Sugaraholics

Many people struggle to get off the sugar-starch-artificial sweeteners a challenge, and the challenge is usually greater when we think we can get off everything “EXCEPT”…meaning a few things we really don’t want to give up. The process can be fairly easy if you take care with hydration and realize it will soon get better. A long trip for a vacation is unpleasant in many ways, but we see the travel as the price to pay for the joy. Thinking this way will help us travel through the transition to a craving-free, fit life.

But as a general approach, keeping in mind we varying in our metabolisms, and so on, these are the things I did, and a few more besides.

1. Clean the house of all the problem foods, including the things like sugar and flour for creating them.

2.Get some staples that keep pretty well, like frozen/canned chicken, frozen/canned fish/shrimp/crab, coconut milk/0il/butter, eggs, hard cheeses, 85% or greater dark chocolate, and such, so you always have an acceptable food on hand.

3. Keep track of what you eat for a couple weeks. Tracking food has been repeatedly shown to help people not over-eat or eat the wrong food.

4. Don’t overly focus on food. Try to keep meal planning to right after a good meal, so you don’t start making yourself hungry. Tests have shown that the sight or thought of food (ala Pavlov’s dogs) raises insulin, and makes us hungry. Avoid cooking shows, wandering food aisles, etc. These are all trigger behaviors for our bad habits.

5. Shop only at stores where you know what/where to avoid things that might be temptations; and it’s best to shop when you have recently had a meal.

6.Drink at least 1-2 quarts/liters of water, mineral water is great at this time, plain tea/coffee.

7. Take a good multi-vitamin, and add potassium and magnesium if you are inclined to cramps. Also, make sure to salt food adequately, since one of the causes of headaches or light-headedness, is sudden drop in your normal salt intake. Plus, if you drink adequate amount of liquids, you flush excess salt.

8. Most people do better if they eat first thing in the morning, especially plenty of protein and fat, like ham/bacon and eggs. Eat in whatever way the keeps you from over-eating and feeling hungry. Most people do perfectly well on 2-3 meals a day and no snacking. This is how humans ate historically. Adaptation takes a few days, then becomes your new normal.

9. Preplan meals, at least generally; always include protein, fat, lots of low starch vegetables, and only berries for fruit if you are trying to lose weight. (Fruit is high in fructose and can trigger binges.) I always eat better if I even loosely plan for the next day.

10. Get plenty of rest; cut out the electronic gadgets, caffeine, and/or alcohol at night which interfere with normal transition to sleep.

11. Know that any change takes effort, and doesn’t need to be painful if approached thoughtfully.

12. Find a buddy. We are known to work harder if we believe our actions are helping another person with our goals. Conversely, avoid people who say: Oh, come on…a  little dessert-alcohol-bread won’t hurt. These people do not understand the intensified and even addictive quality of many of these for some people.

13. Get some kind of light exercise: walk, swim, do weights; any good habit translates to other aspects of our lives.

14. Treat yourself with non-food items: a day trip, clothing, book, whatever is an affordable, but real treat for your efforts.

15. Don’t be discouraged by blips, but be determined to have them be few and very far between.

16. Make your own list of things that you think will be helpful, and remake it often.

Yours in the challenge,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

Check out the following to get an idea of how much sugar people are consuming. Indeed, how much we may have consumed, and do now. I found this on Vanadia.com no sweet blog. Pass it on.

Someone told me today that they had begun having issues with heart arrhythmia and after some investigation of her food journal realized she had been letting aspartame sweetened diet soda creep in. Which then prompted a memory of a previous time some years back when she had a similar reaction to aspartame.

