Re: Sugar free diet
Hi Lin
Top marks to you for realising that any diet is a waste of time if you don't first understand the role of sugar and cut it out of your life. Diets never work simply because by definition, they are a
temporary style of eating which at some point has to cease and then you change to another eating habit, usually old habits that result in the weight piling back on. Yo-yo dieting. Doesn't matter what diet you do imo, cabbage soup, Atkins, Slimming World, Weight Watchers, all temporary eating regimes that, once you stop, will see you revert back to the norm.
People who are overweight need to make a conscious choice to understand why they are fat and make a
permanent lifestyle change of eating healthy foods and eating them the right way. If you do this the weight WILL drop off but will do so slowly, but it will be permanent weight loss, not temporary yo-yo diet weight loss. Common sense tells you that if it took many months or years to put on many stones, then it will take a similar time for your body to get rid of it again.
The sugar issue is one I am passionate about as others here will tell you. Sugar is essentially a Class A drug, highly addictive, hard to come off of, messes with your bodily functions and messes with the reward senses in your brain.
When you eat sugary foods, you get a short term pleasure reward and then the sugar fools your brain in thinking that you are hungry when you are not. As a result you start snacking or eating when in fact your body isn't the least bit hungry. The result is quick weight gain.
It is not simply a case of cutting sugar out though. We need to understand how it is metabolised and thus how to eat foods which contain sugar.
For sure, don't ever buy bags of white refined sugar again, treat it as pure poison. If you take sugar in tea coffee, then wean yourself of it. I used to have it in tea. Couldn't drink tea without it. I switched to green teas and herbal teas which were ok for a couple of weeks, then my body was craving the caffeine more than sugar. When I switched back to regular tea-bag tea, I was then able to drink it without sugar no problem. My body was so grateful for the caffeine (caffeine addiction is something I will need to address later on !!).
Something else to note is the myths regarding "natural sugars" and "non-natural sugars". There is no such thing. Sugar is sugar, it has the same chemical compositions in all its forms whether that be the sugar in that white bag or the sugar in an apple.
What is important is to consume sugar with fibre. There are approx 5 teaspoons of sugar in one large apple. That's a lot ! But the apple also contains lots of fibre in the flesh and pulp. So when you eat an apple you eat lots of fibre with it. That fibre slows down the metabolism of the sugar in your body meaning the energy from the sugar is released slowly and as a result is burned up by your everyday activities, walking, talking, breathing etc. If you eat sugary foods without fibre, like cream cakes, then the sugar is metabolised quickly, your body gets a surge of energy to use and has no immediate use for it, so it stores it away as fat for later.
To help you on your worthy journey I rcommend you read these forum threads on the sugar issue, then come back if you have any questions.
GL
http://www.over50sforum.com/showthre...ighlight=sugar
http://www.over50sforum.com/showthre...ighlight=sugar
http://www.over50sforum.com/showthre...ighlight=sugar
Finally . . . it goes without saying I hope, that you should not substitute a sugar addiction with artifical sweeteners !