This Blog Is For Women

For a while, I thought that people were exaggerating when they compared sugar to a drug.  But then came the studies which compare the similarities in brain stimulation between drug users and people who had eaten foods containing refined sugar.  These are quite remarkable, and they do make a good case for the similarity.

Recently I’ve gained a new appreciation for the similarity between sugar and drugs.  It came from this quote from William Dufty’s 1975 book Sugar Blues:

“In about fortyeight hours, I was in total agony, overcome with nausea, with a crashing migraine. If pain was a message, this was a long one, very involved, intense but in code. It took hours to break the code. I knew enough about junkies to recognize reluctantly my kinship with them. I was kicking cold turkey, the thing they talked about with such terror. After all, heroin is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the poppy and they refine it into opium and then they refine it to morphine and finally to heroin. Sugar is nothing but a chemical. They take the juice of the cane or the beet and they refine it to molasses and then they refine it to brown sugar and finally to strange white crystals. It’s no wonder dope pushers dilute pure heroin with milk sugar —lactose—in order to make their glassine packages a treat to the eye. I was kicking all kinds of chemicals cold turkey—sugar , aspirin, cocaine, caffeine, chlorine, fluorine, sodium, monosodium glutamate, and all those other multisyllabic horrors listed in fine print on the tins and boxes I had just thrown in the trash. I had it very rough for about twenty-four hours, but the morning after was a revelation. I went to sleep with exhaustion, sweating and tremors. I woke up feeling reborn.”

—–Sugar Blues, William Dufty, 1975, Warner Books, Inc, p. 22–3

Right, heroin and sugar.  Cousins.

I don’t use heroine.  Why should I ‘use’ sugar?  The problem is that it’s very hard to kick the sugar habit.  It’s found in almost every processed food, and is so easily obtainable.  And it’s highly addictive.  The best solution is to work hard, stop consuming it and never look back.

Have you seen the new slim Alec Baldwin?  He has embarked upon a sugar free diet, and he looks phenomenal. If Alec Baldwin can do it you can, too!  In an interview done earlier this month he reveals how he did it, and he also exposes the dangers of eating sugar  Hear him speak about healthy eating in this interview with Dr. Robert Lustig. Transcript here.

Sugar, it’s found its way into an alarming number of the foods that we consume on a daily basis.  We’re often completely unaware of how much sugar we’re eating.  If you’re eating food that is packaged, or prepared by someone else, you can bet that it’s high in sugar.

Recent changes to the recommended daily intake of sugar have resulted in a much lower upper limit for dietary “added sugars.” We’re not talking about the sugars found naturally occurring in most fruits and vegetables, we’re talking about the kind that are added to foods to make them sweeter, sugars like glucose, fructose,  sucrose — beet and cane sugar, whether white or brown — and high-fructose corn syrup.  It’s all sugar, and it’s all bad – if not consumed in moderation.

Moderation is the key.  But, it is also the problem.  As a society, we have lost the ability to gauge moderation in sugar consumption.

The American Heart Association recommended sugar intake for adult women is  20 grams of sugar per day, for adult men, it’s  36 grams daily, and for children 12 grams a day. Wow.   Let’s see how that might work.

• 1 teaspoon of granulated sugar:  4 grams of sugar
• Multigrain Bagel from Dunkin Donuts:  9 grams of sugar
• Newman’s Own Tomato & Basil spaghetti sauce, 1/2 cup = 12 grams of sugar
• Bull’s Eye Brown Sugar & Hickory BBQ sauce, 2 tablespoons: 14 grams of sugar
• Kellogg’s Smart Start Strong Heart Cereal, Toasted Oat: 17 grams of sugar
• Delmonte diced pears in light syrup, single serving cup: 17 grams of sugar
• Weight Watchers Blueberry Muffins: 18 grams of sugar
• 1 6oz serving of fruit on the bottom yogurt:  25 grams.  Oops!  That’s the whole day’s allotment!
• V8 Fusion Vegetable Fruit 100% juice, 8 ounces: 26 grams of sugar!
• Minute Maid lemonade, 8oz: 29 grams of sugar!
• 18 jelly beans:  32 grams of sugar!
• Glaceau Vitamin Water, 20 ounce bottle:32 grams of sugar
• 1 can of Barq’s Old Time Rootbeer: 39 grams of sugar
• A small Dairy Queen chocolate sundae:  41 grams of sugar

Some of the most surprising sources of added sugar are items like spaghetti sauce, and yogurt:  foods that we have come to think of as healthy.

Low sugar options

• plain or Greek style yogurt:  2-5 grams of sugar
• water:  0 grams of sugar
• home made spaghetti sauce: limited added sugar
• home juiced vegetables: 0 grams of sugar
• avoid muffins, ice cream, pop, bagels, and packaged fruit.

Eliminating added sugar from your diet really boils down to one thing:  Eat natural foods, in their whole state, prepared by yourself with little added sugar.  If it’s got a package, read the lable, chances are it also has more sugar than you’re willing to add to your diet.

