Checking In, Weigh-In, A CBS "toxic Sugar" video link, and a prayer request. :)

Man, amazing how time flies. It's been nearly two weeks since I checked in.

Okay, so weigh-in: 177.6 

That's a little over 3 lbs less than last Sunday, and that's back near to my lowest weight on this journey. That's good.

Here's the bad: the reason.  I've eaten a lot less (roughly 1000 cals) in the last 4 days. I've been on high anxiety and stressing. Hubby got laid off. So, yeah,  stress is high.

Normally, I'd dive into food for comfort. But, as anyone whose family income got shut down, you start economizing right off, and that means no eating out, take-out (or as minimal as possible). I'm using up what's in the house and drinking my whey protein when I don't feel like cooking. I spent two sleepless nights, and finally crashed and rested last night.

So, for the praying bloggers, I'd welcome prayers for , well, good employment for us, and fast. I don't want to drain savings. Thanks.

In clsoing, I wanted to pass along this link for a CBS 60 Minutes segment by Sanjay Gupta on sugar. If you misssed it back when they aired it, watch it. Worth seeing.

I'm convinced we need an anti-sugar-eating campaign like the no-smoking and no-drugs one. It won't eliminate it, and I wouldn't expect a total elimination. But if we can get people aware to LESSEN consumption and to demand hidden sugars be eliminated (bread doesn't NEED sugar, right) by not buying stuff with unnecessary included sugars, we'd all be better off. I mean, if we save sugar for rarer treats--a celebratory tarte or special hand-made truffle now and then--no one dies from that. But daily sugar ingestion in the sort of quantities and with hyperpalatable foods we have in modern life--the combo that really sets us up for overeating-- that is just deadly.

I began minimizing sugar intake when I first saw BITTER TRUTH (the video with Dr. Lustig that went viral a couple years back). I spent months and months when I didn't touch a thing with sugar. I got lax, allowed some real sugar treats in a few times a week along with my non-sugary ones. It was good to refresh myself with that video, to remind me to be vigilant. :)

Ditch the sugar, friends.

And be well...

Ready for Summer Update #7: Well, that was a surprise. A good one. And no, I'm still not on top of my game...

Tanita-san: 178.8
Last week: 179.8

Back down to where I was two weeks ago.

Waist: 34.75 (unchanged)

I had been as high as 182.2 this week . I though I'd show a 3 lb gain in this update.

(Why? Here's why: Lots of salty foods, more carbs than usual--a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and cinnamon on Wednesday, and I hadn't had oatmeal in, sheesh, more than a year maybe? and beans 3x this week, black and navy and pinto/refried--as well as an increase in snacky stuff, like chocolate and gluten-free cookies).

Seriously, my food has been teetering on the verge of head-diving into the pit, teetering...teetering..

I have hardly been on the ball here.

I have had some of my controls in place--no binge, some exercise, moment when I had to say NO, NO hard when I almost called for delivery stuff out of laziness ,but then cooked the pasteured chicken breasts and made low-salt sauce.

But others waivered quite a bit( eg, no walking AT ALL, partly due to the loads of rainstorms, mostly cause I got really slothful and demotivated to do so. Sugar crept back in in chocolate and gf cookies) No gold star here.

Even my fluid intake was waffley--some days great, two days under desired amounts.

I am not proud of myself at all.

I am happy some good habits remained, enough in place not to send me totally into a tailspin of disaster. Good habits can only hold on so long before they fail if not reinforced.

This week, I plan to make a plan for reinforcement. Maybe tape it up to the kithen cupboard. Back to my 3 cups of water before meals. Back to focusing on less starch and curtail snacks. Back to my ONE diet-friendly dessert AFTER DINNER only. BACK TO WALKLING (even if I may have to do some radical rescheduling, since the rainy season seems to have come in and is keeping me in afternoons/early evening, when I normally walked). I'm not a morning person. AT ALL.So, it's either figure out how to MORNING-IZE my walk to do indoor cardio (hate that, really) with DVDs.

Stress is minimized a bit, but it's still simmering.

I've been praying. A LOT. I'd say I've prayed more the last week than in the two months prior. It's intensive. And I intend to keep that up. I've felt less frazzled emotionally doing so.

GOALS: Well, pretty much the original ones in the opening challenge post. It feels gargantuan to me in my state of mind (demotivated). Still...and again, I will be happy if I show no regain, but my head and heart want that 1/2 pound loss minimum.

I wish everyone a very happy holiday weekend. To all the mothers, God bless you. Be strong and courageous as you raise your young ones (or continue to advise and comfort your not-so-youngs ones) and have a lovely special day. My mother is in Heaven with the Lord, and I know she is waiting for us, like Moms always do, for the great homecoming.

Be well...

Now, there's a creative (aka nuts) delusion to justify stuffing in the junky sweets

The Sweets Empire Parts 1 and 2

If you've never read Japanese manga online before, you read it right to left, top to bottom. You can click on the page to go to the next one, or hit the "go right" arrow on your keyboard.

