Fasting 2017 - No Sugar, No Alcohol, No Meat

Green Smoothies are great for breakfast

For the last few years I have used lent, starting after carnival here in the Rhineland, to give up sugar for those few weeks. The reason was that I was getting the feeling that sugar had such a power over me that I couldn't resist it, whether it was in the form of chocolate, cake or ice-cream. I wanted to proof myself that I am stronger than sugar if I want to.
(You can read about my sugar-fasting experience 2016 here.) This year Mr. Schön decided to join and as he likes to do stuff extreme, sugar was not enough for him, he also wants to quit meat and give up alcohol and coffee as well. I agreed, as actually meat and alcohol is not so difficult for me and why not? Coffee is another story. I don't need it or miss it, but I actually think coffee is good for you, so I might drink have one once in a while.

The carrot cake we made for carnival. I just love cake!

Fasting seems to be a new thing. During the last weeks I have always had groups on facebook with people that supported each other through the sugarless times, which helped. But I asked my friends whether anyone else uses this - originally religiously motivated - time to quit some bad habits or foods. The response was quite overwhelming! A lot of people responded in that they quit alcohol for a few weeks, most people don't touch any sweets and one of them even has the plan not to buy anything that isn't really neccessary and to get rid of useless stuff in her apartment. That is actually a plan we have had for a while, as there is just so much junk in our flat. We own guitars no one plays anymore, lamps that we don't use, etc. Some of the stuff is great and could make somebody really happy. We will sell the stuff online and I vow to make a list about all the objects today.

Bye Bye cocktails. For now...

It has only been five days, but so far we have been really good. We are food-planning now and buy all the wonderful produce for the whole week. That way we spend much less money - no going out for dinner - and the motivation for cooking is much bigger, if you know what to cook and recipe and ingredients are already there in front of you.
We recently watched a tv documentary about how nutrition can be used to treat various conditions. From rheumatic problems to migraine they can improve the suffering by eating the right diet. I am convinced that "You are what you eat" is truer than many would admit, by eating the right food we can already improve our conditions so much.
This morning we used one of the shows recipes to make a cashew milk with cinnamon, which was really good and apparently helps improve high blood pressure and migraines both.

I will keep you posted about what we are eating, which recipes we recommend and how our sugar-, meat- and alcohol-free life progresses. At the moment I am still in this "high-time" where you just feel so good about yourself for doing it and imagining that your jeans get more loose everyday. But I know from the last two years that there will come a time when the fasting thing is less new and less sexy and I will crave sugary food. Next week I will have a fairly stressful week at work, so let's see how that goes...

Green Smoothies are also easier to get "to go" which is just awesome!

Sugar Fasting – Recap and 90 days challenge by Mark Lauren - First week

Thank God it was Easter last weekend! It wasn’t that bad, but the great the whole sugar-fasting started, the more difficult it was during the last days of the fastening. Initially, I was really proud how well I managed to stay away from candy of every kind. After a while I ate chocolate from time to time, but only with alternative sweeteners and very mindful.

Once I went to see my grandma. She had made a cake for just the two of us and I told her that I had eaten no sugar since Ash Wednesday, but that I would make an exception for her cake. I could not have lived with disappointing her that way. As it was in the end still my decision to eat those two pieces of apple pie, I could deal with it. There are more important things than diets. It was interesting, how my body reacted to the sweet stuff. At first I was really happy and content and then on the way back home I got lost on the way to find a gas station and when I was finally in the station I was so tempted by the candy bars lying there in front of me, it was peculiar. My blood sugar had dropped apparently and especially in the stressful situation of driving in an unfamiliar neighbourhood, my brain cried for sugar. Interesting. And it felt oddly liberating to finally see and feel very consciously what sugar can do to our brains.

Last weekend we had an absolutely lazy chocolate evening, Mr. Schön and me. I went to the Kiosk and bought a whole bunch of caramelly, nutty chocolate. It was gorgeous to finally eat them again. And I had some nasty ways afterwards. But you know what? I do not feel bad about it. It was a time when I needed some chocolate and it is ok. I know I can fast again, I know I can quit sugar if I want to and that is fine.

Sports have basically not happened this year so far. I am doing some Yoga, sometimes I switch on the Wii for some Zumba, but we have not been running often and apart from the above mentioned, taking the dog for a walk is the most exercise I get. Until now. I am not a big fan of fitness studios and I am lazy, so even though I love swimming, packing my stuff, driving to the pool, changing, swimming, changing again, drying my hair, etc. is just TOO MUCH effort. Workouts have to be as efficient and as homebased as possible. Running is great, because you do not need much equipment and can basically start at your own door. But – here kicks the laziness in again – I am a sunny weather runner. When it is gorgeous outside, I often get motivated to run. If it isn’t (like most of the time in Western Germany) I do not.

