Sugaraholics

Now that we are in the more sociable summer season many of us tend to be eating outdoors, eating out  at restaurants, more often, and in general sharing food with friends and family or on vacations when and where we are not in our regular control of food.  This does not have to become an excuse for giving in to eating foods that we know will set us off on a binge for several days–or even weeks.

Strategy and planning can keep us on track while enjoying all the non-food benefits of gatherings and vacations where we feel more vulnerable. If it is a sharing event, then take your reliable tasty dishes that everyone will probably praise to the rooftops.

Before going to a restaurant you can help to steer the choice of where, like a good steakhouse or seafood place; most restaurants now posts their menus on line, and you can find a few safe choices. My daughter always enjoys at trip to PFChang’s since there isn’t one near where she lives, and I combed their menu and found around ten tasty options I can enjoy there. I take advantage of those hot sauces to get more out of my dishes like steamed Buddha’s Delight.  But planning makes a difference!  If you decide that this occasion you will enjoy a rare treat, decide how you will do this; I opt to share with my spouse or ask for a bowl of plain berries. Most restaurants can provide berries at the cost of a regular dessert.

We are hosting some family members to stay at our house, and I have asked them in advance if they like the kind of protein diet we eat, which means I don’t have an excuse for buying junk that would unduly tempt me, like cold cereals.

A very minor amount of thinking and you will be proud of being in control. Staying sugar sober is more important than any food we might eat. A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips is a well-known saying, but may a sugaraholic would add, and days or  weeks out of control on a sugar binge.

Working the plan,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

I read a few blogs faithfully and on each one will be two or three people, more women than men to my dismay, who have more excuses than Bayer has pills.  They can create more scenarios for why they can’t quit sugars, artificial sweeteners, starches than you can offer helpful hints. Why is that?

I believe it is related to my last post which  is they have infantile desires to hold on to their behaviors for reasons we cannot fathom, but in some way serve them.  We know that locked in a room and given the kind of non-sweet wholesome foods recommended by paleo-primal diets these people would not starve, or go crazy, or exhibit most of the symptoms they list as sure things if they change their behaviors. Further, why do they frequent sites that advocate doing the things they really don’t want to do, then?

Most likely somewhere in their inner wisdom they know they are fooling themselves, and maybe hope that the truth will eventually set them free. Or–they crave the attention, for they often do dominate these sites with long involved posts that engender sympathy from many readers.

We can make strides to help ourselves, but only if we accept that we must give up the things that keep us fat, sick, and miserable–and quit hoping and hoping for some magic pill that will allow us to continue eating foods that make us fat, for we know that does not exist.

Yours in honesty,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

Many of us who have binged keep our shameful secret close to the chest. We don’t want people to think we are weak, bad, gluttonous, stupid, or any of the likely things people might want to put on us. We actually do a very good job of castigating ourselves, and don’t really need others to tell us how stupid, foolish, counterproductive our actions are.

Everyone slips up and everyone needs to remember that that is part of being human. The surest way to avoid slip ups is to be honest about them. To write them on a journal, tell a loved one about the mishap, and why you think it happened. This provides knowledge, and out of the knowledge we become less likely to repeat the behaviors again.

I had a few missteps recently going to a wedding, and then not tackling the cravings head on when I got home.  After a few days of eating that I did not enjoy, and feeling awful, I got back up on the wagon. C’est la vie!

I don’t know if it is true or just wishful thinking, but it does seem to me that I do far better for longer after I’ve had a bad experience; so maybe nature that programed us for feast and famine is at root. That, though, is not an excuse or license to go out and pig out whenever.  There is a happy balance between our failures and successes. Learn from both, get stronger from both. That seems to me the best way.

Yours in the struggle,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

More and more information is coming out to support one’s conviction that not only sugars are a problem for those who have become overweight or gaining, but that substitute sugars are as bad and maybe even worse.

The best advice is to steer clear; or has the late Jack LaLanne said: If man made it, don’t eat it.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8603394/Diet-drink-consumers-put-on-more-weight.html

Most of us have to go through making the decision whether to cheat or not. It actually does not happen unless we do make the decision, regardless of the excuses we may make to justify it.

The only way to succeed is to make friends with the truth. If you want something, say a piece of birthday cake, then plan for it. Fit it into a scheme that allows you to have it without feeling guilty.  Though we know that abstinence is the best policy, it is better to work a plan that says: I can have one small piece of cake for the birthday. I will make sure it fits into my carbohydrate count for the day.  Otherwise, if you give in, that usually starts a binge cycle.  So, while our goal may be  total abstinence, we will do better to acknowledge what we know to be the truth about ourselves than to say we won’t cheat, then give in to a massive sweet binge.  Just the act of thinking it through may be enough to make you decide it isn’t worth it.

