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| Our temporary fall home. Campbellsville KY |
Many of you didn’t have any questions, but that’s never stopped the captain from answering them anyway:
So maybe I’ll give up sugar for a bit and see how it goes. Like after Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or next year.
It’s your life, but if you want to see lasting results you need to make some permanent changes. Sugared soft drinks are the largest contributor to added sugar in most people’s diet, so if that’s the case for you, start there. Use diet soft drinks if that helps, but after a couple of weeks you’ll want to quit using artificial sweeteners also. Without fructose containing sugars in your diet, you’ll find the artificial sweeteners will taste different, and not in a good way. All for the good.
So if I give up foods with added sugar, I’ll lose weight. Right?
Maybe. Probably not quickly if you do. There is some good news here, however. Because fructose is metabolized by the liver as a toxin, the resulting calories don’t affect your appetite as calories from glucose and fats would. So calories from fructose are extra calories if you tend to keep eating as long as you’re hungry, like most people. Once your appetite starts responding to all of the food you eat, you’ll have a much better chance of eating only as much as you need. For example, one of the hormones responsible for regulating your appetite is secreted by fat cells. The more fat you have the sooner you’ll feel full, so it should be easier to lose weight if you start out overweight. Theoretically.
So I don’t need to count calories, I just need to eat when I’m hungry?
Yep. Let your appetite tell you when to eat and how much to eat, as long as you limit the fructose in your diet to whole fruit (no fruit juice, no added sugar other than glucose).
What about exercise?
Gillespie (Sweet Poison, Big Fat Lies) makes the case that increasing your activity also increases your appetite, making it a wash for losing weight. There are health benefits to an active life, but if weight loss is your goal modifying your diet has a much bigger effect than increasing your activity. Your activity level drops as you gain weight because you gained weight. You didn’t gain weight because your activity level dropped. So if you feel like it , go for it, but don’t feel guilty if you don’t work out.
When can I go back to eating donuts?
Up to you but it’s not just obesity we’re talking about. Even skinny people can develop heart disease and type 2 diabetes, both of which have a direct link to excess fructose. There is some evidence that fructose is addictive (Janie sure thinks so, just from her experience) so there’s that too. You don’t have to wonder what will happen if you go back to eating foods with added sugar, you’ve already been there.
So how do I know if sugar has been added to a package food?
Easy. Just find the nutritional information, skip all of it, and read the list of ingredients right below it (the fine print). There isn’t any useful information in the nutritional information, including the amount of sugar, since we are only concerned with added sugar. Look for anything in the ingredients that looks like sugar, including sugar, cane sugar, fruit concentrate, honey, high fructose corn syrup, any other syrup... you get the idea. Dextrose is all glucose, so it’s acceptable. I think corn syrup is glucose also, but I still don’t like to see it as an ingredient.
Actually, this doesn’t sound so difficult. Just eliminate food with added sugar. And eat whole fruit instead of fruit juice. Anything else?
Sure. I haven’t even mentioned seed oils yet, because that’s another topic entirely. Maybe next time.
Cheers.
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