Going sugar free

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Hammered
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#1345306 16-Jul-2015 11:33

When you cut out sugar, red meat and dairy and greatly reduce carbs, and also can't eat seeds/grains/nuts it gets rather boring.

People often mistake me for an adult because of my age.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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Fred99

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#1345309 16-Jul-2015 11:36

bazzer: What about honey?

It's a cool idea, but I love sweet things. I might be addicted to crack. Soft-crack and hard-crack sugar!

Honey has approximately the same fructose:glucose ratio as cane sugar.
It might (or might not) be "healthier" because of other stuff in it, but IMO the main benefit (apart from flavour) is that it's expensive enough to moderate consumption.

jonathan18

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#1345311 16-Jul-2015 11:43

Stu: When you cut out sugar, red meat and dairy and greatly reduce carbs, and also can't eat seeds/grains/nuts it gets rather boring.

Agree completely. That's why I'd never eliminate any of these (other than meat of course!) completely from my diet. Reduce, sure, but not remove. Food tastes too good to limit oneself to that degree, and it becomes just too much hard work.

For those of you on relatively extreme diets - if you have kids, what sort of food do you provide for them? I'd be equally worried about giving my kids hangups about eating from this level of control as I would bringing them up on a poor diet.

macuser

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#1345313 16-Jul-2015 11:46

tdgeek:
macuser: If we could all eliminate sugar and 80% of simple carbohydrates (white bread, pasta etc) then I'm sure we would all have a far easier time keeping weight and diabetes under control.

Tho carbohydrates make up most of our meals because they're cheap an relatively filling. If only I could afford to eat exclusively meat and veges!

Its ironic, that processed foods are cheaper? At some point they were plain meat and veg, then they were processed, so theorertically the meat and veg should be cheaper as no added production costs

Bit like, why is bottled water more expensive than petrol? Why is coke cheaper than milk? Bizarre

Processed foods have a far longer shelf life, supermarkets throw away or donate a lot of not-so-fresh produce which they don't have to do nearly as much with long shelf life products.

tdgeek

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#1345316 16-Jul-2015 11:52

Stu: When you cut out sugar, red meat and dairy and greatly reduce carbs, and also can't eat seeds/grains/nuts it gets rather boring.

Moderation. Exercise.

Take red meat. High in protein and iron too I think, cut the excess fat off, drain it to drain off the cooked now liquid fat. Moderation

Take KFC, so what if you have that once a week, its a treat. Moderation

doozy

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#1345317 16-Jul-2015 11:53

tdgeek:
jonathan18:
macuser: If we could all eliminate sugar and 80% of simple carbohydrates (white bread, pasta etc) then I'm sure we would all have a far easier time keeping weight and diabetes under control.

Tho carbohydrates make up most of our meals because they're cheap an relatively filling. If only I could afford to eat exclusively meat and veges!

The most difficult meal to arrange in such a way (esp if you're a vegetarian like me) is breakfast, ie what's decently filling but also low in carbs and sugar? And easy and quick to prepare? Many people don't have the time to make a cooked breakfast in the weekday mornings, so this cancels out eggs, bacon etc, or the time to make some wondersmoothy with bamboo root and echidna sperm. As it is, I'm happy with my breakfast of Vogel's, even if it is carb-heavy.

Carb heavy or just some carbs? You need carbs for energy, and its sposed to be the most important meal of that day. Slow digestion is the key. Lighter lunch, lightish tea. But exercise is a biggie.

There are adjustments no doubt, I plan in advance, make a seed muesli on the weekend which lasts a couple weeks, sometimes have a smoothie, and also I made up a large quiche and just reheat portions for breakfast

You don't need carbs for energy, your body can instead burn fat for energy and fat fills you up more than carbs do

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#1345323 16-Jul-2015 12:02

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry but I couldn't resist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UZJRR8OHhY

Cheers - N

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jen1001

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#1345350 16-Jul-2015 12:17

Great post! Thanks for sharing and wish you all the best dafman

I started on that path last December after doing a work challenge.

I cut all processed sugar (biscuits, lollies, chips, jam), having oats for breakfast with a piece of fruit instead of brown sugar and started going for walks during breaks at work. I take public transport to work and got off the bus stop before mine on the way to work, and back home. The effort was well worth it. Also got a Fitbit for extra motivation and that did help as well because I could actually monitor steps and water intake.

Lost 7 KGS in the initial 10 weeks, it's been 7 months and getting close to my set goal for year

I don't go to the gym but I reckon that the lifestyle changes made were significant, like dafman.

Also recommend "the secrets of sugar - the fifth estate" on You Tube, it's eye opening!

dafman: The butter vs marg thread prompted me to kick start this discussion.

