HDL cholesterol, now known as the good cholesterol; it included hypertension, and three phenomena that are considered precursors of adult-onset diabetes—chronically high levels of insulin (hyperinsulinemia), a condition known as insulin resistance (a relative insensitivity of cells to insulin), and the related condition of glucose intolerance (an inability to metabolize glucose properly). Over the years, other abnormalities have been added to this list: the presence of predominantly small, dense LDL particles, and high levels of a protein called fibrinogen that increases the likelihood of blood-clot formation. Elevated uric-acid concentrations in the blood, a precursor of gout, have been linked to Syndrome X, as has a state of chronic inflammation, marked by a high concentration in the blood of a protein known as C-reactive protein. In the last decade, Syndrome X has taken on a variety of names as authorities, institutions, and associations have slowly come to accept its validity. It is often referred to as insulin resistance syndrome. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute belatedly recognized the existence of Syndrome X in 2001, calling it metabolic syndrome. It has even been referred to as insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome X, or MSX, by those investigators attempting to cover all bases.*39 By any name, this metabolic syndrome is as much a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism as is adult-onset diabetes, and is certainly a consequence of the carbohydrate content of the diet, particularly, as Cleave would have predicted, such refined, easily digestible carbohydrates as sugar and white flour. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the evolving science of metabolic syndrome began to have any significant influence outside the field of diabetes, at which point the media finally began to take notice.†40 The potential implications of metabolic syndrome for heart disease and other chronic diseases have only just begun to be appreciated by the research community. As a result, a hypothesis that emerged from research in the 1950s as an alternative explanation for the high rates of heart disease in Western nations has been accepted by medical researchers and public-health authorities a half-century later as a minor modification to Keys’s dietary-fat/cholesterol hypothesis, even though this alternative hypothesis implies that Keys’s hypothesis is wrong. The bulk of the science is no longer controversial, but its potential significance has been minimized by the assumption that saturated fat is still the primary evil in modern diets.

Taubes, Gary (2007-09-25). Good Calories, Bad Calories (p. 140). Anchor. Kindle Edition.

As I was driving down the highway not long ago my eye caught sight of a large cola vending machine. Instantly I thought of the diet soda that was the only soda I ever drank, but I used to drink a lot of it, and for a split second I had thoughts of how much I used to like it, then I immediately realized that old limbic brain I call the Kraken was pushing at the bars of its cage. Then I had on overwhelming sense of relief that I didn’t have to pay attention to that urge, furthermore I didn’t want to because I finally got what the heart of problem is with trying to substitute one bad thing for another bad thing. 

If the goal is to get off the sugar-starch addictive foods/beverages then to replace them with other sweet tasting things is pointless, a true waste of time, for studies and our own experiences have shown that the substitution works only for a short time. When we promise the brain a big calorie input with that highly sweet taste and nothing is forthcoming, the brain will keep bugging us to fulfill that promise by urging us with those constant cravings. Like a gangster who wants his money! Remember, the artificially sweetened substitute, diet soda or diet foods, are usually several hundred times sweeter than the actual soda or food we are trying to avoid. The brain is not to be fooled in the long run. Which means, horror of horrors, the best thing is to give up the sweet food to begin with (or starchy if that’s your main thing, though to the body starch = sugar).

I spent years trying to substitute low and no-calorie foods/drinks that used artificial sweeteners and my weight kept going up. The cravings got far worse, and I felt like I was on a carousel going ever faster that wouldn’t let me off.           

The last couple of years as I got interested in various low carb/primal/paleo blog sites, the one thing that soon became obvious was how so many people immediately tried to find substitutes for their old problem foods. Can’t have flour cookies, then make them with almond meal; can’t use Splenda, use stevia instead. I was one of them. I could over use any substitute.

