Aids to Cutting Back on Sugar

Debbie Flint

Tweets by @debbieflint

Aids to Cutting Back on Sugar

updated April 2016

As I write in my book Till the Fat Lady Slims 2.0 – The ‘When’ Diet, it’s vital to wean yourself off sugar.

Sugar is listed as being linked with all manner of health issues, and crucially it prevents you trusting the signals of your body. It will say ‘give me sugar’ instead of ‘now I want protein/ green veg/ fish’ and will keep you being controlled by the sugar demon in your veins.

These links are here for you to keep dipping into, whenever you feel the need. Now, maybe? If you’re reading this for the first time, watch this summary of the

CNN Sixty Minutes reports from Sanjay Gupta, the famous ‘most trusted guy in America’, summarising WHY SUGAR RUINS YOUR HEALTH then see below for more.

One of the latest and one of the best is from RTE, featuring Professor Robert Lustig and also Damon Gameau from ‘That Sugar Film” – is on this link – especially if you buy ‘low fat’ food but can’t understand why your weight loss has plateaued. click here to watch SUGAR CRASH and it’s mentioned in a Back to you blog here.

And one of the latest youtube chats from the godfather of the anti-sugar movement, Prof Robert Lustig, Sugar pandemic , here.

All calories are NOT equal.

I began my sugar free journey by slowly giving up sugar in coffee and tea, eg a quarter of a teaspoon less each week over four weeks, giving up ‘treats’ which now seemed like insidious tricks to keep me trapped and to keep my insulin levels too high to shed fat. The next four weeks I then cut down on any sugar as an added ingredient. Within that time I lost a stone.

Hope this all helps. It’s hard, especially at first, but not impossible.

How to tell that you definitely need to cut back –

– You find yourself reaching for a dessert or sugary sweet treat regularly through the day

– You feel you ‘have’ to end each meal with sugar

– You tell yourself you ‘can’t’ give up sugar in coffee – ‘can’t’ means you need to

– You KNOW you are not hungry but your thoughts go to sugar and you find yourself restless till you get some.

– You have energy peaks then feel exhausted and rely on sweets etc as a pick-me-up.

– You indulge at Xmas and still in early January you crave sugar again regularly

– You can’t stop once you’ve started. It’s still not enough. It’s never enough.

You’re not ‘bad.’ It’s ok, you know, once you’ve read the below you’ll begin to understand why it’s not simply about willpower. You’re in the grip of an addiction, caused by ever more sugar in our food.

It’s been happening since the early 1900’s, and consumption exploded after WWII rationing ended. In 1982 a big mistake happened. A massive error in how they read the studies back then meant that instead of demonising sugar AND fat, it was just fat. It should have been ‘eat low sugar and eat low fat’ in order to cut health problems and encourage weight loss. Instead, sugar escaped through the net. Food giants strove to make lower fat foods taste more palatable so piled in the sugar. Worse, a fruit sugar, fructose, began being used in a pure form. High Fructose Corn Syrup was cheap and helped keep down sugar prices. More than that it was even sweeter than ordinary table sugar, (which is half glucose and half fructose.) This is bad, because pure fructose should not be consumed without the ‘antidote,’ the fibre in the rest of the fruit. It does bad things in the only place it can be metabolised, the liver. Glucose on the other hand, can be used up in every part of the body, but we don’t need added sugar/glucose, because our body can make it from all normal foods including vegetables and complex carbs.

Starting in the liver, a third of all calories we eat as fructose are converted straight back into fat, no matter what exercise we do, no matter what deficit we create in calories and no matter how high our metabolism. (from ‘Sugar the Bitter Truth’ university lecture, see below.) Scary, right? Fructose by-passes the usual appetite-satisfying signals in the body (leptin, grehlin) and leaves us unsatiated. Fructose in the brain acts like cocaine – rats eating both were seven times more attracted to the sugar than to the cocaine. So don’t be a rat.

DON’T BE A RAT.

Simple carbohydrates (white bread, rice, potatoes, crisps, chips) are also bad but for a different reason – they keep insulin high which prevents the body going into fat burning mode.