A trend that fits my priorities is the whole “Be your own gym” movement, which is weight training without any equipment, but your own body / home. Strolling through a bookstore (one of my favourite leisure time activities of all times), I found a whole bunch of books that introduce workouts only using your own body weight that you can basically do everywhere. And as I like a challenge, I got the 90 days challenge for women by Mark Lauren. (Find it here on amazon. I don’t like the design of the book much, but you know the saying…

In the book you find a lot of explanations why HIT-High Intensity Training – works best for muscle growth and which kind of nutrition helps with the challenge. Mark Lauren is rather critical of cardio training like running, but I think a combination of both should be what makes us super healthy. A typical week in the 90 days challenge consists of three (later four) workouts in different levels of intensity. (So far level 1 is my friend). Between the days of workout there are days of recovery, where you can find tips for your general health, nutrition, well-being, and so on. They are easy to read, informative and a nice change if your body hurts from the brutal work-outs. Lauren used to be a trainer in the US military and the workouts are not easy. But very efficient. Saturday, after I had done the second training session, I was barely able to walk. The muscle pain was really bad. Sore muscles of course always give you feedback on how something is changing in your body and I was surprised at how sore my body got from a few lunges and push-ups. No training so far has taken more than 20 minutes, which is great, because even the hardest training goes by fast in 20 minutes. Today is one day of recovery, but I can already feel how tempted I am to do at least a little bit… I want to take before-pictures and maybe even measure my belly, arms, etc. because I have the feeling that this training can have a lot of effect. And don’t get me wrong, I like my body and I don’t have a weight problem, I just feel that everything could be just a little more toned. Especially my arms, they consist of pudding mostly. But you know what? Even after just five days, I can not only feel but see the effects on my body. My arms have already gotten a bit of a bump. Can you believe it? I had thought I wouldn’t see any effects before two weeks or so. I only just managed to take the "before" pictures or rather "after one week" pictures, but trust me, they count as before. You see that there is a lot of work to be done. I also took my measurements, as weight does not really count if you build u muscles, My measurements in the first week of the 90 days challenge are: 
Breast: 92cm
Waist: 75 cm
Hips: 92 cm
Right upper arm: 27 cm

The plan is to measure again from time to time and take new pictures with the same outfit in the same position to see progress. As mentioned above, even after only one week, I can see the effect in my arms and a bit also on my belly.

It feels really great to actively form the shape of your body and I think Mark Lauren is right when he says that the 90 days challenge can also tone your mind and make you more focused and happier in general. It feels as if that effect is already on it’s way. Let’s see how it goes, I will keep you posted. 

Sugar fasting week 4

Hey folks!

How have you been? Lisek and me we are pretty awesome. Lying on the couch (or - in his case- next to it) after a long morning walk in the sun. There is definitely spring in the air outside and I love it!

Wow, I just had to look it up, because I kind of lose track here, it has been four weeks without candy in my life and I am so proud and happy at the moment. I feel really liberated and not because I fight temptations, but also because I have the feeling, candy and sugary food have become a bit meaningsless in my life. I can be just relaxed about them.

Last weekend we were invited for a "perfect dinner" at friends of ours. We have done this last year as well, every couple of the four invites the others over once a year for a three course menu and gets points for the food, decorations, you name it. Not being a very competitive person I do not particularly enjoy the format of the meetings, but it is always fun to see everyone. They served flan and churros for dessert and I did not want to be the person who would not eat it, just because it contains sugar. So I made an exception on Satuday. It was ok, I just noticed how sweet everything tastes when you are less used to it. Other than that I did not have any problems. Sunday, I just went back to my normal eating routine and that was it . In a facebook group I joined about sugar fasting, people freak out when they "lost control". When I think about it, I can understand it to a certain extent. But by making it a big deal, you let sugar play an even bigger role in your life than it had before. The difference is choice of course. If I deliberatley choose to have some cake or a dessert at a restaurant, then I enjoy it and know that overall I live a healthy lifestyle. Sounds like a healthy approach to eating to me.

PhD reading goes on at the moment. Next week I am goint to have the first eeting with fellow students, where everyone is supposed to present their ideas. I will not lie, I am a bit nervous about it, bur I will manage and probably take a lot out of the opportunity.

This new mindset it quite extraordinary for me. In my twenties I used to have much less self asteem. I would be horrified by the event next week and be totally sure not to be prepared well enough and so on. You probably are familiar with that feeling. Maybe it is my age and my experience that tell me, most of the time, situations you fear are much less horrible than you imagine them to be. All the fretting and the nervousness in advance actually is often worse than the situation itself.

Sugar fasting - Second Week

Yesterday it has been two weeks of no sugar and no candy in my life. And what can I tell you? I feel great!
I had no idea that things would work out so well this year (At least so far...) A major difference to two years ago, when letting sugar go was by far less easy, is the stress level I currently have. Since reducing my officetime and my working hours altogether I am a much more relaxed person. Organizing breakfast everyday and getting up early enough to prepeare it does not seem such a big deal, which helps me a lot with reducing my cravings for anything sweet. Never having been a breakfast person, it can be tough to have breakfast everyday, but I just prepare it and take it on the train to work, so that I don't have to eat directly after having fallen out of bed. It might be weird, but the breakfast in the morning helps with cravings I usually have in the afternoon.

If you feel the need for a chocolate bar or anything, drink a cup of green tea first. It is a) one of the healthiest things you can put into your body and b) it helps with hunger attacks.

As a further motivation and to inform me, or also - let's be honest here - to feel awesome about myself, I like to watch documentaries about sugar and read all books about it I can get my hands on. I also joined a German facebook-group of People who are quitting sugar, the idea is to motivate and inform each other. My problem with it is, that the group is mostly used to share recipes of desserts and cake without sugar. When you want to give up sweets, no matter whether they contain sugar or another sweetener, it is not very helpful.