This is a two-part story in a series of often dark stories about teens. Madness (transient or otherwise) or surreal escapist fantasies or skewed perspectives figure in many. The author weaves the characters into a very cool finale, complete with an unnatural natural disaster and "new day" sorta hope. It's an ending that lets them...fly...sorta...

In The Sweets Empire, a gal loses a lot of weight in order to confess her love to a boy in her class who favors thin beauties. But she's derailed by ONE spoonful of a sugary treat snuck into her mouth by a mischievous friend. What follows is ...not normal. Binge eaters will identify in part with her reaction!

The ending of her story is victorious for her, and man, some of us need a full-size poster made out of that last panel.  If cakes and sweets are your downfall, take a look at that panel and repeat like the heroine, "I won't ever surrender to you, evil sweets empire!"

Be well...

Is Sugar Toxic? Well, I am on the "Yes" side of the debate aisle....and it scares me poopless to think what I've done consuming the crap for 50 years.......beware, a rant...

 "If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

Some time ago, I posted on my old blog the link to the youtube video of Dr. Lustig's SUGAR: THE BITTER TRUTH. That and Gary Taubes first book on carbohydrates and their link to fat storage/obesity/diabetes/heart disease got me to start weaning off sugar, bit by bit. I think they are both onto something. And it's VERY scary.

Read the article. Even if you have doubts or disagreements, read it. If you're insulin resistant or diabetic, you had really better read it, especially the last paragraphs dealing with I.R. And if you eat sugar and HFCS, please, please, take a few minutes to read it. If you forget about this post, you'll find the link on my right sidebar for "Is Sugar Toxic?" If you want a hard copy, I believe it will be in this coming Sunday's NY TIMES.

I was diagnosed with Metabolic Syndrome in 1998 (Syndrome X was the term I heard a lot back then for the syndrome). I have Insulin Resistance. Changes in my diet kept me from going full-blown diabetic in 2004 when I was at my highest weight. Thank God. As I lose weight, I hope to burn off the toxic fat in my liver. Yes, I have fatty liver (and I do not drink). Reading the part in this article about the possible correlation with cancer is terrifying. I have been I.R. for two decades plus. What the hell did that do to me?

Did I start to get fit in time? I ask myself this question a lot. I'm 51.

Like Allan says, "Sure, take your time. Being fat is no problem." This article says there's a time bomb and it may be well related to sugar/HCFS consumption and insulin resistance/diabetes/Metabolic Syndrome.

Time bomb.

Yeah, let's keep stuffing down those sugary treats and justifying them as just "a little sweet something" cause we have a craving, we're stressed, or coworkers keep bringing them in, our period is coming, our in-laws bug us, the weather sucks, it's Christmas, it's Mardi Gras, it's Easter, it's Fourth of July, it's Halloween, it's Thanksgiving,  it's my birthday, your birthday, his birthday, their birthday, my anniversary, his anniversary, the President's speech is on, the next Harry Potter movie is on, it's a blue moon, it's an eclipse, it's a meteor, it's Monday, it's Friday,  oops, it's the PMS thing again, and another Friday, and it's ABCXYZ... ad infinitum...

It's just a treat. No biggie. A sweet something that makes us feel good.

Only that treat is being used often, every day, twice a day. How many treats are in our food journals each day, day by day? Sugar-including treats? HCFS-riddled treats?  A cookie or two here. A Skinny Cow there. A chocolate VitaTop (sugar--third ingredient) here. A 1/4 can of Pepsi there. A frozen yogurt here. A 1/2 cup of Ben and Jerry's there. Oh, look, a handful of M&Ms and a Pop-Tart slipped in that uber-stressful day. Maybe a 90-calorie Quaker granola bar get snapped up for an in-the-car breakfast. (Count how many times sugar comes up in the list of ingredients. Gasp freely.Go look at your granola's ingredients. I dare you. )

I can't do those justifications anymore..not with any amount of ease. I'm too scared of the damage already done and the damage that would be yet-to-come if I went back to sugary ways.

Note no one is talking about an occasional, special treat. We eat this crap daily in the US. A lot of us eat it several times a day in all sorts of foods....

See if you can do sugary treats and foods and sodas with mental ease after reading the article. After watching Dr. Lustig's video. See how calm you can be handing that second slice of birthday cake, side of ice cream to Juanito, that bag of lollipops or that Three Musketeers bar to lil Emily, the candy apples and cotton candy at the fair to Jenny, or the couple Oreos or Froot Loops breakfast to Caleb, Jr?

What are they eating in school that you can't control readily? Do you even know? (Watch the recent Jamie Oliver program on the LA area's school food. OMG! ) Sweetened chocolate milk. Sugar-added pancake syrup. Sugar-fruit yogurt. Sugar laden pizza sauce. Danishes. Brownies. Sugary cereals. The chocolates for fundraisers for the band. Any vending machines nearby? What do they have?

