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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Sweet Poison



Today it’s my wife birthday, she is 20,089 days young!

We are going to eat birthday cake all day. The cake of life with a thick layer of health icing.

Happy birthday girl, you are like wine, so delicious :)


In yesterday’s post I unscrupulously undressed and show nakedness. I admitted I had addictions, and I want to expand on what I think was my worst one: “I was addicted to sugar” 

Just a reminder: I’m not a doctor or nutritionist; I’m just someone who has spent 55 years walking this earth, reading, observing and learning. From time to time, I might unwillingly state facts that are wrong. There are always people and studies to contradict one another about everything, including nutrition. So I’m adding this disclaimer here; if you do some research and check out nutrition facts and you don’t agree with me, it’s ok as I post about facts I believe to be true.

Maybe all of you already know this fact: I read a few months ago about refined sugar, it equated it to a poison. The reason it’s so bad is because to be digested, refined sugar drains and leaches our body of vitamins and minerals. Refined sugar is not digested by our stomach, our liver converts it into fat.

“According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian consumes 26 teaspoons of sugar per day. That works out to 40 kilograms per year.” That’s a lot of fat, folks. I can’t remember where I read it but it’s even worse in the U.S.

From what I read, a lot of that sugar intake is from soft drinks. Watch-out for those!

Some time ago, my youngest daughter lost 114 pounds. She took two years to do this great accomplishment.

Three years ago, she hit rock bottom, she was down to 150 lbs. From the beginning of her journey, she has been keeping track of the amount of food she eats every day and she has been exercising. Unfortunately, even while still eating less than what a women her age needs to maintain her weight, it has slowly crept back up. In the past 3 years she gained about 25 lbs. She wants to lose those extra pounds.

It’s hard to see a loved one struggling while doing everything they can. In order to help her lose that weight, she recently consulted a nutritionist. The nutritionist asked her to eat normally, stop weighing all her food but to keep track of everything she ate until their next meeting. Not a hard thing to do, my daughter has been tracking her food using Spark People’s web site and can show everything she ate for the past 5 years or so. The nutritionist also told my daugher to stop eating lifesavers and peppermint candy!

My daughter was eating one lifesavers after every lunch and one peppermint candy after supper. One lousy lifesavers is worth about 10 calories! I thought “Come on, don’t listen to the nutritionist, eat your lifesavers”. The nutritionist told my daughter that she was severely addicted to sugar and that one lifesavers a day was feeding her addiction. And when you have an addiction you have a craving and in her case, she always felt like she was starving.

 


It makes so much sense to me now! When I started my health journey, I didn’t plan to ban anything, I thought I’d eat less and temporarily cut off all the junk food, cold turkey. It turns out I actually stopped eating the wrong stuff long enough that when I decided I could re-introduce the “banned” food, I didn’t want them anymore!

What I think happened is that my brain knowing it would get that junk food in a short future, didn’t torture me in wanting them now. But by the time I was ready to eat all that junk food, I was not craving it anymore and therefore didn’t suffer from withdrawal. It turned out to be the easiest change ever.

In the past, I tried to control myself around junk food, eating just one little sweet, just one small ice cream cone; it didn’t work too good for me and before long, I wanted more. Starving for junk food is draining and it takes so much energy. From the beginning, by surrendering to my need to be healthy and by being tough with myself and disciplined the whole process quickly became easier and easier with each passing day.

DON’T surrender; you can rid yourself of any addictions!

Tomorrow I have a challenge for you guys, until then, have a great and leaner day. Thanks for reading, you are such a source of inspiration to me.


18 comments:

  1. Sugar/Carb addiction is the same to my body. My body reacts the same to both. Studies show that a "small" piece of dark chocolate is good for us, but here's the thing.. I have friends who can leave chocolate in their fridge and eat a small piece each day, not this crazy Kajun! that candy wouldn't last a day in my fridge. so I have to complete remove all the sugar & carbs from my home, if not it calls my name...the whole time :)

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    1. Research also say that a glass of red wine is good for you, but, I don't have any sigh!

