60 Minutes video

So this quitting sugar thing is really catching a lot of media attention!  60 Minutes had a great story last Sunday about sugar as a toxin!

Click here to see it. VERY worth the time to watch.

Coasting.

I haven't posted in awhile. I'm having a rough time...  not keeping sugar free, suffering post-race depression (if that exists!) and not losing weight. I'm not GAINING, but I'm back where I was in July - fluctuating between the same few pounds (154-157). I haven't been gorging on sugar, but I also haven't been watching that hidden stuff in sauces or dressings. Also I've been eating fruit again (including bananas, but I'm not back to 4+ in a day :-)).

So I'm not here to blow your mind, I'm not going to be inspiring anyone today, for sure.  Just wanted to give a little status update so you don't think I've fallen off the face of the earth.

Starting Week Six

Saturday started week 6 of my no sugar journey.  And I'm still learning things!
For example, my mom called me today and informed me that table salt has added -- yes, you got it -- SUGAR! Why? Apparently the process used to refine salt into "table" salt makes it bitter. Add some sugar (dextrose, specifically) and Voilà! Table salt!

I feel like I'm becoming a more informed consumer. I'm reading a book called Suicide by Sugar.  In it, the author discusses different afflictions from sugar, the hazards and also the dangers of maltodextrin. Wikipedia defines maltodextrin as such:

Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide that is used as a food additive. It is produced from starch by partial hydrolysis and is usually found as a creamy-white hygroscopic spraydried powder. Maltodextrin is easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose, and might be either moderately sweet or almost flavorless. It is commonly used for the production of sodas and candy. It can also be found as an ingredient in a variety of other processed foods.

 What I get from this scientific paragraph? "Maltodextrin is bad and we should avoid it." (ok, maybe it's from a combination of not understanding more than 10 words above and the stuff I have read in the Suicide by Sugar book. :-))

So I'm slowly moving my family to whole foods - maltodextrin is present in almost every pre-packaged food I've looked at, from spice mixes to marinated pork tenderloin.

I'm really leaning on a local produce co-op that we've been using for awesome veggies. I'm looking forward to getting back to some fruit soon (2 weeks!) and we always get lots of great tasting stuff!  I'm experimenting with different ways to make old favorites. I got a recipe from a friend for Oatmeal waffles that I'm just leaving the brown sugar out of the recipe. They taste GREAT now, with some pecans chopped up on top.  My daughter loved them with applesauce and hubby had a little powdered sugar and butter.   I made sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving - instead of putting in 1/2 cup of brown sugar and covering them in marshmallows, I used butter and cinnamon. They were a big hit!

My cravings aren't completely gone. I was making our Advent calendar for this Christmas season tonight and purchased a bag of my (formerly) favorite holiday candies -

Hershey's mint miniatures!  (The dark chocolate/mint was my favorite)    It was all I could do not to open every single one and eat them. So no, my cravings aren't GONE. But did I eat them all? Nope. Did I even eat one? Nope. Instead, I went and got some peppermint chocolate tea.  NOT the same, but definitely satisfied the craving in a sufficient way!


So here goes week 6 in the journey. I will be posting some updated stats soon. I will say that as of my weigh in last week, I was 1.5lbs from my first weight loss goal!

Sweet Education

So now you know - if you've been following along - that sugar is hidden everywhere. But do you know how to find it?  Do you know all the different names it goes by?  

Let's play a game - how many times can you find sugar listed on this label? Go on, I'll give you a minute. 

 

 So, how many could you find? 

High fructose corn syrup; Corn syrup; Brown sugar; Sugar; Honey; Molasses

So what gooey goodness is this, you ask?  Brownies? Cookies? 

Nope. Plain bread crumbs. The sugar content on the label was 4g. If you were just to look at the sugar content, you wouldn't have noticed all the different (overkill) ingredients. 

So here's a list of what to look for, with the rule of thumb being anything ending in "-ose" is sugar. The exception here is lactose, which doesn't affect your blood sugars the way the others do and is okay to consume during a sugar detox.

list found at About.com

• Agave Nectar
• Barley Malt Syrup
• Corn sweetener
• Corn syrup, or corn syrup solids
• Dehydrated Cane Juice
• Dextrin
• Dextrose
• Fructose
• Fruit juice concentrate
• Glucose
• High-fructose corn syrup
• Honey
• Invert sugar
• Lactose
• Maltodextrin
• Malt syrup
• Maltose
• Maple syrup
• Molasses
• Raw sugar
• Rice Syrup
• Saccharose
• Sorghum or sorghum syrup
• Sucrose
• Syrup
• Treacle
• Turbinado Sugar
• Xylose

Also - evaporated cane juice, which Wikipedia describes like this: "Nutritional benefits are minimal; evaporated cane juice contains trace minerals and vitamins but has the same amount of calories as table sugar."