Sarah Wilson is also giving up fruit for 8 weeks, but I am not there yet...

I enjoyed "That sugar film" though (check out the trailer here), which was in cinemas last year. A documentary about an Australian actor, Damon Gameau, who had quit sugar a while ago and wanted to show the effects of sugar on a healthy body, by eating produced products again and including sugar in his diet. The interesting part about the movie is, that he doesn't eat candy though, but gets all his sugar (the average Australian amount of 41 tablespoons of sugar a day) from food often considered healthy, especially low fat producty, which usually contain a lot of sugar and cereals, granola bars, vitamin water, frozen yogurt, etc.  It is a very crazy, colourful and entertaining movie and it shows how bad all this food can be for your body. What impressed me most about it was, that it didn't stop with the message, that today's food is mostly bad for you, but on a positive note, that you have the power to change it. Damon goes back to his healthy lifestyle after his experiment and after a few weeks loses the weight and all his health problems. Even during the "sugar diet" he longs for his healthy lifestyle and feel good again. A scientist, interviewed in the movie made a statement that really got me to thinking: "If you have always lived that way (eating processed food), you have no idea of what life can be like." If you have always been drugged how can you know what it is like to be clean? Quitting sugar the last two weeks already had an effect on my energy level, I get up early, I feel motivated to do sports, I cook, spend qualitly time with friends, get my work done, read stuff for my PhD thesis - and it feels awesome. It makes me not want to start with sugar again. So this time I might stick to this way of eating.

I can also recommend a relatively new documentary about the problem of sugar made by the BBC (I love their documentaries!) called The Truth about Sugar.  and Globesity - Fat's new Frontier. Those help me to stay motivated and also to be informed about what contains sugar and how to avoid it. Just yesterday I watched a Ted Talk that Jamie Oliver gave on sugar and nutrition. It is very informative and I like how he uses his popularity to make schools healthier and inform people about food choices. In one of the documentaries I watched they said that about 80 % of all the school canteens in the US are sponsored by fast food or beverage companies, meaning the kids are surrounded by a lot of fast food even at school. I can only imagine how hard it must be to live halthily in the US.
One product containing added sugar Jamie Oliver talks about is milk. At least in the US. I found that appalling, but is there actually that much difference to the new apple varieties which have much more sugar in them than apples formerly had? We have a very good and big organic supermarket across the street and I am planning on getting my fruit from there in future, trying to find old varieties that contain less sugar.

Sugar and candy are considered such desirable products, that a lot of pet names actually come from that family: honey, sugar, sweetheart, a.s.o. I made myself a "sugar playlist" and those are only the songs that immediately came to my mind when thinking of candy related songs:

Sweets for my Sweets
Sugar Sugar - The Archies
Brown Sugar - The Rolling Stones
Candy man - Christina Aguilera
I'll take you to the candyshop - The Baseballs
Sugar - Robin Schulz, Francesco Yates
Lollipop - The Chordettes
Like Ice in the Sunshine - The Boss Hoss
Sugar - Maroon 5
Sugar Baby Love - The Rubettes
I want candy - Hop

Lisek is the sweetest Sweetheart anyway! 

Sugar is everywhere. Our brains react to it like they would react to other drugs as dangerous as cocaine or heroin. No wonder we want more and more and the food industry puts it into everything, always making us want more. They make money of our addiction. Imagine the uproar if we found out they put cocaine into everyday products to make us buy them. But the more I read and learn about sugar I feel that it is not so much different... 

Just recently a research team tested popular hot beverages we buy at coffee houses nearly every day on our way to or from work and they had a rocking amount of sugar in them! I always enjoyed drinking my nice and cozy Chai Latte at the coffe shop in our main station and no wonder, it consists of almost more sugar than we should eat on the whole day! Check out the BBC report on it here. I will have to continue making my own chai tea at home...

A lot of sugar experts, scientists and journalists see parallels to the fight against the tobacco industry in the 1970s. From the 1950s onwards it got clear how bad cigarretes are for your health and still, cigarettes used to be everywhere around us. The industry reacted by trying to undermine science and even attacking scientists and paying lobbyists to make sure, they did not have to endure government regulations. The same is happening at the moment with sugar.   (My parents actually used to smoke in the house all the time, and that was in the 90s...) I am currently watching a lot of Mad Men, and set in the 1960s, they are smoking everywhere, even on a plane, or with a big pregnant belly, which nowadays looks so shocking and perverse, but that is only thanks to the rebellion of some scientists against the tobacco industry. I believe that the same might happen to sugar. Ok, cigarettes are not part of what our body needs, but the longer and longer I am sugar fastening, I realize that processed food with sugar in it does not count as food at all. They are non-foods and they increasingly feel like that to me. While I already feel sick, when I see parents filling the baby's bottles with coke (I have only ever seen that on tv, dealing with the US or Mexico e.g., but I bet people are doing this in Germany as well), maybe in twenty years time we will tach footage from 2015 and feel appalled by the vast amount of sugar offered for example at a kid's birthday...