Undoubtedly there are some people who can judiciously use substitutes, but for the overweight person who is plagued by cravings, who grazes looking for something to satisfy that empty feeling that never seems to get filled—no matter how much food is eaten—then substitutes are probably just as bad as the real thing. The test is whether you can eat three meals a day without snacking and that feels just fine, without cravings that won’t give you any peace.  

I find that I can use a little stevia sweetened food now and then, but it must be after good foods and in a very small amount. Everyone had to find his/her own tolerance. But if I find that cravings begin with any food, it has to go. I can’t let any food threaten my health and take away the freedom from cravings that has taken me over a decade to finally figure out.

Scary is the word that comes to mind, as I consider why we are driven to find substitues, for scary is how it feels to say “I won’t drink sugar OR diet soda or eat artificially sweetened foods.” After all, that was the sacrifice you thought you made. Eat/drink this no-cal thing and it will take me to my goal. But if it doesn’t, what other choice is there? Rational people know when to accept a fact, and sometimes the facts are exactly what we do not want to accept. 

So when I saw that soda machine I knew in my deepest being that there is no such substitute for me. Besides the fact that most of the substitutes are filled with chemicals that are potentially very dangerous. But the good thing about resignation is that it lifts a burden from your shoulders, for you know you are no longer in thrall to sugar, though it’s wise to always respect the power it can quickly regain if you start eating such foods or their artificially sweetened counterparts.

Yours in strength and courage,                              

Nan aka Sugarbaby

Seems like nearly every day there is a new study being released about yet another problem with sugar at the levels we consume them in the west.  The cravings cause us to eat something that is making both dumber and sicker as a nation. That is a very poor trade-off for the short sweet taste we find so appealing. Here are three recent postings on the subjects:

http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-fructose-makes-rats-stupid-brain-20120517,0,2305241.story

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-sugar-side-20120414,0,7849134.htmlstory

http://www.medpagetoday.com/LabNotes/LabNotes/32781,

Yours in learning,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

Some years back my daughter took my granddaughters to a museum in Rochester, NY, where they stood before some gadget or machine that registers body temperature. She was not surprised to see that one of the girls gave off an almost solid red color that showed she was, as it were, burning hot, had a very active metabolism. Though smaller than her fraternal twin sister, she eats like a veritable horse, and is always on the go. By contrast my daughter and the other granddaughter were much more blue-to-yellow with a few hot spots. I have no doubt I would be very blue-to-yellow.

Metabolism matters. A couple of studies have demonstrated that for a person who is naturally very thin, as is the paternal side of my family, in tests where they over fed them by several thousand calories, the thin people seemed to just throw off most of the excess, and did not gain more than a very few pounds if any; while people who were life-long plump people readily gained weight.

Now, it may be that a very thin person who over-eats, especially of highly refined sugars/starch, long enough can upset their natural metabolisms and begin to put on weight, indeed we all probably know people who were very thin until late middle age when they began to put on weight.

I was thin for over half of my life until I had a serious illness, and from that point onward weight became a struggle. I doubt that anyone can really appreciate the struggles of someone who easily gains weight, has migraine headaches, or any number of problems unless s/he has had some experience of that struggle.

Metabolism, though, is tricky. For even if you have a cold running system one’s metabolism is not an excuse for letting go, giving in, avoiding the work it takes to get in control of health.  Metabolism is a stumbling block, a pain in the backside, a mountain to climb, but it is not an excuse to do nothing. Think of all the things that work well. Do you have great hair, nails, good eyesight-smell-taste, a good mind, etc.? We each are made up of the good and less than good in the sum of our parts. For example, I have great eyesight, but terribly soft teeth (I have enough money in my mouth to buy a high-end car!).

One’s metabolism is simply either in the great, okay, or lousy category. We deal. Circumspection is a great gift. Would you trade your sugar/weight issues for being hard of hearing or blind? I think it unlikely anyone would.