Then maybe the young ones are on the way home, and they pick up some treats--gum, chocolate bars, ice cream cones, milk shakes. Then while doing homeowork, some trendy new treat gets munched on. Maybe hit some jelly beans when it's time to watch tv. Or caramel popcorn. Or a few Nilla Wafers washed down with some "fruit juice beverage" that's essentially sugar water. Or a Coke or a Dr. Pepper.

Maybe dinner has meat drenched in bbq sauce (HFCS second ingredient)  or they use up a 1/2 cup of ketchup on that burger with fries (HFCS # 3, corn syrup #4 ingredients) or there's sweet-n-sour Chinese or a honey-mustard dipping sauce for the nuggets that's more sugar or corn syrup than actual honey. And what are they drinking with dinner? Sugary fruit punch? Sugary lemonade? Hawaiian Punch? Regular soda? Flavored/sugared milk?

Just see if maybe you don't think twice...three times...about what mainlining all that sugar's gonna do to your babies....what it already is doing...

Me, I regularly call sugar-- online and offline-- "da debbil". I do believe it is the devil in the human diet. One of them, for sure. The Big One, perhaps.  It's pervasive in the US (read labels). It's addictive. (Take away a kid's--or PMS woman's treats--and try not to get killed.) It's fattening.

The devil in the diet.

"Isocaloric" is not "Isometabolic", says Dr. Lustig. (See the article for definitions.) We forget that, I think.

Here are the concluding paragraphs:

Most of the researchers studying this insulin/cancer link seem concerned primarily with finding a drug that might work to suppress insulin signaling in incipient cancer cells and so, they hope, inhibit or prevent their growth entirely. Many of the experts writing about the insulin/cancer link from a public health perspective — as in the 2007 report from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research — work from the assumption that chronically elevated insulin levels and insulin resistance are both caused by being fat or by getting fatter. They recommend, as the 2007 report did, that we should all work to be lean and more physically active, and that in turn will help us prevent cancer.

But some researchers will make the case, as Cantley and Thompson do, that if something other than just being fatter is causing insulin resistance to begin with, that’s quite likely the dietary cause of many cancers. If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, they say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers, at least — radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly. For just this reason, neither of these men will eat sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, if they can avoid it.

“I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can,” Thompson told me, “because I believe ultimately it’s something I can do to decrease my risk of cancer.” Cantley put it this way: “Sugar scares me.”

Sugar scares me too, obviously. I’d like to eat it in moderation. I’d certainly like my two sons to be able to eat it in moderation, to not overconsume it, but I don’t actually know what that means, and I’ve been reporting on this subject and studying it for more than a decade. If sugar just makes us fatter, that’s one thing. We start gaining weight, we eat less of it. But we are also talking about things we can’t see — fatty liver, insulin resistance and all that follows. Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do.

Rant Done.

Now I'm going to bed (this will be published hours from now) singing a bit of an old Randy Stonehill song: "Shut de do'. Keep out de debbil. Shut de do'...keep de debbil in de night...shut de do'...keep out de debbil...light de candle...evvything's all right..."

Quote of the Day: Sugar, not Fat!

For the past couple years, I have started to move more and more into the position espoused by today's quote from Dr. Mercola, though I won't say I espouse his entire nutritional philosophy:

The truth is, many of the health problems attributed to fat and cholesterol are in fact caused by SUGAR, not fat!

I think it was just hearing about sugars and inflammation, sugars and cancer, sugars and diabetes, sugars and upping cholesterol, sugars triggering binges, etc. It was just coming to me as: Okay, this stuff is like poison in many ways. It has to be reduced (or for some ELIMINATED) from one's daily meals. Multitude of health issues may be impacted (some seriously) by ingesting sugar (sucrose, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, and etc ad infinitum).


I do think it still comes down to calories for weight loss--burn more than what you eat or stay the same or gain. Period. Gastric bypass' popularity has proved that even those who said they couldn't lose weight by eating less were lying. The surgery made them eat less: they lost. (Unless someone can show me a gastric bypass patient whose surgery was done properly but right off the bat either didnt' lose or gained.) Eat less than you burn, you lose weight. Eat more than you burn: gain weight. (And yes, some people naturally burn more--freaking lucky devils--and some naturally burn less --we the cursed ones-- for all manner of reasons, such as some naturally fidget, some naturally have an urge to NOT sit still, some have great thyroids, some have whack pituitaries, some have endocrine disorder.) It still applies: Even if you're a metabolically blessed person who can eat five turkeys and two pigs and a palmful of chocolate a day and burn it off, if you eat the SIXTH turkey and the second palmful and don't burn it, you'll gain.

But I think that simple, processed carbs may actually be the diet devil. Time and more research will tell.

Until then, finding a way to eat fewer calories that your body needs daily with maximal satisfaction (however one defines satisfaction, be it bulk that fills the tummy or small portions of most-desired foods, or high fiber, or high liquid, or meat or no meat) is the only surefire way to go down, down, down on the scale. Less in than out. But also BETTER IN...