There’s a ton of info below. DO please dip into it and make yourself aware of what’s controlling you. Get free of it, drink enough water so you’re not dehydrated, and use my Till the Fat Lady Slims 2.0 (TTFLS) book to help break free from food prison.

The habits of a lifetime can be changed, and it starts right here. it’s as easy as watching the videos below.

if you have kids around you with bad bad teeth who drink juice, get their parents to watch this.
If you have overweight people around you who ‘can’t give up sugar’ get them to watch this.
If you think it’s normal to have sweet stuff after every meal, watch this.
If you still think low fat is the way to go, watch this.
If you drink hot drinks with ever more sugar, watch this.

PSYCHOLOGY OF TEMPTATION

Till the Fat Lady Slims 2.0 – the ‘When’ diet This is my semi-autobiographical weight loss book – if all else fails, and you still need to reach for the biscuit tin, this is how to stop it becoming a binge. FREEDOM EATING means sugar is not treasure – therefore resisting is easier.

www.debbieflint.co.uk/ttfls for general info and testimonials and pics of eg 5stone weight loss

Ebook or paperback – ‘Till the Fat Lady Slims 2.0 – the ‘When’ Diet’ – on Amazon – click here.

The Chimp Paradox – it’s a chimp, that part of your brain linked to being a cave man, but there are ways of dealing with it even if you currently think it can’t be controlled. Understand how to deal with it and how it can help stop self-destructive habits. Fascinating book about human behaviour.

‘The Chimp Paradox’ on Amazon – click here.

Gut: by Giulia Enders – another amazing resource. Examines how our microbiota in our gut is the beginning of many health issues. Genius new science. eg we have ‘chubby’ bacteria and how too much sugar affects our whole digestive system which affects our whole body, and our brain. Did you know we even have different bacteria if we are depressed?

Gut by Giulia Enders on Amazon – click here.

Prof Alex Richardson on omega 3 and health – click here for FAB research video clip april 2016

ARTICLES ONLINE

Fat burning simplified Nutrition guru Marlene Watson Tara (.com) has a hard hitting but simple to understand article about why eating simple sugars means insulin is released and having insulin in your body means the cells CANNOT shed fat. Fat Burning Simplified is here – it helped me stop reaching for sugary ‘treats’ – they’re not treats, they’re an insulin switch.

http://www.marlenewatsontara.com/fat-burning-simplifed/

Addicted Oreos are legal crack – so says this website – go here to see the effects of sugar on the brain and why they can be as addictive as cocaine. Isn’t it best to get off it?

http://mic.com/articles/88015/what-happens-to-your-brain-on-sugar-explained-by-science

Trapped If the idea of being controlled by others makes your blood boil, just look at this astonishing article about how food makers deliberately targeted the overweight consumers to make them sugar addicted and buy more. Are you one of their minions? Have they got you addicted? Read this to understand why the answer is to cut down on sugar, then rebel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html

yet more research – improve kids’ health in ten days – here’s an October 2015 New York Times report on the latest findings from Professor Lustig and team on what happened to obese kids’ health in little over a week of cutting right back on added sugars – it’s amazing reading.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/cutting-sugar-improves-childrens-health-in-just-10-days/?_r=0

VIDEOS TO WATCH ONLINE

If you’re like me, watching these iconic videos will make you WANT to stop eating the chronic poison that mucks up your metabolism and keeps you trapped –

– Sugar the Bitter Truth –

1. the original YouTube sensation An hour and a half of a university lecture in 2004 by Professor Robert Lustig the anti-sugar campaigner who is changing the world one click at a time. I watched this FOUR times before I reduced it so much that I ate no sugar at all for a whole month, and lost a stone. So worth while. If getting the info affects your mindset at the moment of decision, then watch them over and over. And keep watching more till you find it easier to leave the dangerous white stuff alone. Sugar the Bitter Truth on youtube is here. 90 mins long – I watched it 4 times – full of science.

