Break-Up With Sugar Series:

"If you are constantly receiving deliveries, you cannot relax, you cannot disassemble stored goods, and you cannot access the furniture." me 

A friend of mine recently asked me about the relationship between cholesterol and diet. She is thoughtful and contemplative about taking a Lipitor like drug to reduce elevated cholesterol. I offered a handful of advice including reading labels, avoiding dried fruit, minimizing animal based foods and watching sugar intake. She admitted her dislike toward reading food labels and examining ingredients for reasons we didn't discuss. I then simplified things: "Buy and eat foods without labels."

When reducing sugar, just like reducing cholesterol, eliminating foods with labels is quite possibly a most effective practice. Instead of a boring science lesson, imagine you've moved. On the day the truck arrives with all of your belongings, multiple people scurry in and out of the truck and deliver goods to different rooms of your house. There is a rush to unpack the kitchen and the coffee maker, a scramble to find the kids underwear and favorite stuffed animals, and a last hoorah at the end of the day to make the beds with at least a fitted sheet if the flat can't be found. 

Back in context, the moving truck is your meal, the coffee maker, sheets and underwear are the sugars, and the rush, scurry, and scramble is your insulin response. Sugar, especially refined, easily accessed, high glycemic load sugar, requires a long and fast insulin response from your pancreas. Simplified, insulin moves fuel, sugar and nutrients to the cells of your body for storage or for consumption during and after meals. 

Only when insulin is turned off and inactive within the body, can other hormones access stored sugars and fats for fuel ~or~ Only when the moving truck pulls away and you are sure all of your belongings are back in your possession can you relax and slowly disassemble the boxes and access the furniture. The problem with sugar is this: If you are constantly receiving deliveries, you cannot relax, you cannot disassemble stored goods, and you cannot access the furniture. 

Real foods offer a diverse amount of sugar, fat, carbs, nutrients and protein in tasty, recognizable packages. Chips, breakfast cereal, soda, Aunt Jemima, Hamburger Helper and Skippy aren't real foods. Instead choose roast sweet potatoes, eggs, water, maple syrup, grass fed beef tips and peanuts for all of the flavor, a fraction of the sugar and thrice the benefits. While you're at it, make sure to give your vitamins their vitamins, wash your hands and think of this:

“Some of the largest companies are now using brain scans to study how we react neurologically to certain foods, especially to sugar. They've discovered that the brain lights up for sugar the same way it does for cocaine.” ― Michael Moss


Anna~