60 days with no sugar: what I learned

Going sugar free for the past couple of months was really eye-opening for me. My main motivation was to speed up my weight loss-- and I think it did-- but I learned some other things in the process.

Baked goods can be enjoyed without sugar. For the first month, I stopped making muffins for my family for breakfast. (I probably make muffins about once a week or so.) I didn't think they would taste good with no sugar, and I didn't think any substitutes would work quite as well. When I finally did try my banana nut muffins with honey, all wheat flour and coconut oil, they were great! I used honey in El Torito's sweet corn cake recipe, and no one even noticed the difference.

I have learned to like things a little less sweet. I use less sweeteners now, because I taste them more. As a culture, we not only eat sugar too often, but we eat too much of it when we do. A little sugar goes a loooong way. When you slowly cut it out, you change your taste. I used to live in Taiwan where I was a missionary. The Taiwanese people don't like things very sweet. They eat slightly sweetened beans for or fruit for dessert. Even the Snickers bars they sell in 7-11 have less sugar, because they just don't like things overly sweet. You can train yourself to like things less sweet.

The less you eat sugar, the less you crave sugar. And the opposite is also true. I think that's a good thing to remember if you are trying to cut sugar out of your diet. It will be hard at first, but will totally get easier. When those sugar cravings DO happen, it's usually your body telling you that you need fat. Have a few nuts and wait a little while and your craving WILL go away.

Most sugary foods aren't worth it anyway. Think about it for a minute. Most of the time, when you talk about sugary food, it's things like store bought cookies or ice cream... some may be okay, but most are not amazing. And most don't make you feel great afterward. Except for a little piece of dark chocolate. That does feel good on my stomach.

Cutting out sugar helps you lose weight. Studies have been done on this, but I will just add my own experience: my baby weight came off faster and easier while I was not eating sugar. I certainly didn't cut my caloric intake; I ate what I was hungry for, plenty of fat and protein and yes- carbs too, but no sugar or white flour. And my weight loss sped up. I am now within 10 pounds of my goal!

Be sure to check out my giveaway ending this week.
This post is part of Fight Back Friday, wholesome whole foods, and Vegetarian foodie fridays.

My new goal: no sugar

My youngest baby is 7 months old, and last time I checked, I'm still carrying around about 19 extra pounds (mostly in my lower body, see photo above). This is my fourth baby, so I have been through this before, but the weight wasn't coming off as fast as I would have liked (which, if you want to get technical, never comes off as fast as I would like). I decided it was time to really get serious about trying to lose this weight: I was going off sugar. I decided first to do an experiment. I wanted to see first if it was really hard, and second if it helped me lose weight any faster. For my experiment, I would go without any refined sugar or white flour for a week. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you probably know I don't eat a lot of sugar anyway. We hardly eat anything that is all white flour, but I would often mix it with wheat as a compromise with my husband.

The first question: was it really hard? NO! There were a few things I purposely didn't have around: no chocolate chips in the freezer, and I didn't make any muffins. I used honey or maple syrup in place of sugar for a sweetener, and I felt like I was getting plenty of sweet tastes in my diet.

The second question: Did I lose weight any faster? YES! After one week, I had lost 3 pounds. That was unexpected and really exciting for me. I don't think I lowered my calories at all, and I ate a lot of fats during that week. If I ever needed a treat, I made chocolate fudge with no sugar.

So, I've decided to continue on with my no sugar/ no white flour diet a little while longer. I know a goal should have specifics, like how long I am going to keep doing this...but for now, the goal is just to continue.

Confessions: The only times I have had sugar in the last month have been times when I was out to eat. Really, I don't know that there was sugar in it, but I'm just going to assume the pizza hut had some HFCS and the Pickup Stix was loaded with sugar. Oh, yeah, and the other time I cheated was my husband's birthday (even though I didn't even have sugar on my own birthday!). He requested I make him a German Chocolate Cake from scratch. It was the most fabulous cake I think I ever made and I have to say, totally worth it.

White, Brown, and Raw Sugar

So, you know sugar is not good for you. You want to get it out of your diet, but you still want something sweet. What's a girl with a sugar craving to do? Here is a list of 3 common sugars, how they are made, and what the difference is.

Raw Sugar: Raw sugar is made by pressing the juice out of the sugar cane, mixing it with lime, evaporating the liquid, and spinning in a centrifuge. Umm, what happened to the raw part? When you talk about raw milk or raw honey, that means nothing was done to process them. Raw sugar, on the other hand, is actually processed! In one statistic I read, it is only 5% less processed than white sugar.

White sugar: White sugar is made basically the same way, but they add chemicals to take the color out. They can do this before or after crushing the sugar cane, but the end result is the same: they bleach out the color and filter out the vitamins and minerals found in whole sugar cane.

Brown Sugar: To make brown sugar, first they make white sugar, then they add in some of the molasses. That's where it gets its darker color. It has a very small amount of minerals from the molasses, but brown sugar is only about 5% molasses, so most of what you are getting is empty white sugar calories.

I used to buy Organic Evaporated Cane Juice from Trader Joe's. Sounds good, right? Well, from all I've read on sugar, there is really very little difference between the "raw" and the "white."

I try to reduce my sugar consumption and use honey or maple syrup as an alternative. For those few things I still make with sugar... I use regular old white or brown sugar, just because it costs less. I like to use my shopping dollars where they really count, and it doesn't make sense to me to spend more than twice as much on the "raw" sugar, for only a 5% variation in the final product.

More reading on sugar:
"Get the refined sugar out."
"Will the real raw sugar please stand up?"