The other thing to watch out for are "sugar alcohols." These are the things they add to "sugar free" products.  (Read more about them here). While there technically isn't sugar proper in these foods, the "fake" sugars are still fooling your body into thinking that sugar craving is being satisfied.  During a detox from the addiction to sugar, it's best to avoid this as well. 

I'm 20 days into this journey, only 1 1/2 hours from being a solid three weeks in. I must say, it's not as wholly-consuming as it was in the beginning. I've armed myself with "safe" snacks. I'm learning there are certain things I will need to make from scratch instead of purchase in order to avoid unnecessary sugars. I do still have cravings, mostly in the afternoon when lunch is over and I'm hurting for something sweet to "finish" my meal. But I'm staying strong, staying true to this journey. 

And that's what it is. A journey. People keep asking "are you ever going to eat sugar EVER AGAIN?" Why of course I will! But when I do, I'm praying I'm able to stop at one piece of candy, a reasonable amount of ice cream, a few bites of cake. I will evolve and get to that place. Right now? I don't think I could stop yet, as I still crave it. Every day I'm feeling stronger and more in control of my situation! 

Dirty Words

There are four dirty words that Nic mentioned in one of her first blog posts that are really having quite an impact on me lately... high fructose corn syrup. I've seen the ads that say "high fructose corn syrup is made from corn and as healthy as natural sugar" and then there's the other side of the battle about how awful the stuff is for you. I'm not jumping in that debate, because honestly, I don't really care. I've learned how harmful the effects of the ridiculous amount of sugar that's been put into just about everything we eat is, so it doesn't really matter to me if HFCS is the same as sugar. Sugar is not really my body's friend - whether that's granulated sugar, HFCS, corn syrup, Splenda, etc.

My roommate had fruit snacks that were made with real fruit juice... with 14 grams of sugar in a tiny .5 oz package! A coworker had a single-serving cup of fruit with over 20 grams of sugar in it! The "healthy" ice cream bar a friend was eating had a whopping 30 grams of sugar. How is that healthy?! And now I've learned to look not only at the grams of sugar listed on the nutrition facts, but to also scope out the ingredient list for these sneaky little devils, it just gets me more frustrated than ever. Why do we put this stuff in everything??

Here are some things I've found recently that have HFCS in them that I would never have given a second thought to before this journey: Nyquil/Robitussin/Delsym (only the liquid kind, but of course that's the only cold medicine that actually knocks me out), Land O Lakes fat-free half & half, Pepperidge Farms' line of 100% whole grain bread, Ritz crackers, sweet pickle relish and most jarred pickles, all varieties of Miracle Whip, Campbell's vegetable soup (the microwave cup kind), etc.

Obviously, HFCS is found in a lot more foods than these. But I didn't expect it to be in most of these! I have never before read the label to my cold medicine. I had to run to the store this morning to find a truly sugar-free half & half I could put in my coffee at work. These things sneak up on me and I'm realizing like never before how much sugar and sugar-substitutes I have really been consuming. It almost makes me sick to think about. No wonder I was getting sick all the time. No wonder I craved sugar on a daily - if not hourly - basis. Have you found these hidden sugars in any other surprising foods?

When I first downloaded the e-book and told Nicole I was going to try not eating sugar for awhile, I thought it would be easy. I had no idea how many varieties of sugar are out there or the extreme amount that is in most of my normal "healthy foods." I'm learning a lot of foods aren't nearly as healthy as I once thought they were. And I'm not surprised that although I was losing weight on WW, I wasn't really getting much healthier. In fact, after a year on WW, I was getting physically sick and spending a lot more money on doctor (and even Emergency Room) visits with stomach issues.

I'm anxious to see after several weeks of diligently sticking to this plan if and how that changes. I know I was feeling like a new person after my first sugar-free week. And yes, I've made mistakes and I've eaten sugar along the way - some intentional and some not. But I'm back on track and I'm committing to see this through. I will be posting my stats - weight, measurements, photo, etc. - sometime this weekend in hopes that will be another thing to keep me accountable to this. But for now, it's back to work now that my really sugar-free coffee is kicking in! Happy Friday, friends!