I avoid all artificial sweeteners most of the time, except stevia which I use occasionally. Aspartame in particular is highly suspect for causing unpleasant things to happen in the brain. Now, I’m not a purist, and once in a while I may have something sweetened with sucralose, even a diet coke on  rare occasions, but the key is to recognize any particular effects these may have on your health or your ability to leave sweets alone.  Too many people give up sugar only to replace it with artificial sweeteners which wind up causing even greater cravings (see: https://sugaraholics.com/2011/06/01/artificial-sweeteners-ersatz-sweet-dangerous-poison/)

The main thing to keep in mind is that artificial sweeteners are chemicals manufactured to be far sweeter, usually 200-600 times sweeter, than sugar. When the brain gets a 600 level message, it expects a 600 level meal. I used to have a serious diet Coke habit, not realizing that in an effort to save calories, I was creating horrible cravings that I succumbed to all too often.

I think it is probably better to have evaporated cane sugar sweetened foods or beverages than those using any artificial sweetener besides stevia. We just really don’t know what all those chemicals are doing in our brains and bodies.  Learning to find health treats is one of the biggest parts of going off sugar-starch-artificial sweeteners.

These days I mainly like tea, especially fresh brewed iced tea, seltzer, hot/iced coffee, along with plenty of water. For treats I make things like peanut butter balls that don’t require added sweet.

Yours in health,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

Consider that every life is a story of ups and downs, good times and bad, gains and losses, and all the things that we recognize as the stuff of life; but, we are unique and each of us has a story that is our own and unlike any other person’s story. Then each area of life is like the separate chapters of our own story.

We are the authors of our life stories with contributions from all the people who have touched our lives from parents and family, teachers, friends, enemies, acquaintances, cashiers, and all those imprinted on our brains from random meetings on airplanes, a walk in the park, and so on.

Sometimes the best way to understand why we do what we do is to  record the journey we have been on up to now, who and what has contributed, and then imagine what the next leg of the journey might be like, or how we would like it to be. A plan is where to start, and while I am convinced that life is better if we do some planning, I also know it will be better still if we remain open to the serendipity, luck, and mystery that lies ahead–all that we cannot imagine or anticipate.

The best things in my life happened while I was trying to execute another plan, which is not a denigration of planning, only a reminder that while a plan is good, we can’t be so devoted to the plan that we can’t be open to the surprise, truth, and beauty that may create a need to deviate from it, or rewrite it altogether. For, if we are too dedicated to a plan, we may miss out on something far better.

I am now writing the story of my struggles with weight and how I have learned to get control over the raging cravings that made life miserable for a few years. Looking back, I find I’m surprised that I was able to get through some things as well as I did, which sort of makes me the heroine of my own story, and I like to think of myself that way, rather than as a victim.

As long as we breathe, we are creating our life story, and it seems to me far more desirable that we feel purpose and intention, rather than just being flotsam carried along by the tide.

Yours in the telling of our stories,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

One popular way of getting up motivational steam for losing weight, or a cleanse, or an exercise regime is to plan a Whole 30, meaning start on March 1st and go for 30 days, for example. As we have plenty of Irish blood, March seems a particularly auspicious month to go thirty days without any sugar-starch-artificial sweeteners*.

My spouse and I have decided to do a March Whole 30 to get some spring cleaning, so for us that will mean sticking to our low carbohydrate plan without interruption the next thirty days, we are starting a little ahead, but it takes a couple of days to get the system rolling.  I like having the calendar posted there above my kitchen desk area and crossing off  each day in bright orange or similar, which shows me our progress. As we are in our middle years, the days go so fast that the thirty days will be over soon.

Getting sugar, simple starches, and artificial sweeteners our of the system is going to be a repeat process; very few people are 100% free of them.  So, when we fall off the wagon for a day, week, or more, the best thing is to have a plan to get back on the path, and the Whole 30-60-90, however long you want or need, is a great mental device to improve our physical health.

Yours in a Whole 30 for March,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

A person I read on another blog suggested to another reader that if she was struggling with cravings to test her blood glucose/sugar (BG) at that point, and chart what was happening. Her suggestion was based on the fact that many people can be hypoglycemic and unaware of it unless they do regular testing.

A blood glucose meter can be purchased at any drugstore or online very reasonably, and I found that it has been very helpful to me the last few years to make sure I don’t get diabetic. Increased BG is the first sign that a person is heading into dangerous diabetic territory.