Studies have shown that people are actually good at keeping promises, so promise yourself that you will plan and not allow the sugar to rule the way you eat. Make sure to have plenty of protein and fats before eating any sweet, which will mean your are more satisfied and won’t have the big sugar rush to the brain.

If possible, at most events, take something of your own making that allows you to feel a part of the fun without sacrificing your desire to be in control of the sugars. We can make good decisions, we do make all the decisions, the decisions are not being made for us. But we must remember the powerful effects of sugar, and do all in our power to not allow the sugar to run our lives.

Learning how to be,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

A recent study* showed that fructose is actually worse than plain sugar or glucose. But we know both are bad for us, despite the insistence on the part of many in the medical and nutrition camps that want to tell us to have all the fruit we want.

For people who have become insulin resistant (if you are over weight you are), and even more significant, leptin resistant, then sugar is not just negative, it is bad—regardless of the source.

Natural sugars from fruit, honey, maple syrup, sorghum, yacon syrup are still sugars. They will continue to cause the plague of constant cravings, and ultimately lead to abuse of the natural source. A few pieces of fruit, especially from high sugar varieties like melons, bananas, figs, and the like, are as bad or worse than the person who only puts a teaspoon of sugar in coffee, for the cravings for ever more sugars and starches get worse with time and age and stress to mention the most common.

Fruit, sugars may be controlled for some people, but I doubt they would make their way to this blog or others that decry the dangers of sweets/sweeteners for the population that is growing ever fatter and ever more unhealthy.

So don’t be persuaded by the fruit aka fructose is good for you argument. It is not if you are a sugaraholic.

Working towards better health,

Nan aka Sugarbaby

*http://www.drbriffa.com/2011/06/22/fructose-found-to-be-more-harmful-than-glucose/

Sugar is the enemy of weight loss for most people. That is a given on this webpage, but what makes that true is due to a complex set of factors well detailed by Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories, among others. Further, starchy carbohydrates are sugar in the body, and artificial sweeteners keep the brain on high alert for food coming as promised by the sweet taste, hence cravings that frequently result in binges

There is much yet to be learned about how our evolution designed our nutrition requirements, and much just being discovered about how the processes of hunger, cravings, and the kind of eating the results in obesity. The old calories in-calories-out as a simplistic understanding of weight gain or loss is being disputed right and left, so that as time goes on we can expect a fuller and more accurate understanding of what leads so many of us to gain weight and/or have trouble losing weight.

In 1994 the hormone leptin was discovered, but in a very surprising place, the fat cells. Prior to this discovery, it was generally believed that the fat cells stored, but didn’t create. Then it turned out the leptin is in fact the Master Hormone, directing insulin and ghrelin, and others, since it tells the brain that we do or do not need to eat.

After years of eating too much sugar, starch, and artificial sweeteners, many of us develop not just insulin  resistance, but the concomitant of leptin resistance, so that it is no accident many of us feel like we have no reliable hunger or satiety signals. Until the leptin and insulin get re-sensitized, we will continue this struggle.

Leptin has been getting a lot of attention over at marksdailyapple.com, a blog emphasizing a primal, or more natural, way of eating, that reflects the way most people for most of our human history would have eaten. Ergo: meat, vegetables, fruit, no highly processed or manufactured food; food you could expect to find on a farm in the 1700s, though with grains that are now considered undesirable for many people.

I have been experimenting with the leptin protocol as designed by Dr. Jack Kruse, which borrows heavily from the work of Byron Richards, author of the Mastering Leptin. The object is to spend 6-8 weeks resetting leptin. Here is the protocol: 50-70g of protein within 30minutes of waking; three meals spaced 4-5 hours apart; NO snacking; less than 25-50g of carbohydrate daily; last meal within 4 hours of bedtime.  It is important to not eat outside the times set for that interferes with the leptin signaling to the brain. Most of the people on the threads report a significant decrease in hunger, no or few cravings, weight loss, improved sleep, greater energy and alertness. I am experiencing all these as well.

Below are some sites you might want to examine to learn more about how leptin is related to our compulsive desire for sweets and carbs. You can expect that I will report on how my eight weeks develops.

Mastering Leptin,  Byron Richards webpage: http://www.wellnessresources.com/weight/articles/what_is_leptin/

Why is Oprah Still Obese? Leptin Part 3

Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker: http://www.chronicneurotoxins.com/learnmore/obesityresearch.cfm

Learning the ropes,                                                                                                                               Sugarbaby

I went into a popular department store today to pick up a couple of items and not for the first time was shaking my head over the fact that even non-food stores seems determined to make us eat.  No doubt marketing research is behind this product placement, but it boggles the mind to figure out why there needs to be Godiva chocolate bars at the brassiere register. Or, the shoes, or just about any of the many check out in these stores.