2.or this 2011 version is superb – ‘frontiers of Science – WHY sugar is bad – do watch both – and alternate if you need reminders from time to time.

3.(nb if you want a summary, here’s the 2011 New York Times article explaining it in more or less layman’s terms, if you don’t have 90 mins or the science is too confusing. read ‘is sugar toxic, sweet and vicious’ here.

4. The updated video lecture will help decry the nay sayers – see Prof lustig rip apart the studies ‘proving’ it’s not sugar – watch the first fifteen mins or so here in ‘Prof Robert Lustig – sugar; the newest, bitterest truth.’ it’s BRILLIANT.

– Toxic Sugar – ABC news report – great for beginners – 18 mins long –click here

– Is sugar Toxic (the Sixty Minute show) – 14 mins long – click here AND THE FOUR MINUTE SUMMARY HERE

– Prof Lustig video – by me! And taking it back to basics – combining exercise with the whole ‘avoid too much sugar if you want to lose weight’ theme, which we return to over and over again (!), here’s an eleven minute segment from a talk I went to by anti-sugar crusader, Prof Robert Lustig – this section is about the all-important hormones which influence our eating – incl insulin, and the other hormones that signal satiety in the body and how sugar disrupts it all. Click here to watch.

– Dr Eric Berg’s Youtube Channel – including this 14 min clip – the second half is most riveting – layman’s terms about toxicity- click here

– Plus Watch out for – Fed up! the US sensation,on YouTube and from March 2015 ‘That Sugar Film’,by an Aussie reporter, and starring Steven Fry. (www.thatsugarfilm.com )

– And if you have a brave stomach, watch this about FATTY LIVER, bleaurgh! Click here to read ‘Liver Fat is a Serious Health Risk‘

– the RTE documentary featuring so many current experts, Professor Robert Lustig and also Damon Gameau from That Sugar film – watch Sugar Crash here. A good one to watch with the kids.

– how OVERCONSUMPTION OF SUGAR CAN HAVE ADDICTIVE EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN – a bit of science for you in a TED Ed vid – go here – only 5 mins long

– Aprl 2016 – the famous That Sugar Film currently on Youtube (or buy it if it’s been deleted) shows definitively it’s not about the calories. Click here.

– FED UP film – click here – scary – another amazing movie made by health campaigner with some truly scary politics leading to appalling kids’ health.

BOOKS

There’s a long list inside part two of TTFLs 2.0. In addition sign up for the newsletters listed and visit the scientific study sites like FABresearch.org, all listed in the book. Or on google or amazon etc.

ALTERNATIVES

Davina MacCall had a complete pull out in You Magazine at the beginning of January 2015 about giving up sugar and how you can cook differently to accommodate cutting down the white stuff. Lots of knowledge, and suggestions, and for some, that’s all they need. Well done Davina! More here about ‘Five Weeks to Sugar Free’.

Sarah Wilson’s classic ‘I Quit Sugar’ of course, in its various incarnations, if you like following a strict plan.

And Christianne Wolff’s book via QVC ‘Body Rescue Plan’ for a healthy eating diet. And so many more.

Marlene’s Home-cooked treats www.MarleneWatsonTara.com has some fabulous links to videos of her cooking sugar alternatives –

– Nut bars

– Sweet vegetable tea

March 2015 – THat Sugar Film and That Sugar Book from Damon Gameau an Ozzie who proved ‘healthy’ options are so sugar packed he super-sized eating just those. How 60 days of eating ‘health’ foods with too much sugar led to fatty liver disease. More here on the website www.thatsugarfilm.com.

September 2015 – Jamie Oliver’s Sugar Rush on Channel 4, and a whole page on his website about why it’s vital to cut back – well done Jamie! go here.

And more.

This page is regularly updated. Please come back for more.

EXERCISE – maybe an endorphine rush or a tighter tum helps keep you wanting to persevere. Easy quick exercise in a few minutes every day. The Bodyblade is brilliant – here’s the ‘Beach video super6 workout’ Bruce and I did in LA to show how quick and enjoyable exercise can be.