The other day, I went through the station and saw those ads, for chocolate, showing big choloate bars, full of nuts and yummie stuff, promising coziness and happiness. Candy in our culture is connected to happiness, which makes sense in the short run, as sugar helps to rise your serotonine-levels, but they shatter afterwards and you feel worse than before you ate that cookie or the piece of chocolate. So, turning to candy as a moodbooster is quite shortsighted and can start a vicious circle of always wanting more. I used to be a total ad-victim. Whenever I would see chocolate on a screen I immediately wanted some. Not so yesterday though. I went through the station, noticed the ads  - and then just went on. Without having the desire to eat chocolate. That might not mean much to you. but it is a huge step for me and it felt so liberating to not be affected by this ad. It is a huge thing for me. Being too passive about my food choices is one reason, maybe even the main reason, I chose to quit sugar for Lent two years ago. So it might be not such a big surprise of how empowering it felt to not care about the great looking pictures of chocolate above my head. 

Living healthily has motivated me to do more sports as well- I have started with yoga again after having the flu two weeks ago. We have also been bouldering last week, which was so much fun that I regret how we have been not doing this for such a long time... And we went running tonight. 

I will keep you posted about the sports and fitness which is going to happen around here. Taking the dog for a walk outside in the spring sun is already pretty awesome exercise I think.

Take care :)

Sugar Fasting 2.0 First Week

Aschermittwoch ist alles vorbei (It's all over on Ash Wednesday)

Aschermittwoch marks the end of carnival season, a big party in the area I live in. We always celebrate carnival big, with lots of friends and nice costumes. And lots of sugar and alcohol, of course. The overly sugary food around carnival, following another very unhealthy time of year, christmas, causes the bad feeling we all know, the feeling of sugar weighing us down. It is no wonder that spring is a time for fasting. After Ash Wednesday, Lent officially starts. It is a very useful tradition, not only to prepare your body for spring, but to make you feel better after a time of sin ;-)

Lisek didn't understand what "Cheese" was supposed to mean...

We should be aware that Lent is no invention of the church, fasting is a much older tradition.
Two years ago I decided to give up sugar for the time of Lent. I am not a Christian, but it is a good tradition, found in many religions and cultures, to give up something that you feel has power over you, maybe something you do exceedingly. It is a time of empowerment. of regaining control over aspects of your life and can be very spiritual in itself. Sugar fastening was quite hard from time to time two years ago and all that kept me going was the longing for chocolate on Easter Sunday.

It's bye bye chocolate again!

This year proves to be a bit different. I have just started with the sugarfree time. but at least till now I do not miss my candy much. Two years ago, tomatoes and coffee with milk have helped me through the sugarfree weeks. In preparation I bought heaps of fresh and sundried tomatoes, so if I ever crave something sweet, I can just have some tomatoes. Banana with peanutsquish (without added sugar or salt) are a good snack if you feel like you need something sweet.

We have been quite good this year so far, when it comes to cooking. Mr. Schön and me we like to try all kinds of recipes and I have the ambition to eat more typical winter veggies, as long as they are still around. Brussel spouts, kale... Yesterday we tried a recipe with brussel sprout, fried in a pan, with pasta, mixed with parmesan and lemon peel and some cream. It was delicious! The other day, we made steak and guess who really wanted to have a piece of it. Or rather all of it...

Lisek watching Mr. Schön's every step...

Our food nowadays is loaded with sugar: ketchup, peanut butter, alcohol. juice, soda, you name it. I have no figures or number for you, but I guess that sugar addiction is the most common addiction there is in our times. Sweets are so present in our everyday life that everytime I almost ate something sweet during the last week, was when I was not paying attention to what I was drinking or eating. For example soft drinks on parties. While sugar used to be a rare good in the olden days, you can now find it almost everywhere- cake. joghurt, drinks, even salad, fast food, etc. If you are hooked on sugar like most of us are nowadays, maybe you want to give it up for a while as well.

Those tips might be helpful:

- give away all your sugary food, maybe take it to work, usually there are a few hungry people there.

- A.J. Jacobs writes in "Drop Dead Healthy" about how he wrote a cheque of I think 1000 $ to the American Nazi party, and if he failed to keep his hands off the mango slices he loved to eat, the money would go to those idiots. This is a good way to motivate you, even when the flesh is weak, it might help to make your spirit stronger, if in case you fail, something horrible happens.

- I just read about the suggestion to give up sugar step by step and to first write down a lot of sugary food you usually like to eat. Every evening, you mark the food you did not eat that day. I can imagine that seeing how the list grows you get motivated to eat better and better.

- Find the food you like to eat instead of candy. Sundried tomatoes work for me, plus everything containing milk, as milk has sugar in it as well.

- If you happen to eat a piece of cake or chocoate, don't stop the whole project. None of us is perfect and that's ok. Maybe you just really needed this piece right then. Keep up with the plan and don't think about the occasion.

- Reduce stress. It helps me big time that nowadays I work more from home, where I better control what to eat and when to eat. When in the office, often I do not take the break to eat in peace, ending up with really bad food choices. Try to avoid stress and eat early in the day, to not let you crave sugary food on an empty stomach.

- I am putting everything I eat into an app. It sounds like a lot of work. but the app is actually quick in finding all the ingredients, plus I always find time for it on the train or in the evening on the sofa. It motivates me big time to eat healthily and also to do some workout I can write down into the app. For this, I am using Lifesum, as I mentioned in an earlier post.

- A side effect of the sugar diet last time was my weight loss. It was not much for six weeks (six pounds) I think, but it was a nice side effect. Maybe I will have the same effect this year, but as it is the main goal to become empowered when it comes to food choices, it is not really important.