Notice that we are not counting the naturally occurring sugar found in fruits and vegetables.  These bring fibre, minerals and vitamins into your diet that are essential for good health, and they also supply an adequate amount of sugar for healthy body function when eaten as part of a healty diet.  Fruits and vegetables are sweeter than they have ever been in history due to being selectively grown for taste appeal.  Consuming these natural foods will provide us with all the sugar we need to be healthy.

Want more information about sugar and it’s effects try the following:

Sugar- Are You Addicted?

60 minutes, Is Sugar Toxic?

Rodale:  Report Provides New Sugar Recommendations for Adults

FitWatch: Signs that you may be addicted to Sugar

So, I have been thinking about why we sometimes struggle with sticking with a healthy lifestyle or any important life mission, for that mater.

One key factor in struggle is trying to “go-it-alone.”    The Beatles said it best:  I get by with a little help from my friends…gonna try with a little help from my friends.  My Mom used to tell me when I was a kid that “birds of a feather flock together.”

We all need support and encouragement, and good examples. Seeking out people who are after the same thing you are and interacting with them is a sure way to effortlessly move in the right direction.

This is true in all areas of your life from fitness goals, to work ethic on the job, to saving money, to holding your moral values in check.

Have you ever had a job where everyone you work with complains all day about the boss and the work they have to do?  It’s not long before you might find yourself thinking the same thing.  You started the job with a positive attitude and you personally don’t have any issues with management, but the fact that everyone around you is complaining will leave you a little drained and negative at the end of the day.

This same thing can work in reverse.   Churches have known this for centuries.  They bring like-minded people together to encourage them to maintain their religious ideals.  Seeing others uphold their values encourages people to do the same.

On the flip side of the coin, street gangs create exclusivity and encourage their members to stick together.  This creates a homogeneous group of thugs.  They have an image to maintain and the behaviour of one person affects the image of the group.

So, it should be no surprise that meeting your personal goals can be much easier when you have a peer group with a similar goal.  In fact, you might even find yourself exceeding your original goal if you have a community of like-minded people all working along toward their own related goal.

Friends who are actively following the primal blueprint can encourage you by:

1. being examples of success,
2. recognizing your efforts (and sacrifices,)
3. giving you ideas,
4. sharing recipes,
5. recommending websites,
6. sharing stuggles and needing your encouragement,
7. bringing paleo/primal friendly food to gatherings,
8. not distracting you or tempting you with foods from the SAD,
9. giving you someone to walk with or get out in the sun with,
10. having someone to set an example for – you know they’ll know if you cheat!
11. making you laugh… and we all know how important that can be!

You can do it!  You know you can, and so do we.

I am looking for a group of people to share my primal journey with, and I think since you’ve read this post that you are one of them.  Can you help me along my way? Just making a comment or suggestion on this blog post, or any one that strikes your interest.  Together we can give each other a bit of encouragement and be better than we ever would be on our own. Weight Watchers does it, book clubs do it.  We can do it too!

Commenting is easy just scroll down a little(!) you’ll find the reply box, or the tiny little comments link.  Be the first to add something.  Even just a little “hello.”

Thanks

~Lisa

5 things that happened when I stopped following the Primal lifestyle.  Aka …. If you fall off the Primal Wagon, you’ll feel like a zombie.

Going primal made so many great changes in my life. You can read about them in my post 5 things that happened to me as a result of starting a Primal lifestyle.    I should have called the post 5 Great things…because every one of the changes was a positive one.

You might wonder how I would ever let myself slip off.  And you’d be justified in wondering this.  I am perplexed myself.  Essentially, it boiled down to laziness and procrastination.  I had been very consistent with my efforts for the first 6 weeks and then with a trip away (all you can eat and drink is hard to completely resist,) and some unexpected life hiccups it just became less of a priority.

These are the things that happened when I fell off.  They didn’t happen all at once, but they all built up simultaneously over time.

1. I gained weight.  It didn’t happen all at once, it creeped up.  I was off track for about 5 weeks and I  managed to gain 5 pounds.  This was after losing between 9 and 10 pounds in the first 2 months I was on Primal.  Gaining weight you just lost is like losing money on the stock market.  Now my jeans are snug at the waist again.  No fun at all.

2. I was more tired.  It became harder to get up in the morning when the alarm went off.  And I wasn’t sleeping as well.

3. I was less regular.  I’m not going to elaborate on this one, since I think most of my readers are not 7 year old boys who enjoy discussions about toilet issues.

4. I became cranky.  Tiredness, weight gain and irregularity can do that to a girl.

5. I was less motivated.  Less motivated to dance, to run, to bound up the stairs.  I had less resolve to jump start my way back into the Primal way of eating.  I was succumbing to the SAD (Standard American Diet.)  I felt a bit like a zombie, just not the flesh eating kind.

(6. I stopped blogging.) Likely a result of #5 combined with super-busy life events.

Anyway, you’ll be happy to learn that I’ve the spark I needed to get back on track and I am starting to feel the goodness from it already.