This home testing is how I found I had reactive hyploglycemia, and many people, probably all of those who struggle with cravings, are experiencing the rapid rise, then equally rapid fall of blood glucose; that’s really the definition of a craving. If blood sugar stays pretty level, then you won’t get cravings.

For some good information on how to test both fasting blood glucose and determine what your norms are, go to http://www.bloodsugar101.com/.

The first rule of getting control of sugar-starch-artificial sweeteners is to know what triggers are causing the problems, and regular BG testing is the best and easiest way to find out.

Yours in learning,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

I came across the following about how to move towards creating new habits to replace our old, unhealthy habits. I’m always willing to try something new or different if it will help me get to my goals.

Source: http://www.ultimatehealthliving.com/creating-healthy-habits/

In his research on Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Malz established that it takes approximately 21 days of consistent application to change a habit. This time-frame allows for our brains to create new memory traces and for the information to become etched in your brain. With focus, determination, and approximately 3 weeks you can start turning your good intentions into life-long actions.

Irrespective of your habits, the following tips can help you to maximize your investment in yourself:

• Determine your goals before inviting feedback from others. Being clear of our personal direction minimizes the pressure of committing to another person’s vision of your life.

• Start slowly. Some of our habits have been nurtured over a lifetime and expecting everything to change overnight can be an exercise in futility.

• Use visual cues. Start with a list of the benefits or desired outcomes you envision when you successfully establish the habit. Post this list somewhere visible as a reminder of your commitment to yourself.

• Free your space. Rid your home, office and other areas of any poor-habit supporting items. For example, remove cigarettes and ashtrays if you are trying to stop smoking or remove junk food from your cupboards if the goal is to eat healthier. Minimizing temptation bolsters the energy we need to avoid automatically returning to old habits.

• Call in the pros. Trying to successfully incorporate healthy habits in our lives sometimes requires the support of a professional. This could mean inviting feedback from a professional organizer to help with organization challenges, working with an advisor to establish sustainable financial habits or joining a team of like-minded individuals.

• Celebrate the “small wins” and the “big steps”. Recognizing progress at different stages helps us to acknowledge and enjoy the process of change while remaining on task to accomplish our habit goals.

Yours in working towards a better self,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

When avoiding foods that cause us problems we sometimes don’t eat enough or often enough. I used to get into trouble with this all the time. I would be so busy all day long that I wouldn’t stop to eat, but when I did get around to eating, I ate way too much, and my resistance to sugary/starchy junk was very low.

New studies have shown that resistance is indeed much lower and our ability to exercise control or will power or avoid the sugars is lessened. (For more on will power or self control see: http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=25&editionID=210&ArticleID=1997)

I’m now trying to make a point of eating a little something, like a half ounce of cheese or some nut butter on a piece of fiber dense cracker-bread, and the like, to keep my hunger in check while I try to limit my caloric intake, since I’m still working to lose some weight.

Every little bit of new information is helpful, so I keep reading in the hope of learning all I can to insure my health for now and the future.

Yours on the journey of wellness,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

I had two bad days a earlier this month; not horrible, but bad for me. Started when I was on a trip, which is often a time when I feel more stress and also have less control over my food. Of course I paid for it by feeling awful physically, and mentally.

It was a bump in the road, not the end of the world. That’s what I keep reminding myself. Like lots of people, I have to work very hard, very diligently in order to keep my weight in check, and to avoid the FQ Principle when one bad carb food quickly can lead to another worse carb food.

We all have those days. The key is to stop as fast as possible and not let one eating event turn into days or weeks or more.

Never give up, keep on trying is my motto. So I’m back in high gear doing another round of very careful eating for a few weeks to get down a few pounds. There’s nothing like a project to get the motivation up. But diet fatigue, inadequate sleep, worries, various challenging life events can make anyone have a bad day. It’s what we do most of the time that matters.

Yours in never giving up…

Nan aka Sugarbaby