What To Do About Sugar?
“sugar doesn’t just sweeten your foods, it also messes with your biology, making you cranky, overweight, and, in a word, sick.” – Sugar Free: The Complete Guide to Quit Sugar & Lose Weight Naturally by Sonoma Press
Pie, donuts, cookies, candy, ice cream they all sound so good and make my mouth start to water. What I do know is that just about 2 years ago my wife and I began a lifestyle change that included what we were eating. One thing we began to cut out in large part was sugary foods. After losing over 100 pounds I can say that it was all worth it.
“sugar is in fact more addictive than cocaine” – Sugar Free: The Complete Guide to Quit Sugar & Lose Weight Naturally by Sonoma Press
Unfortunately, the cravings for those sugary desserts have not completely gone away. Bring on the holidays and all of the sweets that tend to accompany them all and it’s a recipe for disaster and challenges. About a month ago I stopped tracking my eating in detail and allowed my sugar intake to increase, luckily I’ve stuck with my running, otherwise I think I would be in a much worse place with my weight than the 6 pounds I’ve gained over the last couple of months. It’s pretty pathetic when you resort to drinking warm apple cider vinegar and honey to soothe a painful stomach ache that you caused by throwing caution to the wind with your eating. Throw in life stresses with the fact that you are historically a stress eater and it’s not a good place to be.
I saw a developer I follow post to his blog something not long ago about his own struggles with health, and the havoc that sugar had caused him. He’s on a path to drop all sugars from his diet, though I think he’s going to the extent of dropping fruit too. I recently picked up this eBook for free on Amazon and started reading it today. I think I too am going to get back to a place of cutting out processed and refined sugars as much as possible. It’s not going to be easy but beyond the potential of gaining weight I don’t want to deal with the other health issues attributed to the consumption of refined sugars.
“consuming refined sugar and excess carbohydrates can lead to mood swings, insomnia, premenstrual syndrome, fatigue, compromised immune function, anemia, depression, anxiety, acne, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and even cancer.” – Sugar Free: The Complete Guide to Quit Sugar & Lose Weight Naturally by Sonoma Press
This is going to be a pretty tough next step in my health journey. The temptations are going to be surrounding me all the time. I think I’ll be looking forward even more to my trip to Sierra Leone Africa even more for the fact that access to all the processed sugary foods will be pretty limited.