Six weeks in and ……

So it has now been 6 weeks since I have begun this sugar free lifestyle.  I haven’t really keep count,  as it just feels like a nature part of life now, it’s  just that someone asked me the other day and I really had no idea so decided to count it up 😉  It has taken a bit of work to be sugar free at times especially in double checking labels of food that we had regularly and replacing them for homemade versions when I found they contained sugar, pre-made tortilla is a perfect example of this. However on the whole, with the cupboards set up with heaps of sugar free foods it has been pretty easy. 

I got through Easter sugar free (though not fructose free as I had some dried currents in our homemade hot cross buns) and a weekend away then last week a few bit of sugar did creep in.  Some as part of meals out (stewed fruit given to us, cream sweeten up and in a salad dressing) and some through choice (curry paste with less than 3gm per 100gm).  I have got to say that while there was a bit of guilt I do try to work on the 80/20 rule in life so figured that as long as the serves were small and I wasn’t making a habit of it, things were all good.  The thing is that I really noticed the difference in my moods on the day after having that wee bit of sugar.  I suddenly felt irritable and a bit volatile along with a mild headache which nagged ever so slightly at me. Thankfully I had a few Bach Flower Remedies to get me through along with a bit of tapping and by the following day I felt good as gold again 😉  Maybe it was coincidence that I had those feelings all in the same week as I had bits of sugar, maybe …….. and then again maybe not.  I certainly felt calmer when no sugar was in my diet that is for sure and it has been a good reminder of why I really began this – to improve my health and well-being (emotionally and physically).

What was left of the second batch minus the crosses as little ones were eager to begin munching.

My journey to giving up sugar has been a gradual one in improving my health, until this final cutting off of all sugar (apart from fresh fruit) that is.  When we decided to have kids I gave up alcohol, luckily for me I was pregnant 2 weeks after that so I had to continue with that sugar loss 😉  From there a realisation that wheat was playing havoc with my stomach made me reduce baked goods. My daughter then developed eczema and while there were no allergies it seemed that the more processed i.e. the more ingredients in it, the more she flared up.  So that meant that I began reading labels more and once you read those labels it isn’t long before you are buying food stuffs without sugar.  I was however still a big fizzy bubbly (soda) drinker, tomato sauce user and a humongous honey hogger!  These were my staples for coping, and feeling normal, until I read an article last December about how fizzy drinks can deplete the calcium in your bones not to mention what it does to your teeth.  Being a runner – well that is what I call the thing I do in the mornings 😉 – I didn’t want to be breaking any bones so the fizzy bubbly was the next to go.

That left my trusty friends honey and tomato sauce (ketchup), along with fresh and dried fruit giving me most of my sugar hits.  It is at this point that I read about Sarah Wilson’s book. ‘What??!! Give up fruit and honey?’ ‘She must be mental’ I thought.  It planted a seed though. A seed that niggled at me and grew till I eventually went to the library to order her book.  It was then that I found and read David Gillespie’s book and the rest is history 😉  No more tomato sauce and no more honey!  I can hardly believe it some days.

I have kept in the fresh fruit for a snacks if needed (dried fruit has been left a bit abandoned on the shelf except of Easter buns)  and use this in baking. It just comes down to preferring to use naturally occurring products versus processed, like dextrose, for me.  I save the dextrose for those occasions, like my Mum’s birthday cake, when the receiver really just wants to taste a yummy sweet baked good and not banana dense wholemeal option 😉 My experiments with the glucose syrup, which I found out is made with completely GM free corn from NZ thanks Queen Fine Foods, have not been that successful so that has be ditched too.  I’m happy to have fresh fruit, mostly oranges, pears and kiwifruit now, as the sweeter in my life (baking  and raw) instead of all the other stuff.  I can go into shops and walk down the lollie (sweets) aisle with ease and even the chocolate section isn’t a big attraction anymore.  I do still have cravings for food however it is just that food, not the sweet sugar stuff that I used to think about.  Usually nuts can quell it pretty fast, thankfully, along with my trusty Bach Flower Remedies 😉

The past 6 weeks have certainly been an interesting journey into what works best for my body and also just how much I don’t miss all those sugar laden foods when I am eating whole, nourishing foods. Here is to continued health, vitality and enjoying life.