      I'm very good, you could have a chocolate fondue beside me and (I would not like you, and at night I would do a voodoo doll of you and stick it with needles) it would not get me upset!

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  2. You need to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

    High fructose corn syrup is in sooooo much and it's worse than sugar! Your body doesn't know what to do with it so it's all stored as fat whereas glucose, your muscles and organs will use a big percentage of it and the rest is stored as fat. Also, it's MORE addictive than sugar.

    Different players have a lot of gain from this, especially big pharma. Diabetes is on the rise. There's no cure for it but it sure does generate a lot of money to "control" it.

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    1. Thanks Elaine for the link, pretty discussing! I didn't watch the whole presentation yet, it's over an hour and it exceed my attention span :)

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  3. So many things the average person doesn't know about that makes a huge difference. I swear the food industry likes to keep us ignorant (and addicted) so they can make their obscene profits. You are not only on a health journey but also on an educational journey. The two go hand in hand, and you'll be glad you went down this road. It'll change your life.

    Happy birthday to your lovely wife. Only 20,089 days young, you say? Why she's just a young'un! :)

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    1. Thanks Martha for Christiane wishes but to tell you the true, I was expecting her to become wiser but I'll have to carry that load myself naw naw naw

      I was so ignorant about sugar... no more, and I only scratch the top of the sugar bowl!

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  4. Sugar definitely makes me hungrier! I was really glad that the nutritionist gave my beloved sister the advice to cut it out with the lifesavers and the chocolate drizzled granola bars.

    -WWE

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    1. Sugar made me want more sugar. Stay away from it all WWE, or I'll have to ground you!

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  5. Your daughter now has 35 pounds to lose. After this Easter weekend, I think I'mma go ahead and just say 'NO' to sugar from now on. 1. I did NOT feel good, and 2. I was NOT able to control myself. It's easy to say "NEVEEER AGAIIIN!", but I'm equating it to a drug addiction at this point. Sugar is dangerous, yo.

    - Hairy Toes

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  6. It's interesting how many very obese people are addicted to sugar. I wonder which came first? Did they get overweight because they were born with a predisposition to be addicted to sugar, or did they become overweight after a lifetime of unhealthy diet? Maybe a bit of both. And is it permanent, like alcoholism, so no matter how much weight you lose you can never go back to it - or is it reversible?

    I am obese but it is a fairly recent thing, and I am not addicted to sugar (I have other problems!) Is that because I was not overweight as a child? I am pre-diabetic now so you could definitely say I have problems with sugar, but it makes me feel sick it doesn't make me want to eat more.

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    1. From what I'm checking out now, I would think all very obese people are addicted to sugar. Hey you just need to take 1 soft drink a day and it will result in taking over 40 KG of sugar in one year. But who take 1 soft drink a day?

      Possibly the best thing you could do for yourself, stay away from sugar as much as possible.

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  7. First, Happy Birthday to your wonderful bride.

    Second, congrats to your daughter for all her hard work.

    And lastly, I don't cook or bake or use any refined sugars at all. I don't use corn sugars or syrups, I won't eat that stuff, it's absolute crap on so many levels. It brings nothing to my culinary table and it's a waste of belly space. Rather put something yummy in there like my new flaxmeal, millet flour and oat groat flour (all homemade), in my belly.

    Eating better foods is far more satisfying than the shelves of industrial processed like-food, items.

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    1. Thanks for the wish and my daughter rock. I'm so proud of her!

      I have no idea what is flaxmeal, millet flour and oat groat flour but I think I'm about to find out :) If only I owned a coffee/spice grinder or knew someone that has one, I could do my own :)

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    2. It's just flax seeds turned into a meal. Where almonds can be milled into a flour (lighter), or a meal (not lighter).

      Really fun stuff.

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  8. Great post! Very interesting! Sugar is hard for me to leave behind- really hard! Happy birthday to the wife!

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    1. If I did it, you can do it. It's hard the first few days but it is so easier within a week.

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  9. Belated best wishes to the birthday girl .........

    All the best Jan

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