So, here’s to being on the cool side (pun intended),

Nan aka Sugarbaby

I have been deliberate in stating that I believe for many of us that sugar becomes addictive and that we must steer clear of sugars-starches-artificial sweeteners if we hope to be free of constant cravings, improve our health, or get weight in check.

One component in this for me is to follow the 3 Rs, and be rational, realistic, right, meaning: be rational in accepting you have to make choices, and the ones that are going to lead to freedom from sugar cravings, bingeing, weight problems require changes of habits, acquiring new habits/behaviors that allow us to pursue our life goals more easily and with less suffering; realistic in that you didn’t get the problems overnight, and it will take time and diligence to develop new good habits, and there is some sacrifice on the front end that leads to the great benefits down the road; right in that regardless of what anyone else can do/eat/drink, if I can’t then I must choose to do what is right for me, regardless of how many people tell me I’m wrong, or eating a fad diet, or other–usually totally uneducated–opinions.

Most people can find themselves in a rut, feeling low/self-pity/blue/deprived and use that for an excuse for going off the healthy path. We must often remind ourselves that we have good brains, and can be careful decision-makers: don’t go to the fast food places where you typically go overboard, don’t give yourself permission to eat between meals, etc. Make a plan, and work at sticking to it.

We can be past masters of rationalization, making excuses, thinking that all will change tomorrow, but nothing will change that you/I don’t make change.

So, of late, I find that while things are easier, I still have to make adaptations, give my self pep-talks or a kick-in-the-pants, whatever it takes to keep moving in the right direction.

If you have suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Yours in the 3 Rs,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

I’ve just listed the first 100 below, but Nancy Appleton gives an exhaustive list, including references, for the problems that result in over use of sugars, and for some of us even the small intake of refined sugars. 

For more see: http://www.healingcancernaturally.com/sugar-health-effects-risks.html

Sugar’s Health Effects, Risks & Problems: Is Sugar Sweet Poison?

146 Reasons Why Sugar Is Ruining Your Health

by Nancy Appleton, Ph.D., www.nancyappleton.com, author of Lick The Sugar Habit

In addition to throwing off the body’s homeostasis, excess sugar may result in a number of other significant consequences. The following is a listing of some of sugar’s metabolic consequences from a variety of medical journals and other scientific publications.

1 Sugar can suppress the immune system.
Compare Using Your Amuse System to Boost Your Immune System.

2 Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in the body.
Compare Minerals.

3 Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.

4 Sugar can produce a significant rise in triglycerides.

5 Sugar contributes to the reduction in defense against bacterial infection (infectious diseases).

6 Sugar causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function, the more sugar you eat, the more elasticity and function you lose.

7 Sugar reduces high density lipoproteins.

8 Sugar leads to chromium deficiency.

9 Sugar leads to cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, and rectum.
[This statement may need to be qualified and reworded in less absolute terms, also see number 120, 126 & 143.]

10 Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose.

11 Sugar causes copper deficiency.

12 Sugar interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.
Compare book extract.
In addition, sugar needs calcium to be metabolized and reportedly draws the required amounts from teeth and bones if these are not provided via food containing bioavailable calcium.

13 Sugar can weaken eyesight.

14 Sugar raises the level of a neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.

15 Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.

16 Sugar can produce an acidic digestive tract.

17 Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline levels in children.

18 Sugar malabsorption is frequent in patients with functional bowel disease.

19 Sugar can cause premature aging.

20 Sugar can lead to alcoholism.

21 Sugar can cause tooth decay.

22 Sugar contributes to obesity.

23 High intake of sugar increases the risk of Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis.

24 Sugar can cause changes frequently found in person with gastric or duodenal ulcers.

25 Sugar can cause arthritis.

26 Sugar can cause asthma.

27 Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections).
Compare note on Candida Albicans in Fungi producing mycotoxins: The Fungal/Mycotoxin Etiology of Human Disease (particularly CANCER).

28 Sugar can cause gallstones.

29 Sugar can cause heart disease.

30 Sugar can cause appendicitis.

31 Sugar can cause multiple sclerosis.

32 Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.

