Sweets for
my sweet….
… sugar for
my honey: Hello, my name is Selina and I am a sugar-addict. Yes, I confess.
There is nothing as hard for me to resist as chocolate, ice-cream and Co. If I didn’t knew it was sabotaging my health I could
live on sweets. Pudding, cake, you name it. Everything.
A part of
me really likes the feeling to eat healthy food though, so I am interested in
getting to know more about nutrition, which is how I found out about Dr. Robert
Lustig. He is a medical doctor, a pediatrician with a focus on obesity. During
his studies he found out how sugar, fat and obesity intermingle. I know that
some aspects of his theory might be debatable, but actually critics have not
really had a point when trying to confute him. A lecture he gave on the dangers
of sugar is found on youtube, check it out:
Last year, I
was fed up with the power sugary food has over me and I abstained from sugar
for about three weeks. (Until I found myself on the wedding of a friend with
great dessert and cake, but that was ok, I only wanted to show myself, that I
do not have to eat sugar on a regular basis.) For 2014 I thought lent would be
a good timespan to once again let sugar go for a time. There are several
reasons why fasting in lent makes sense: a) it is a defined timespan, so you
know when you are about to be released; b) everyone knows about lent, so they
won’t ask as many questions; c) you might shape your body a bit while fasting,
good for better weather, plus d) I think living healthily in general is easier
when the weather is good (maybe due to less stress symptoms).
So I
started on carnival, Monday before last. Sugarfree food also means, no sweet
stuff, no xylit, or other sugar-substitutes, especially no artificial ones like
aspartame (even more poisonous than sugar). I tried the strategy to let go of
every sweet taste, in theory including even fruit. But I didn’t make it. The
fruit-abstinence. So I still try to eat more veggies than fruit but once in a
while I will eat a pear or a Kiwi. It works well, as the fruit now are like a
special treat for me, substituting Snickers and KitKat.
Out of bad
conscience I even googled how much sugar a Kiwi had. 9 grams. Quite a lot, I think.
A banana 12 g, which I think is little, seeing how on a diet, fruit is ok, as
long as it is not bananas or grapes. Well, I enjoyed it.
Unfortunately,
craving does not get much better. I thought after a few days (12th day
now) it would improve, but whether it is the beautiful spring weather that
makes me want to devour ice-cream and cake outside, or other reasons, I don’t
know. Maybe it won’t get better. But I made it so far, like a fourth of the
time, so I am pretty sure I will make it. But it is hard. Maria, from http://craftymaria.blogspot.de/
writes that she didn’t eat sugar in January and that she didn’t really mind. I
have great respect for her. For me that seems to be impossible, I think about
sugar a lot when I cannot have it.
If you are
interested in the body-functions relating to sugar, please read “Fat Chance” by
Robert Lustig. I am only half way through, but the insights the book gave me
are priceless. I have the feeling that every page is like a bit of a revelation
to me. Unfortunately the book cover looks like a diet-guidebook, which is why I
am always a bit ashamed when I take it out in public. It is however full of
scientific insights and highly political. Lustig detects several mechanisms in
our body that can make us obese or also sabotage our health, even if we are of
average shape. Insulin-resistance is the main problem, which will make sure
that all you energy is stored into fat-cells. While insulin is high, when you
are resistant, the leptin in your body, which will tell your brain when you are
full and satisfied is blocked. Therefore, insulin-resistant people’s bodies
will feel like starving bodies and react like them. They will make you eat as
much as possible, mostly fatty and sugary food as they have a high
energy-density, and make you move as little as possible (not to loose more
energy). In addition to this, stress causes the production of cortisole, a hormone
that causes even more energy-storage, saving up for a rainy day, if you will. Dr.
Lustig’s approach is very medical and fact-driven, but I think it might be a
good explanation why there are more diets and exercise-trends now than ever
before, but at the same time more obese people than ever before.
It is
definitely true for me that if I have a bad day and feel stressed out by
something my craving for sugar gets worse and worse. Yesterday was bad. I had
to stay at home because of my migraine and felt useless and hopeless. To tell
you the truth I was an inch from calling the whole fasting off and indulging in
loads and loads of sugary food. But I resisted. Cooled down and it worked. I
was much better in the evening already.
There is a
lot to loose besides honour: Mr. Schön offered me a deal: He would pay for
vibram running shoes that I wanted to buy for my own, when lent is over, if I
make it through the time. In case I don’t make it I would have to pay him back
the money for the shoes, plus 500 Euro go to a party I hate like hell, e.g. the
Nazi-party NPD. (I found this idea in the book “Drop dead healthy” by A.J.
Jacobs, another great read.) Actually it is motivation enough not to give those
dumbasses my precious money to keep fasting. Great idea, hm?
I will tell
you how it will work out for me during those next 5 weeks. I already learned
two things: it is important to keep yourself busy and to always eat enough not
to be super-hungry.
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