- If you do not want to give up sweet stuff, there are loads of sugarfree recipes online, for example check out pinterest for it. Natural sweeteners like dates or agave should be chosen over artificial sweeteners like aspartam, which I think is even worse than sugar.

- two years ago I wrote about a great recipe for Mousse au Chocolat. It was seriously better than the original sugarloaded thing. There are heaps of recipes on the internet, just check them out.

- We are in one boat: a lot of people use Lent to do sugarfasting and it is always easy if you share your battle with others. Find groups on facebook, pins on pinterest, etc. to make the time easier.

Bon Appetit!

Tonight's dinner. Yum!

When your head seems to explode

This post is about a pretty serious topic, headaches. Or, more precise, migraines.

Migraines can be like a needle digging into your brain

Migraines are still not always taken serious enough. Maybe it is because we live in a male-dominated world and much more women suffer from migraines than men, or it is because you can seldomly "see" the pain, headache-patients are often considered crop-outs; too lazy to work or using the pain as a kind of excuse for cancelling unwanted appointments.
I wish everyone suspecting this could have a migraine-attack once in their lifes, to experience the hammering pain, the feeling someone is carving out your eye with a blunt spoon and the bolts of pain that light or sound can shoot into your brain.

As you can tell I have been suffering from migraines for years and it is - thankfully - the only chronical disease I have to deal with. My attacks ususally only last a few hours, while other patients may suffer for days, but in the beginning of last year I had to deal with the pain quite frequently, usually once or twice a week. This had been going on for roughly twenty years, and as the attacks started to get more frequent, I was desperately searching for something to help my heacaches.

During my university time I took part in a study about accupuncture and migraines. The neurologist I went to had spent several years in China and I trusted his skills completely. After a few sessions I was pain-free for four months after the last treatment. Probably the longest I have ever been without migraine since I was about ten years old. I wanted to go on with accupuncture and found a doctor near my place who offered it. I had to pay for the treatments myself which meant spending more on that than I spent on rent. While I was a student. Long story short: It did not help me. Neither did a second doctor I tried out. Maybe it was their skills, neither of them had been trained in China and I suspected that one of them had only done a weekend-seminar on accupunture as he always placed the - very long - needles in different parts of my body everytime I came there. It just didn't seem right. After blood sputtered from a spot in my forehead where he had placed a needle, I never went there again

I have tried quite a lot of things to treat my migraines. After years of suffering and of trying things out I decided to let you know about my experience, maybe you can find a method that is working for you:

butterbur powder, taken preventative

high dosed magnesium, taken preventative and in case of an attack

nutrition: not eating sugar for six weeks, resigning from alcohol, meat, cheese, none of them had any effect whatsoever

sports, will help to make you feel good anyway and might have helped a bit to prevent attacks

change your cosmetics, they might make you suffer. I just changed my toothpaste which basically is the only cosmetic brand I always stick to usually. To make it short: it did not help.

atlas nerve-correction: I had heard about this method from a colleague whose wife got healed from her headaches by a simple correction of her atlas (the most supervior cervical vertrebra of the spine). I went to a clinic to let them do an mri-scan of the spine and it turned out mine was fine, but I know people whom this method has helped big time, so no harm in checking it out.

The only pills that have helped me to ease an attack so far are triptanes, originally developed to help people with epilepsy, they also ease the pain and help you to fall into a unconscious dreamless sleep, that can be really mercifull, if you have an attack. They are the only medicamentation that have helped me so far, the problem is, they can damage your liver and kidneys and are very extreme methods If you take too many of them - as with every painkiller- your body might get used to it and react with pain if you try to live without painkillers.

Acupunture: As I mentioned above I have done acupuncture with amazing results. I started it again last summer and it is amazing ! This time I went to an expert in Traditional Chinese Medicine, TCM, whose place - tadaaa- is just across the street from our flat. I am paying for the treatments myself and it is rather a lot of money, but it is the only thing that helps. My migraines have become a very rare occurence  and I am so grateful to my doctor. I guess doing Yoga much more often and the relaxing atmosphere in the doctor's office with meditation music, warming lamps and blankets help the needles do their work, but after years of suffering from this horrible illness I feel blessed. We often only appreciate our health once we loose it and I invite you all to celebrate the pain you are not feeling right now.

I hope that maybe I could help some people with migraines to ease their pain a bit and to regain new hope that you might be able to change something about your situation.

Delicious sugar-free Mousse au Chocolat

Being the sweet tooth that I am, I could not resist temptation and searched for sweet alternatives. Xylit seems to be one of the cheapest and healthiest alternatives to sugar, which is even good for your teeth. It tastes quite similar to sugar and doesn’t have a weird aftertaste like stevia. At amazon you can get 1 kg of xylit for 10 Euros. Compared to sugar that is a huge difference, but I would say it is worth it. Xylit is also called wood-sugar, as it is made out of tree barks. It has much less calories than industrial sugar and it does not rise your blood sugar levels. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol)

Last weekend we tried a recipe with xylit. It was also lactose-free, but instead of soycream we used regular cream. You can try it with soy cream, I bet it will still be delicious. Not being too fond of mousse au chocolat myself, I still know how much my better half enjoys it, which is why our first xylit-dessert came to be mousse au chocolat. We loved the coconut fat, and I found quite different opinions on it in the net. They all agree that coconut fat has lots of saturated fat, but there are hints that these saturated fats act differently from others… Hm. I can say it is delicious, as it adds some coconutty flavour to the mousse au chocolat, it was so tasty. The good thing about organic coconut fat, if it is really not good for you, we won’t have it often, as it is fairly pricy.

