Artificial sweetners and insulin levels?

Today the cravings started. 

First it was fizzy (sugar free?) flavoured water. I don’t ever drink fizzy water! Then it was cake, but only because I was looking at a new cake shop website. Daft thing to do, really.

I’ve been eating a hand full of grapes, and the odd tangerine to taper off any sweet cravings and so far that’s been fine. I’ve been (un)lucky enough to have vertigo for the last week, which hasn’t encouraged eating particularly! But I’m already planning what I’m going to eat when I finish the challenge. I’m thinking scones, with jam! Om nom nom!! 

I’m thinking I might cook some sugar free rhubarb muffins or a crumble with frozen yoghurt at the weekend, as a treat. 

I’m even contemplating looking at sweeteners, but I’m not the biggest fan of those – I’m not entirely sure they’re good for insulin levels. Maybe I can read about them!

 

Brain Farts

So, it begins. I’ve been attempting to write this blog a few times, but every time I come here my brain does a fart and I can’t think!! Maybe it’s the lack of sugar. 

I’m just about wrapping up day two, and a number of things are very starkly starring me in the face…

1. How much sugar makes up my usual diet?!?! 

Lots…apparently. Yesterday, I ate bacon, tomato, mushies and egg for breakfast…see photo —->

I had a rice cake and a tangerine for lunch and then this lovely dish for dinner….

a nice bit of River Cobler with butter bean cassoule! YUM. But on realising I had 10grams of natural sugar allowance left, I thought – GREAT! Let’s have some fruit. Only to find that my 10grams of fruit was made up completely of three grapes. THREE! Three grapes and a spoonful of natural, not messed with at all, yoghurt. 

One thing that scared me, was that all day, I’d only consumed 664 calories, but had reached my sugar limit. In a last ditched bid to see if I could bring my calorie intake up, I started munchelling on some roasted nuts.  So in answer to question 1) yep, my previous diet must have been make up of some serious sugar. 

Today, I’ve managed to up my calories to an acceptable level 🙂

I realised today that I need some measurements – I need to be able to establish the change in myself from pre-sugar challenge. So, because of the research I’ve done, there’s a number of factors I’m going to measure along the way that are strongly attributed to too much sugar in the diet. They are:

• Fatigue
• Mood swings (and for me, Rosacea of the cheekles!)
• Headaches
• Cravings
• Sleep quality
• Sinus problems

I think that’s all, though I may edit with more tomorrow when my brain is working better! Main symptom today = tiredness only cured by a strong cup of black coffee! And brain not working very well. 

On the plus side – I’m not having many cravings at all, and I feel surprisingly sedate, more sedate than normal! 

Want to know a little fact?

Apparently, food standards dictates that Demerera sugar and Muscovado sugar can be called this, even when the actual sugar is white sugar covered in white sugar caramel! So some of them aren’t as good as you think! Look for ‘unrefined Demerera/Muscovado’ to be sure it’s not white sugar in disguise! 

L’Enclume

Hello all!

Well, this week, in the run up to giving up sugar, I’ve found it easy giving up all foods – mainly due to being sick for two days straight! Hurrah! (urgh)

This weekend saw a visit to The Lakes (a first for me) and to the Michelin star restaurant L’Enclume for a 17 course extraveganza. Which means, in the run up to tomorrow, I’ve had a 17 course meal, sticky toffee pudding at Alberts in Didsbury and an Easter egg my mum promised not to buy me but couldn’t resist. 

To be honest, I’m looking forward to having an excuse to say ..

No!

…to all things sugary and indulgent. In preparation, I’ve already checked out a bread recipe which I can chuck together from things in the house, and after being persuaded by the free Kindle sample, bought Pure, White and Deadly: How Sugar is Killing us and what we can do to stop it by John Yudkin & Robert Lustig. 

The support from family and friends has been amazing – I was a bit embarrassed telling people what I was going to do, I’m always the first to caution people against such extreme diet changes, but everyone has been brilliant. 