One moms "healthy snack" is this mom's nightmare

Today at the library after reading a story, the librarian handed out a snack. I always cringe inside when I know my kids are going to be given unhealthy food, but I try not to be a total food Nazi (outside the house). I figure if my kids are constantly feeling deprived when all the other kids are getting a treat, it will eventually backfire. Anyway, when they handed out the "fruit" snacks, I opened it for my 2 year old, but I couldn't help reading the ingredient list on the back. "This has a lot of sugar," I lamented to the mom next to me. Her answer? "But at least they're fat free."
As Americans we are so concerned about what's not in food, it almost seems like we don't care what is in it. In this case, what was in it included: juice from concentrate (this means fruit sugar), corn syrup (processed sugar from corn), sugar, modified corn starch, Fruit Puree, Gelatin, Citric Acid, Lactic Acid, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Alpha Tocopherol.
These particular fruit snacks say on the cover: "made with real fruit" and I think for a lot of parents, that's enough to convince them that it's healthy. We don't stop to think sometimes that "made with" is not the same as getting an actual piece of fruit. We've lost so much in the processing, and adding other ingredients, that we're not getting the benefits of fruit at all.
Most shocking to me was that this one toddler sized serving of fruit snacks contains 23 grams of sugar. In one teaspoon there are 4 grams of sugar, so in this one little fruit snack pack-- 5.75 teaspoons of sugar! And the fact that they are fat free, like the other mom was so relieved about, is actually worse. There is no fat, fiber (0 grams) and only minimal protein (1 gram) to slow down the rush of sugar into the bloodstream. In nourishing traditions, Sally Fallon explains, "In nature, sugars and carbohydrates...are linked together with vitamins, minerals, fat and fiber--the bodybuilding and digestion regulating components of the diet." Fruit snacks are about as far from nature as you can get.
This is one of those hard calls as a mom: risk a fit-throwing hungry toddler, who may grow up feeling deprived, or feed him processed sugar masquerading as a healthy snack.

This post is part of fight back friday at food renegade.

"What's so bad about sugar, anyway?"

A friend asked me this question today. It's easier to understand in the context of what sugar is, and how it affects our body and digestion.

What is sugar?

First of all, when we talk about sugar, what exactly are we talking about? Sugar comes in lots of forms, such as milk sugar (lactose), but generally, when we talked about sugar, we're referring to refined table sugar. Sugar comes from sugar cane or sugar beets. When in their whole form, these have things like fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Refining sugar is the process of boiling it down, removing the solids and color, until all that's left is sweet tasting little sugar crystals. So, problem number one is that we remove all the "good stuff." One rule I try to follow is to eat food in its natural state as much as possible.

Enzymes and Digestion

One of the good things we remove from refined sugar is enzymes. Dr. Edward Howell, a food enzyme researcher says this:

"If enzymes were in the food we eat, they would do some or even a considerable part of the work of digestion by themselves. However, when you eat cooked, enzyme-free food, this forces the body itself to make the enzymes needed for digestion. This depletes the body's limited enzyme capacity." (Click here for the complete interview)


So what does that mean? Basically, when we eat refined sugar we aren't eating any of the components of food that help digest it. Our bodies CAN digest refined food, but since the food is enzyme free, the body must rely on our limited stores of enzymes to do the job.


Blood Sugar and Insulin


Next, we come to the topic of blood sugar. While blood sugar goes up and down, our body's job is to try to keep our blood sugar from spiking too high or too low. There are many processes in our body that are dedicated to doing just that. 


"But", says Sally Fallon, "when we consume refined carbohydrates, especially alone, without fats or proteins, they enter the bloodstream in a rush, causing a sudden increase in blood sugar. The body's regulation mechanism kicks into high gear, flooding the bloodstream with insulin and other hormones to bring blood sugar down to acceptable levels. Repeated onslaughts of sugar will eventually disrupt this finely tuned process, causing some elements to remain in a constant state of activity and others to become worn out and inadequate to do the job. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that a diet high in refined carbohydrates will also be deficient in vitamins, minerals and enzymes, those bodybuilding elements that keep the glands and organs in good repair. When the endocrine system thus becomes disturbed, numerous other pathological conditions soon manifest--degenerative disease, allergies, obesity, alcoholism, drug addiction, depression, learning disabilities and behavioral problems."


Here's a clip from the movie Fat Head that gives you a visual on how this all works.

You may come to the conclusion that refined sugar is evil and you should avoid it at all costs. If you have the willpower to do that, it probably is better for your health. But for our family, sugar is a sometimes food. 


Ways to cut down on sugar

1. Avoid packaged foods. Or, at the very least, read the labels. Sugar has many names in the ingredient list: high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, maltose, lactose, evaporated cane juice, and many more. SO many packaged foods have high fructose corn syrup. Start by avoiding that one, as it is definitely a processed, refined sugar and in so many foods.
2. Start slowly to cut the sugar down. If you're used to using 2 Tablespoons of sugar on your oatmeal, try cutting it in half. If only one Tablespoon seems too little, try 1 1/2 Tablespoons. It won't take too long to get used to it, and then in the future you can cut back a little more. If you do it slowly, you won't even miss it.
3. Ask yourself if you really need to add sugar. A few recipes I have really don't- like the 2 Tbsp. called for in my pancake recipe or the recipe for wheat bread that calls for brown sugar.
4. In baking, reduce the sugar by about half. You may have to play around with certain recipes, and reduce more or leave more in, but I find that half is usually a good place to start in most baked goods.
5. Use extra virgin coconut oil in place of butter. Extra virgin coconut oil has a sweet flavor, so you won't need as much added sweetener.
6. Try using a sugar that is less refined: raw honey and pure maple syrup are good ones to try. They are both sugars, but still have nutrients that our bodies can use.


So, what is so bad about sugar? Probably the worst thing about it is its prevalence in our food. Try one of the above tips or one of your own to cut back on the sugar in your diet.