Not so many years ago you had to at least go to a chocolate department, aisle, or store to get such sweets, but getting through any store without the assault of sugar everywhere you turn is becoming a challenge.

What about parents trying to get the week’s shopping done when the worst hazard is the checkout aisle, where both sides are lined with candy, soda, and gum, even baked goods nowadays.

So here comes the tired harassed, probably highly stressed customer trying to just get the underwear or shoes or salad greens for dinner, and s/he must run the gauntlet to get out of the store without succumbing to the dozens of sugary/starchy options just in arms reach.

As I experienced for many years, you may do well for days and weeks avoiding the foods that are most addictive, but given the right amount of stresses, a low day or hour, and most people will fall victim to the barrage.

What we who finally recognize our status as sugaraholics must keep in mind is that the addictive quality is what puts these foods in those places to begin with. Researchers know how easily we will give in, and those dollars add up quickly.

What we sugaraholics also have to recognize is that we cannot so much as entertain the idea of having any amount of the sugars-artificial sweeteners-starches without become once again caught up in days of bingeing.

Imagine how this scenario would be for an alcoholic. What if they had to face bottles of gin, whiskey, and wine at every checkout? They would soon become prisoners in their homes if they found it too challenging.

More and more I order as much as I can online to avoid having to traverse the stores and their irritating product placement. Even drug stores will ask at the checkout: Would you like to try our 2-for-1 candy bars?  No! I’m trying to be healthy; wouldn’t one at least expect a drug store to help in that process?  But apparently making profits out strips any other consideration.

The best defense is a good offense, as they say in sports. So look at this array of sweets for what it is, a way to manipulate people into buying something they do not need, or even want. I’ve decided I will not participate in such blatant money grubbing. There is always a better option waiting for me at home, or in a place where I am in control of the outcome.

Always on the defense against sugar,                                                                        Sugarbaby

“I can’t ever have chocolate ice cream or brownies again!”

“You mean, no bread, ever?”

“What, no pasta! I can’t give up pasta.”

“But what about Thanksgiving or holy days?”

“My kids wouldn’t go along.”

“You can have treats, but just not too much. It’s calories in, calories out.”

These are a few of the things I have heard people say about going on a lower carb, no sugar eating plan. I have personally thought several of them myself.  People fear change, period. People fear personal change, that is, changes in how they behave, even more.  No doubt there is a biological basis for this fear, but we can look at our way of thinking and evaluate it for its merits or misconceptions or fears or anything else that might get in the way of our health and happiness.

What strikes me as interesting is that I’ve heard no one say the following when engaging me about my low carb diet:

“What, I wouldn’t be craving all the time?”

“You mean I can lose all this fat and get healthy?”

“I could cure my pre-diabetes/diabetes condition?”

“I could be lean and fit again?”

“My kids won’t struggle with mental and physical conditions brought on by excessive sugars?”

“You mean I will still enjoy holiday meals without all the starch and sugar?”

The great psychologist Albert Ellis who put rational thinking on the boards pointed out in his many books that the rational, logical way of thinking is often the last recourse for most people. We know many things on the rational level, yet emotions will trump them time and again. Think of anything you truly regret having done, and chances are very high that you knew, logically, that you should not do it, but you did anyway for other emotional or self-indulgent reasons.

Sometimes people don’t want to change at such a deep level they delude themselves that what they are doing is right, or acceptable, or that eventually it will lead them to some mythical promised land. These are people so attached or devoted to their behaviors that any change is unthinkable.

Never underestimate the mind’s capacity for rationalization.  Here are some classics:

This one won’t hurt.

I’ll start tomorrow.

A little will be okay.

I deserve it.

It will make me/him/her happy.

When it comes to addressing the truth of our relationship to food, especially sugars, artificial sweeteners, starchy carbs, we are in one state or another, and a sensible person—that is a person with the ability to see reality as it is—will recognize that state. Generally we are either being self-indulgent, self-deluded, or self-controlled.

Once you recognize that being self-indulgent or self-deluded is what is causing you to continue in self-destructive behaviors with food, the sooner you can get on the way to being a person who is self-controlled. To be in control of oneself is a great asset to all kinds of achievement in life. To be out of control is to be at the whim of any passing cookie or donut, and hardly a person who can say s/he is happy with their condition in life.

Yours in the pursuit of self-control,                                                                                      Sugarbaby