Try the recipe, I bet you will love it as much as we did:

4 eggs

100 g Xylit

60g coconut fat

70 g cocoa powder

300 ml cream (soy)

Attention: The mousse needs to cool in the fridge for a few hours in order to make it firm enough. We were pretty impatient and ate it after about an hour, which was great already.

Separate the eggs from the yolk, beat the yokes for a while and add Xylit and cocoa powder.

Beat the egg whites till they are stiff. Melt the coconut fat (microwave), add it to the cocoa-yolk-mass. Add the beaten egg whites carefully.

Whip the cream and add it to the rest. Put into the fridge for about 4 hours. Enjoy J

Dr. Lustig's approach on sugar

Reading can be such a joy. Knowing this for ages, one resolution of 2014 is to read more. I have always enjoyed reading a lot, but being a student of English and media science, it feels like all you have to do all day is read. For your studies. So reading for sheer pleasure while you had roughly 600 pages lying next to you that you SHOULD read, not fun. So I didn’t read much for myself during my studies.

Though working at university, I currently do not have as much to read for work (will change when I start my PhD. Big time…), plus I am spending roughly three hours every day sitting in a train. Purchasing books is one of my favourite leisure time activity, I own dozens of books, still waiting to be read. Having put roughly ten of them right next to the couch in the living room, I am reminded on a regular basis to take one of them with me whenever I leave the house, or just read when I am at home. I am enjoying it a lot and can only recommend it. As mentioned earlier “Fat chance” by Dr. Robert Lustig was one of the best reads I have had for a long time. It is pretty unbelievable how little I knew about our bodies and about nutrition, although it is such a large part of our life. (At the moment I am reading “Thinking fast and slow" by Daniel Kahnemann. Also new insights into everyday life. I will tell you more about it when I am finished, but I definitely recommend it.)

If you are interested in the fight against sugar and how exactly sugar works in your body, read “Fat Chance”. For those with limited time, I collected some of the most important facts:

-        a mantra used to be “A calorie is a calorie”, so if you use up as much as you take in you should be fine. Dr. Lustig makes clear: not every calorie is like the other

-        40% of normal weight Americans (so not only obese people) suffer from metabolic syndrome in some way [type 2 diabetes, lipid disorders, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, dementia]

-        Obesity is not the result of gluttony and sloth, but of a defect in energy deposition

-        Today, the obese outnumber the undernourished on the planet by 30 %

-        The body decides whether it uses your energy intake for storage or the business of living

-        Different calories are metabolized differently, the difference is: insulin

-        High blood sugar leads to a release of big amounts of insulin, which will store energy that is not used by the muscles and the brain in fat cells.

-        Subcutaneous fat is not the devil here, in fact it seems to be healthy to have some fat stored on your thighs, hips, arms, but the visceral fat makes you really ill. It is the fat surrounding your organs, which you cannot see, apart from the size of your belly. A lot of people have too much visceral fat and not only if they have a big belly. Even slender persons can have vast amounts of visceral fat, putting them as much at risk for diseases as someone who is obese.

-        I guess we all know, that our bodies are still programmed for droughts and ice age times, when food was scarce and who stored best got farthest

-        Sugar is as addictive as alcohol, the same part of your brain derives pleasure from it, which is why the food industry puts sugar into anything (ketchup, burgers, all kinds of processed food)

-        Your hunger is managed by a substance called leptin. Whenever the fat cells are full, and you have eaten, blood sugar is high, then there will be a lot of leptin in your blood, telling your brain that you had enough

-        Problem is: when you eat a lot and a lot of sugar that is, your insulin levels will rise high, as well as your leptin levels. After a while though, the cells will ignore both substances as they always exist in such abundance that your body suffers from a type of burn-out, it just gives up, resulting in insulin and leptin resistance.

-        Those resistances have a lot of horrible consequences, most interestingly, the body of an obese person releases the same signals as a starving one: the brain cannot see the leptin anymore, therefore it signalizes GET FOOD and DON’T WASTE ENERGY, SO DON’T MOVE. It is not only the sheer body mass of obese people that keep them from working out, ironically it is their brain, being afraid of starving.

-        Processed food is full of glucose, fructose, fats and proteins

-        Obesity is no result of behaviour, it is mainly the result of nutritional alterations of the last decades that drive insulin levels higher

-        Our bodies produce twice as much insulin as the bodies of people 30 years ago, even for the same amount of calories or glucose, which is one difference, the other: there is much more sugar and sweetener in our diet than 30 years ago

Factors and reasons

-        stress, little sleep -> biochemical response is to store more fat; sugar makes you happy and satisfied for a short amount of time

-        fructose (50% of refined sugar is fructose) activates pleasure centre in brain, but liver has a hard time to metabolize it -> liver fat -> metabolic syndrome

-        tans fats: increase shelf-life of products, mitochondria cannot digest them, they stay in your liver, your arteries, a.s.o. -> metabolic syndrome

-        omega 6 fatty acids: are essential, but too many lead to inflammatory compounds, intake of omega 6 acids (e.g. canola and corn oil and protein from animals fed by it (as most of them are today) has to equal omega 3 (e.g. in wild fish)

What to do to fix it?