Having such support has made me more determined to do this, document it and see it though. So much so, I had a nightmare that I’d eaten a KitKat for breakfast on Monday and woke up completely devastated by my dream-self! 

Now to decide what my Last Supper will be! 

Recommended Daily Allowance of Sugar?

So there I was, telling everyone that the recommended daily intake of sugar for a woman is 20 grams, when I stumbled upon this….This packet of Walkers Sunbites says that the guideline daily amount of sugar for a woman is 90 grams! That’s 4 and a half Cadbury Creme Eggs! That’s when I thought:

Gosh, have I been telling everyone it’s 20grams (one Cadbury Creme Egg) when in fact it’s 90grams!

Where did I get the 20 gram thing from?

1. The NHS claims it’s 50g for a woman
2. LiveStrong.com claims women should limit their intake to 30g a day
3. GDA Labelling suggests it’s 90g per day for women
4. Wiki says it’s 40g a day, no more
5. At My Fitness Pal it sits around the 26g mark!

So, with the recommendations ranging from 26grams a day for women, and a whopping 90grams a day – what do we actually go with?! Hashtag CONFUSED!

It’s only three and a half days till I start my 30 day challenge and I still don’t know my limits. Answers on a post card! I suspect some labelling food people might use the highest recommendation (90g) so that their percentage on the front looks a lot lower….

If we used the lowest recommendation (26g) – it would make this packet of ‘healthy’ crisps nearer to 10% of the daily intake, rather than 2%.

Hopefully, before Monday, I will have a conclusive answer from someone?

In other news….

I’ve been asked recently;

What exactly will you do?

So, here’s a little run down of the challenge. All ‘added’ sugars, and refined sugars are out. So any labelling that shows the following:

• glucose
• sucrose
• maltose
• corn syrup
• honey
• hydrolysed starch
• invert sugar
• fructose

…is out. This will include a lot of white bread, all chocolate and sweet treats. I’ll also be declining all ‘concentrated’ fruit juices, with or without added sugar and all sweeteners (as they can act just like sugar in the body and on insulin levels)

In a nut shell, I’ll only be eating naturally occurring sugars i.e. fruit, milk, some cheeses and will only consume my recommend daily allowance in those. Whatever that may be come Monday!!

Welcome to Naureen who has decided to join me in my challenge!

Free Yoghurt

Today, our workplace got a lovely delivery of free yoghurt from @Chobani_UK and because of my crusade, I proceeded to annoy all of my fellow workmates:

Did you know? That one yoghurt you’re eating contains ALL of your recommended daily sugar intake? A woman’s is around 20 grams and that yoghurt contains 19!!

 

Shut up, Steph. 

 

I also realised that instead of promoting a reduced sugar diet to the office, I was inducing type 2 diabetes in them all by feeding them the brownies I made. It was like a zoo at feeding time, and I raised £5.40 for Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation. 

Adding that to the £69 raised in sponsorship from my colleagues, and a £10 online donation by a lovely lady called Lizzie – It’s all looking great!! 

In a quest to be even more annoying to everyone around me, I’ve started reading free kindle sample chapters from books like Beat Sugar Addiction Now! and Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar.

I’ll let you know if any of them tempt me to buy!

Interesting facts of the day:

• Chapattis don’t contain any sugar, nor do many curries (thanks for this one Naureen!)
• Chobani yoghurts contain 19grams of sugar 
• Global use of high-fructose corn syrup has increased by 250% in the last 15 years
• Our rate of diabetes has increased by 45% in that time

 

A week to go!

Today it dawned on me the challenge ahead. I had a chat with some lovely folk at work who have sponsored me –

You know bread has sugar in?

Even yogurt has sugar in.

Hmm. In pure panic, I saw no other option than to eat half an Easter egg and a creme egg.  One week and counting, I will be giving up sugar (refined) for the Just Giving 30 Day Challenge.