Till next week.

Arohanui

Y

www.becominghealthy.co.nz

 

Untying the bonds

I always thought we were pretty good with sugar.  I read labels and where-ever possible buy products without sugar on the labelling, I make our bread, we don’t do juices for the kids or fizzy drinks (only fairly recent for me I have to say and of course himself has his homebrew) and I make most stuff at home either omitting sugar, like my pikelets, or reducing the sugar by 1/3 to 1/2 the recipe amounts.    Sure the kids had the odd treat but not everyday or every week so all and all I was feeling not too shabby about the whole sugar thing.

Well I was until I came a across an interview with Sarah Wilson of ‘I quit sugar’ fame in which she was describing how she thought she was good too.   She ate fruit, don’t we all?  She used honey for sweeter, just as we do, and she dried fruit as snacks.  Then the big shocker came as she talked about how this was still sugar and the amounts of sugar they each contained and that she was actually addicted to sugar.  It really must of  hit something somewhere as I kept thinking about it, over and over.  Could I really give up sugar?  Honey maybe but fruit?  Surely I wasn’t addicted! We need fruit and dried fruit is just all that goodness condensed isn’t it?  Somewhere inside I was panicking a little in the knowledge that actually maybe, just maybe, I was a little hooked on sugar too.  Not the white stuff but sugar never the less.

I had read many other times about the addictive nature of sugar and not really thought that much about it due to the fact that I didn’t really use sugar anymore, aside from a wee bit in baking. I had even heard about addiction and how the addicts brain was actually wired to work normally with the toxin and abnormally without it, once again I didn’t make any links.  I had even thought that I needed to reduce my honey intake in a bid to improve health but that is about as far as I got and that maybe that wee bit of baking was actually growing since we begun home-educating. Truth was that I was enjoying my sweet treats too much to want to take the information and action it.  Sarah’s interview stuck with me though and I decided to get her book from the library, still doubting that I would need to give up honey and fruit.  As the library didn’t have in stock I reserved it and began to browse.  Low and behold what should I come across but ‘The sweet poison quit plan’ by David Gillespie.  Hmmmm…. I thought maybe the universe is trying to tell me something?

One of our Monday baking sessions.

I got it out and soon realised that this was the guy that started it all.  Sarah had used his research and advice to quit her sugar habit and it seemed that he was now going to be guiding our family of four through the same process.  The evidence in the book, along with information I already knew about food and me was enough for me to see that I was indeed hooked on the stuff – honey and fruit being my big staples and chocolate or bread being my cravings.  In brief David Gillespie explains how it is the fructose portion of sugar which is the big problem.  Not only is it making us fat, it is also making us addicted and causing major health issues to boot.  Yes we need sugar and yes we actually convert much of our food into sugar however this is glucose.  We need glucose not fructose.  In fact our body doesn’t even know what to do with a whole heap of fructose apart from store it directly as fat and as a lovely aside make us addicted to the ‘high’ it gives us each time we indulge.  The scariest thing is that is it is so so much that is everyday food.

So with that very brief and incomplete background I have decided to quit sugar as I’m not that into being addicted to anything let alone being poisoned by it! If you want the facts then check out David’s book ‘The Sweet Poison Quit plan’ or others of his books.  Needless to say that I will keep you updated how everything goes for me and the family.  So far the kids have only had fruit with fructose in it over the last two days and already I am noticing a difference in their appetite, as in they are eating more real food that I present, and that all that honey I have been feeding them certainly has had them hankering for sweet stuff too much.  Herself jnr and myself have both had a bit of a clearing as far as sinus go yesterday and today – not sure if it is related or a big old coincidence – and she also went on the search for sweet things in the cupboard this afternoon, just as I too was feeling the sugar crave hit.  We managed with some nuts and popcorn instead thankfully. 

It is actually nice knowing that I’m not feeding them up with sugar, or myself for that matter, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how this whole thing pans out. 

Arohanui

Y

www.becominghealthy.co.nz