You have to give your liver and your mitochondria a break. Insulin levels need to get down to fix the resistances.

Cooking fresh food containing

a) fiber

slows the rate at which body turns food into energy, therefore regulating blood sugar and insulin levels. Processed food lacks fiber to make it freezable and prolong shelf life. Fiber also activates leptin, tells your brain that you are full. [Dr. Lustig identifies not only softdrinks, but especially fruit juice as bad, as it is still considered healthy by a lot of people, containing as much sugar as coke and no fiber and therefore really dangerous.]

b) Omega 3 fatty acids

Anti-flammatory, wild fish and eggs from chicken fed with omega 3 fatty acids, flaxseed, linseed oil, walnut oil, a.s.o.

c) micronutrients

fruit and vegetables, especially wild ones, containing healthy micronutrients and antioxidants -> combat inflammation, keep cells intact and can protect you from cancer and Alzheimer

Eat real food, cook it yourself, when cooking or baking, take less sugar than in the recipe and experiment with healthier sugar alternatives, like stevia or xylose. Move -> movement refreshes the mitochondria and helps you to shrink your fat cells.

Read the book, it has helped me to see sugar differently and understand our bodies and our problems much better. 

Inglorious Plastics

It is a glorious day. The sun is shining, I bought myself a reusable cup for coffee and as yesterday, due to striking workers I was forced to go to work (partly) by bike. Which is great: I arrive at work and part of my workout for the day is already done. Excellent. (The good weather helps motivating me, I bet in darkness and rain it would be another story.) The countrywide strikes give complete strangers reason to talk to each other and I have the feeling that everyone is equally proud to go to work by bike. I am planning on taking the bike to work more often, even if there is no strike. As long as the sun is shining. (Well, good luck with that Selina… But yes, I will remember how good it felt and do it from time to time.) As mentioned before, my coffee-intake has risen enormously since I stopped eating sugar. I always felt bad when I got another cup I would throw away. With the reusable university-cup that is over. Feels great. It is astonishing, how much more I think about packaging nowadays. A friend of mine, who even writes a blog about her experience with reducing waste, especially fighting plastic (http://ingloriousplastics.wordpress.com/), undoubtedly has given me a lot of input and thought. But still. I mean my mum always told me off, e.g. for littering the street and made me pick the stuff up and put it into a nearby bin. This worked too well, I could never throw anything to the ground, unless I know it is disposable by itself, like leftovers from an apple, e.g. Now, I would rather carry trash around for hours, before I litter the ground. But not littering your surroundings is not the point of today’s movements. It is the sustainability of products and the avoidance of garbage.I would like to give you a few tips, how to avoid to use plastic (written in a list, of course)

a) follow my example and buy a reusable coffee container, that you take with you also into coffee bars. It is not a problem to let them fill the fresh coffee into your container

b) Always carry a cotton bag with you (there is very small bags you can pack into your purse), in order to avoid plastic bag purchases

c) check your groceries for plastic packaging and try to choose the one with cardboard over plastic (often cardboard-containers have a plastic bag inside nonetheless, so don’t be fooled)

d) Out of milk cartons you can build little lunchboxes to take with you and avoid alu foil or wrapping film, plus they are reusable

e) try to buy fresh fruit and veggies without plastic wrapping, (you should try to avoid packaged food also for health reasons, but that is another story)

f) a market is a great opportunity to shop fresh groceries without plastic packaging

d) collect recipes that do not require any plastic-wrapped products

To show you that it is possible, I will post eco-friendly recipes from time to time. Here is a German speciality, apparently especially made in the south. It is sweet as hell and great. Makes you really full, so don’t make too much.

The German word for it is “Scheiterhaufen”, translated: stake (the one to burn witches on) – The name comes from the layers that build this delicious dish. (We ate it for dinner – and lunch the next day – but you can easily eat it as dessert). Apart from being really tasty, Scheiterhaufen consists of some ingredients which can be leftovers, so it includes a bit of upcycling ;)

You need (for a big casserole dish):

-         7 old / dried rolls, or pieces of white bread

-         1 litre of milk

-         7 eggs

-         160 g sugar (my recommendation: take xylit, or at least raw sugar)

-         160g powdered Hazelnuts

-         60g Hazelnuts (whole nut)

-         1 kg of apples (slightly sour)

-         A little bit of real vanilla

-         70g of butter

-         Cinnamon

-         1 lemon (juice)

Slice the bread (1 cm). Mix milk, sugar, vanilla and egg thoroughly in a bowl. Adjust powdered Hazelnuts. Peel the apples, take out the core, slice it. Sprinkle lemon juice on the slices and then powder them with sugar and cinnamon.

Dip the bread into the milk-mixture until they are soft, butter the casserole dish. Put a layer of soft bread into the casserole dish and then in turns adjust layers of bread and apples, ending with a layer of bread. Put some butter and the whole hazelnuts on top.