33 Sugar can cause varicose veins.

34 Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses in oral contraceptive users.

35 Sugar can lead to periodontal disease.

36 Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.

37 Sugar contributes to saliva acidity.

38 Sugar can cause a decrease in insulin sensitivity.

39 Sugar can lower the amount of Vitamin E in the blood.

40 Sugar can decrease growth hormone.

41 Sugar can increase cholesterol.

42 Sugar can increase the systolic blood pressure.

43 Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children.

44 High sugar intake increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs) (sugar bound non-enzymatically to protein).

45 Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein.

46 Sugar causes food allergies.

47 Sugar can contribute to diabetes.

48 Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.

49 Sugar can contribute to eczema in children.

50 Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease.

51 Sugar can impair the structure of DNA.

52 Sugar can change the structure of protein.

53 Sugar can make our skin age by changing the structure of collagen.

54 Sugar can cause cataracts.

55 Sugar can cause emphysema.

56 Sugar can cause atherosclerosis.

57 Sugar can promote an elevation of low density lipoproteins (LDL).

58 High sugar intake can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in the body.

59 Sugar lowers the enzymes’ ability to function.

60 Sugar intake is higher in people with Parkinson’s disease.

61 Sugar can cause a permanent altering [of] the way the proteins act in the body.

62 Sugar can increase the size of the liver by making the liver cells divide.

63 Sugar can increase the amount of liver fat.

64 Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney.

65 Sugar can damage the pancreas.

66 Sugar can increase the body’s fluid retention.

67 Sugar is enemy #1 of the bowel movement.

68 Sugar can cause myopia (nearsightedness).

69 Sugar can compromise the lining of the capillaries.

70 Sugar can make the tendons more brittle.

71 Sugar can cause headaches, including migraine.

72 Sugar plays a role in pancreatic cancer in women.

73 Sugar can adversely affect school children’s grades and cause learning disorders.

74 Sugar can cause an increase in delta, alpha, and theta brain waves.

75 Sugar can cause depression.

76 Sugar increases the risk of gastric cancer.

77 Sugar [can] cause dyspepsia (indigestion).

78 Sugar can increase your risk of getting gout.

79 Sugar can increase the levels of glucose in an oral glucose tolerance test over the ingestion of complex carbohydrates.

80 Sugar can increase the insulin responses in humans consuming high-sugar diets compared to low sugar diets.

81 High refined sugar diet reduces learning capacity.

82 Sugar can cause less effective functioning of two blood proteins, albumin, and lipoproteins, which may reduce the body’s ability to handle fat and cholesterol.

83 Sugar can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.

84 Sugar can cause platelet adhesiveness.

85 Sugar can cause hormonal imbalance; some hormones become underactive and others become overactive.

86 Sugar can lead to the formation of kidney stones.

87 Sugar can lead to the hypothalamus becom[ing] highly sensitive to a large variety of stimuli.

88 Sugar can lead to dizziness.

89 Diets high in sugar can cause free radicals and oxidative stress.

90 High sucrose diets of subjects with peripheral vascular disease significantly increases platelet adhesion.

91 High sugar diet can lead to biliary tract cancer.

92 Sugar feeds cancer.

93. High sugar consumption of pregnant adolescents is associated with a twofold increased risk for delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.

94. High sugar consumption can lead to substantial decrease in gestation duration among adolescents.

95. Sugar slows food’s travel time through the gastrointestinal tract.

96. Sugar increases the concentration of bile acids in stools and bacterial enzymes in the colon. This can modify bile to produce cancer-causing compounds and colon cancer.

97. Sugar increases estradiol (the most potent form of naturally occurring estrogen) in men.

98. Sugar combines and destroys phosphatase, an enzyme, which makes the process of digestion more difficult.

99. Sugar can be a risk factor of gallbladder cancer.

100. Sugar is an addictive substance.