About two months ago I decided to cut sugar from my diet. Why? Without going into too much detail here, the enemy sugar is fructose. Refined sugar is half glucose, half fructose - glucose is easily processed in the blood, fructose cannot be processed in the blood, so is sent to the liver to be dealt with.

Research seems to agree that the human body can only effectively process around five teaspoons of sugar a day. Any excess – particularly fructose, can’t be effectively processed by the liver and is converted to fat.

Evolving thinking is that fat is not necessarily the enemy we have been led to believe. Sugar is potentially worse, and the drive to ‘low fat' processed foods has dramatically driven up the average person’s sugar consumption.

Take this typical ‘low fat’ breakfast – a bowl of Special K, low fat fruit yogurt and a glass of fruit juice. How much sugar in this breakfast alone …

… in excess of 20 teaspoons! That’s way more than your body can effectively process in a day, and you haven’t got out the front door yet to start the day.

If interested, in particular, I would recommend these two recent documentaries (1) Fed Up (2) That Sugar Film.

So what’s my experience two months in? With no other changes to lifestyle at all, I have dropped around 5kg. I gave up sugar for health reasons, not weight loss, but an nice side effect nonetheless.

[Mod edit |Stu| Moved to the correct sub-forum]

Dingbatt

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#1345353 16-Jul-2015 12:21

I went "sugar-free" over 3 years ago (April 2012) before it became the latest fad. Lost 15kg over the following year. Firstly, to lose that amount you have to start off as a fat bas***d. However even friends that have followed what I have done have lost some and become healthier in the process.
I started after reading a book by David Gillespie called Big Fat Lies and didn't think I had a diet particularly high in sugar in the first place, no sugar filled fizzy drinks, only occasional ice cream or chocolate. But it is all the hidden sugars that really do the damage. Some breakfast cereals, up to 40% sugar, tomato sauce 25%, barbecue sauce 33% (more than chocolate sauce!), fruit juice with similar sugar content coke. Even sushi, which seems to be a healthy alternative, uses sugar syrup to bind the rice.
As mentioned in earlier posts fructose is the real culprit here, it is converted to fat as an energy reserve and it inhibits your body's ability to know when it is full. This last point is the key because once you have weaned off fructose then you eat less, and because you are not lurching from a sugar peak to trough you are not driven to search out more food constantly.

There is an excellent website http://www.nzsugarfree.co.nz/ from someone who has been there done that.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

tdgeek

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#1345360 16-Jul-2015 12:24

Dingbatt: I went "sugar-free" over 3 years ago (April 2012) before it became the latest fad. Lost 15kg over the following year. Firstly, to lose that amount you have to start off as a fat bas***d. However even friends that have followed what I have done have lost some and become healthier in the process.
I started after reading a book by David Gillespie called Big Fat Lies and didn't think I had a diet particularly high in sugar in the first place, no sugar filled fizzy drinks, only occasional ice cream or chocolate. But it is all the hidden sugars that really do the damage. Some breakfast cereals, up to 40% sugar, tomato sauce 25%, barbecue sauce 33% (more than chocolate sauce!), fruit juice with similar sugar content coke. Even sushi, which seems to be a healthy alternative, uses sugar syrup to bind the rice.
As mentioned in earlier posts fructose is the real culprit here, it is converted to fat as an energy reserve and it inhibits your body's ability to know when it is full. This last point is the key because once you have weaned off fructose then you eat less, and because you are not lurching from a sugar peak to trough you are not driven to search out more food constantly.

There is an excellent website http://www.nzsugarfree.co.nz/ from someone who has been there done that.

How can you tell what sugar in a product is fructose, bad, or glucose, good?

jmh

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#1345364 16-Jul-2015 12:25

tdgeek:
macuser: If we could all eliminate sugar and 80% of simple carbohydrates (white bread, pasta etc) then I'm sure we would all have a far easier time keeping weight and diabetes under control.

Tho carbohydrates make up most of our meals because they're cheap an relatively filling. If only I could afford to eat exclusively meat and veges!

Its ironic, that processed foods are cheaper? At some point they were plain meat and veg, then they were processed, so theorertically the meat and veg should be cheaper as no added production costs

Bit like, why is bottled water more expensive than petrol? Why is coke cheaper than milk? Bizarre

Most processed foods are made up of carbohydrates that are incredibly cheap. Most of the purchase price is actually the markup followed by marketing. Walk around the central isles of the supermarket and you will find that most foods are some combination of cheap grain-based starches and sugar. The profit margins on these foods are very high. It costs a lot more to farm, store, deliver and sell fresh produce.

andrew027

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#1345367 16-Jul-2015 12:29

Due to some liver/gall bladder problems I had early last year I've significantly reduced my fat and sugar consumption. To give you an idea of how much sugar is like crack cocaine...