Preheat the oven, bake the whole thing for 45 minutes with a temperature of roughly 175° (Celsius). The top should be of a light brown colour. It is best when served fresh from the oven and you can eat it with vanilla sauce or ice-cream if you like. We ate it with walnut-ice cream and it was marvellous! J  The recipe says that as a main dish this amount will feed 4, as a dessert 8 people.  Guten Appetit!

The WHO puts us all on a sugar-diet!

I have the feeling that my obsession with sugar – on the one hand craving it and at the same time trying to find out how bad it really is for my body – follows a trend that will hit us hard in the next couple of years, maybe even already in the next months. Dr. Robert Lustig is quoted more and more throughout the media, new studies are being made and finally, one big change just occurred a few days ago:

The WHO changed its recommendation concerning sugar! This is huge, people. All those last forty years, when obesity became a problem in the US and politicians requested scientists to solve the problem, sugar has been ignored and fat has been blamed. Why?

This might sound a bit like a conspiracy-theory, but it is a plausible explanation: the sugar lobby is just too big. They pump a lot of money into the government, also into science, and it is no surprise that they saw the introduction of low-fat products as their chance to sell even more sugar and make people therefore more addicted to their products. This is exactly how it worked: fat was reduced in a lot of products, (low-fat yogurt, butter, cheese, there is even low fat lasagne, tiramisu, toffees, etc.) but as fat improves taste, you had to add sugar to compensate for the missing fat. This had two effects: 1^st the body does not feel as full as with the full-fat version, craves more in consequence and 2^nd the sugar triggers the reward centre of the brain and makes us want more. We can see the result on the streets in everyday life and on ourselves: we get fatter inspite of all the low-fat products. Scientists have criticised the food industry ever since. Check out this BBC documentary, it shows pretty accurately on how the whole process works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6nGlLUBkOQ

Jacques Peretti gives a very good overview on what the problem with our everyday diet is. Robert Lustig too is interviewed in this documentary. (Lustig’s lecture on youtube got commented by a girl from the US “He is fat himself and shouldn’t lecture us.” (paraphrasing) Obviously, she hasn’t seen the video. Lustig is not lecturing anyone and least the obese people themselves. Plus, he admits that he loves sugar just like anyone else. Which is the curse of sugar: knowing how bad it is, does not help.) Peretti says that the American government and the WHO are dependent on the sugar lobby and will only change their recommendations for sugar once the costs for obesity rise higher than the money gained by the sugar industry. Money rules the world… This apparently is the case now, as the WHO announced new guidelines on sugar only a few days ago, reducing the amount of recommended sugar intake dramatically from 10% to only 5% of your daily calorie intake.

“For an adult at a normal body mass index, or BMI, eating 5% would be around 25g of sugar – or six teaspoons. That’s less than is typically found in a single can of regular soda, which contains about 40 grams of sugar.” (http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/06/health/who-sugar-guidelines/) 

Things are about to change. And they have to, regarding the rising levels of obesity, the numbers of children suffering from type 2 diabetes and more and more people dying from metabolic syndrome. There are more people overweight than undernourished today, which seems like a joke.

How is my personal war on sugar going? Well, I have mentioned the fruit yogurt I couldn’t resist. Apart from that it is going pretty well. I learned that I should eat more regularly (which could also help me get rid of my migraine attacks.) and that it is much harder, to resist sweet food when I am stressed and everything seems to fall apart. But I managed and I am pretty optimistic of refraining from eating candy till Easter. Apparently though, sugar and especially chocolate is not a trigger for my migraine as I had more attacks already in March than I had in February. But that is a good thing, as I am only damaging my insulin- levels eating chocolate, not triggering any headaches. I also learnt that I cannot live without the taste of sweet food, not unless I move into a desert with no supermarkets and no fruit available.

So I eat plenty of fresh fruit but as Robert Lustig states the fiber from fresh fruit and veggies makes sugar much less dangerous, this is not really bad for you. Just leave away the juice and smoothies and eat the real thing. I also found a new love: sundried tomatoes. They are my candy now and I truly love them. So you can live without candy and it is not too hard, really. In the beginning of April I can donate blood again and I am pretty excited for the results of the blood test: will my no-sugar-diet have any affect on them? 

sugarfasting

I have to admit that I caved. In a way. I mean did not eat the list of candy I craved a few days before, including chocolate bars, cupcakes, cookies, cake, tiramisu, toffees, puddings and so on. But bought myself some yoghurt. with fruit in it. And they are almost as bad as candy, but I could not really help it. I suffer severely from PMS and yesterday was that time of month. I guess that yoghurt is kind of a compromise between the stuff I normally buy and the apples I should have gotten instead. Apart from the yoghurt I have also started to eat more fruit again. From time to time, as a treat, I feel like I have to eat something sweet and at least fruit also has a lot of fiber, so it is not as bad as candy.

Apart from that my 17 days of not eating sugar so far have not been a healthy affair at all. I feel like I compensate the lack of sugar with the help of more calories and more fat. I used to eat much healthier, less cheese, less flour, more veggies. But I can't seem to help it much. I read in Robert Lustig's book that often our brain replaces one product we crave with another, if one addiction cannot be satisfied. I am not addicted to bad food, but I cannot deny the satisfaction, salty or fatty food gives me at the moment.

Interestingly enough, shopping is not as horrible as I thought it might be. I got used to not pay the candy section of my stores any attention. (If it is not pms day). I will keep you updated on how the sugarfree time goes on.

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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

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 (12^th 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.