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| Sugar is bad. mmmmmmKAY. Image Credit |
Some background
If you are new to the theories introduced by the Sweet Poison books, the following excerpt from The Sweet Poison Quit Plan explains it in simple terms:
" Sugar makes you fat. It is converted directly to fat by your liver and it destroys your appetite control so that you want to eat more of everything. The more sugar you eat, the fatter you will be".
Fructose is the bad part of sugar that we need to avoid.
Breaking the Habit
My brain was buzzing after I had read the books. There was so much that I had been eating, thinking they were healthier for me. There were choices I was making for my children, thinking it was better for them. Turns out I had most of it wrong. I was fuming, strangely enough. I had been fed all the wrong stuff and I was sufficiently pissed off.
- I thought FAT was the bad guy. Not sugar.
- I eat dried apricots by the truck load. Turns out eating chocolate bars might have been just as healthy.
- I had heard of fructose and thought it was good!
The Issues
At first I wasn't sure how I would go eliminating sugar from my diet. Having Coeliac Disease means that I already follow a very strict diet. I was about to make life very difficult.
Breakfast is the hardest meal. I normally tuck into a bowl of Carman's Gluten Free Cereal and remove all the fruit anyway (because I hate it and there is too much of it in there). Even if I continue to remove the fruit, the product still has added FRUCTOSE (AHHH!) and honey (bad). I have had Coeliac disease for some 8 years and it is the only Gluten Free cereal that I can stomach and don't have to chew on for 5 hours to be able to swallow it. Saying goodbye is going to be hard.
Another food I have a big problem with is bread. It's taken some 8 years to find a nice Gluten Free bread. Zehnders Gluten Free Pumpkin bread has added sugar. Not enough to make it sweet to taste, but sugar is sugar. I inspect other gluten free breads and they are all very similar. Added sugar. I cannot make my own bread. It's too hard and I have tried before. There is no point switching brands because they taste gross to me and they also have sugar. I could cry. I am not sure if I can continue not to eat this going forward without withering away into nothing. I might need to change the name of this blog to "This is Nobody".
The Withdrawal
I am now at Day 5 of the withdrawal. The last few days have felt as though I have climbed the walls looking for something to satisfy me. The desire for sweet tastes are overwhelming. David advises to do the artificial sweetener thing if you are going nuts. I have had to pop the tops off a few Coke Zero's. It's not something I regularly drink, but at the moment I really need it to get me through.
No sugar means no yummy sweet squishy dried apricots which I used to stuff into my gob with gusto (because I thought they were good for me). I miss them.
It means no baking yummy pikelets and scoffing them hot off the pan. This is hard for me because I love to bake.
I feel like I can't get any satifaction from my food. I don't feel like Taryn. I feel a bit odd. My brain feels slightly muddled. I am irritable and cranky and I find myself very hungry. Since I can't have the sugar, I have been eating a lot more fat than usual. I have been frying off Haloumi cheese and Italian sausage (OMG delicious). Potato chips. Roast potatoes. Nuts. Rice cooked with a bit of butter.
I think having Coeliac disease has helped me in a way. I am used to saying NO to food. I am used to reading ingredient labels. It's just another thing to look out for.
So we are doing ok so far... just approach me with caution!
Oh dear.
ReplyDeleteHow are the kids going with Mummy and her sugar free cranky pants?
Give the bakery in melville a call and see if they add sugars to their gf breads. I know its a bit of a drive, but my mum puts in bulk orders and drives up from rockingham.
Oh and woolies has started stocking a gf crumpet mix.
My brother and sister-in-law are really into this! They've been doing the sugar free thing for months now and they both look and feel a lot better. It all makes sense to me. I've cut out most sugar...but I need to really stick to it to make it work.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about this sugar free thing. MOH and I are both Type 2 diabetics so have to watch our fat and sugar intake but are told fruit is fine for us. Not fruit juice or dried fruit as they are too concentrated but fresh fruit a couple of times a day, especially apples, pears, cherries and strawberries. I often think some of these extreme ideas are just a little too extreme. I am approaching 80 and MOH 82 so sugar has of course been a big part of our life until the diabetes thing came along. I wish you well with your endeavours and realise it must be bad to have to find foods without flour but has a doctor told you not to have fructose? Just a question from me is all.
ReplyDeleteI'm just going back and reading some older posts, to get recipe ideas, and came across this (I've been sugar-free since the beginning of the year, and am now gluten-free as well). I just wanted to say that I know exactly what you mean about not feeling like yourself because you can't get satisfaction from food.
ReplyDeleteI know this feeling goes away (mostly) with time, but it's still there at the beginning! I feel a bit like I'm starting all this again because of the gluten-free stuff. :-)
Thanks for sharing all these great recipes, and your story- it makes the world of difference when people are starting out with something new like this!