When my daughter was born I stopped smoking: my wife and I went out to dinner, I had a cigarette after dinner, she went into labour an hour after we got home, and I never smoked again. From 20-25 cigarettes a day to zero, in an instant, and I've never missed it or wanted a cigarette since then. When I decided to stop having sugar in my coffee I tried cutting that straight out too, but couldn't do it - I had to cut down from 2 teaspoons to one, to a half, to about a quarter, to nothing, over the course of a couple of weeks. While some of that was getting used to the taste, some of it was just missing the sugar - e.g. I didn't mind having less sugar in the coffee if I could have a chocolate chip biscuit with it. And now, over a year later, sometimes in cafes I look at all the sugar sachets in the bowl on the table and think about ripping one open and pouring it into my coffee...

Fred99

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#1345387 16-Jul-2015 12:47

tdgeek:
Dingbatt: I went "sugar-free" over 3 years ago (April 2012) before it became the latest fad. Lost 15kg over the following year. Firstly, to lose that amount you have to start off as a fat bas***d. However even friends that have followed what I have done have lost some and become healthier in the process.
I started after reading a book by David Gillespie called Big Fat Lies and didn't think I had a diet particularly high in sugar in the first place, no sugar filled fizzy drinks, only occasional ice cream or chocolate. But it is all the hidden sugars that really do the damage. Some breakfast cereals, up to 40% sugar, tomato sauce 25%, barbecue sauce 33% (more than chocolate sauce!), fruit juice with similar sugar content coke. Even sushi, which seems to be a healthy alternative, uses sugar syrup to bind the rice.
As mentioned in earlier posts fructose is the real culprit here, it is converted to fat as an energy reserve and it inhibits your body's ability to know when it is full. This last point is the key because once you have weaned off fructose then you eat less, and because you are not lurching from a sugar peak to trough you are not driven to search out more food constantly.

There is an excellent website http://www.nzsugarfree.co.nz/ from someone who has been there done that.

How can you tell what sugar in a product is fructose, bad, or glucose, good?

You can't easily - though can make some assumptions based on total sugars and ingredients. If they were to add fructose as an ingredient, then that should be disclosed in the ingredients list - but otherwise the quantity of fructose (as 50% of sucrose) isn't specified except by order of ingredients listed - ie including "sugar"as a general ingredient.
Soft drink - yes - you can be pretty sure that in NZ, fructose will be 50% of total sugar (and a bit higher in the US or some imported product using HFCS rather than cane sugar).
A more complex product like Milo, then it's more difficult, as some of the total sugars will be maltose etc from malt extract on the ingredients list, and some from added cane sugar.

IMO there's enough evidence already for a change in food labeling so that fructose content - either as pure fructose, HFCS, or as 50% W/W of sucrose should be separately listed on the nutritional information panel. Especially so now that WHO etc are revising guidelines for fructose intake - yet global consumers can't tell from product labels.

Dingbatt

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#1345389 16-Jul-2015 12:48

tdgeek:
How can you tell what sugar in a product is fructose, bad, or glucose, good?

Look at the list of ingredients on the back of the packet. The closer sugar is to the beginning of the list, the worse it is. All added sugar will be 50% fructose. I try to avoid anything that lists sugar as an ingredient. Dextrose (glucose powder) is different, it is still energy but will be burnt frst.
However if you look at the table that shows amounts of fats sugars sodium etc in the product there is something to be aware of. Firstly look at the percentage per 100g or ml, not the amount per serving. The sugar value listed will show all sugars, including fructose, glucose, maltose and lactose. As a guide I expect most processed foods I eat to have no more than about 4% sugar content per 100g.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

tdgeek

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#1345399 16-Jul-2015 12:50

andrew027: Due to some liver/gall bladder problems I had early last year I've significantly reduced my fat and sugar consumption. To give you an idea of how much sugar is like crack cocaine...

When my daughter was born I stopped smoking: my wife and I went out to dinner, I had a cigarette after dinner, she went into labour an hour after we got home, and I never smoked again. From 20-25 cigarettes a day to zero, in an instant, and I've never missed it or wanted a cigarette since then. When I decided to stop having sugar in my coffee I tried cutting that straight out too, but couldn't do it - I had to cut down from 2 teaspoons to one, to a half, to about a quarter, to nothing, over the course of a couple of weeks. While some of that was getting used to the taste, some of it was just missing the sugar - e.g. I didn't mind having less sugar in the coffee if I could have a chocolate chip biscuit with it. And now, over a year later, sometimes in cafes I look at all the sugar sachets in the bowl on the table and think about ripping one open and pouring it into my coffee...

Wow, a strange story indeed. Have you truied artificial sugar, sacharin is it? To give you a no sugar diet but with the sweet taste that you appear addicted to?

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