Sugar: The Bitter Truth

Excellent, excellent presentation on the evils of sugar (fructose/high fructose corn syrup) by Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF.

It's *really* good if you watch it while eating delicious double-chocolate brownies with a nice glass of shiraz.

Resolution Recap

Even though I was done with my New Year's resolution on January 21st, I thought I'd officially sum up the experience. All in all - meh.

To be honest, it was sort of a sandbag resolution. Except for the holiday cookie binge I stupidly took part in just before the New Year, I don't eat that much sugar on a daily basis.

Sure, I worship at the House of Pancakes, Doughnuts, Scones & Cookies, but I don't take communion but once in a great while. I rarely drink and I've been gradually decaffeinating myself for months, just to break the morning grogginess cycle.

The idea was to see what it might be like to avoid these things all at the same time, for some length of time and see if it made any difference in my energy, auras, chakras, gravity or gas mileage.

I did feel some nasty depression early on & had a few minor headaches. I think that was purely from the sugar detox after the holiday cookie binge. That passed and hasn't happened again since. So, that was educational... If you eat your weight in biscotti & chocolate chip cookies every day for a week and then quit cold turkey, you might experience some "withdrawals."

Toward the end of the month, I didn't feel any marked difference. Maybe more irritated, in general, and that's not what you want. I'm not sure I can recommend it unless you're really a sugar-booze-caffeine-aholic and need to give your system a break. Everything in moderation - even moderation.

Cheater

Something happened yesterday. I'm not proud of it. I also can't explain how it happened. OK, maybe I can explain it a little, but most of it is still a total mystery.

We took a day trip yesterday, the first sunny day in four hundred years, and I may have been drunk on sunlight and didn't know it.

Rather than waste any time getting on our way, we stopped at Peet's for breakfast. I had a Kashi bar in my purse and it's still there, under my wallet, sunscreen, Orbit gum and a tampon.

I had a delicious almond croissant with my Peet's half & half. Whatever - what's a little frangipane going to hurt? Put it with all the butter in the croissant - what insulin? Plus, it felt like Christmas my birthday and the last day of school all in one - the sun was finally out! PARTY!

We continued on our way to the Marin Headlands to explore & hike around. Spent three or four hours goofing off by the bridge, the abandoned military installations and the beach, then made our way to San Anselmo for lunch.

I *wanted* pancakes and waffles but I *got* the turkey burger. I didn't even eat my fries. Then we left Bubba's and David said he'd really wanted a shake and wished he'd gotten one.


On the way home we passed a shopping center that had a Ben & Jerry's in it. I pulled over so he could get a fix. We cruised through the parking lot and a new store caught my eye. I said I would like to have a look in that store and see what's what.

This is where it gets blurry. I may have gone into said store and immediately joined the excited, jubilant line of eager customers waiting to spy the goods on display in the brightly lit case. I may have been asked what I would like and I might have asked for two cupcakes to go while wiping drool off my face.

It all happened so fast. It's like I wasn't there, but someone told me about it later with such detail that it feels like I was there.

We got into the car, David with a brownie and me with a beautiful little box of treasures. I put down the box and said to David, "I just bought SUGAR!" WTF?

Once home, we cut them up to share and POOF - gone. Just like that. Resolution totally annihilated. I made it 21 days without sugar, caffeine or booze. I'm still off the booze, but now that just seems silly.

But, and this is a very good but - this morning David said he's giving up coke zero. After years of trying to get him to just take a break from it, he's decided to give it up.

So, in honor of that, I'm going back to my no sugar (or almost none) plan, but I will have the occasional fully-leaded coffee and by the end of the month I'll go back to my one-drink-a-week benders.

You gotta live, right?


p.s. the mocha was *amazing* - the double chocolate, meh... next time... red velvet.

Spastic Dreams

Lately I'm having a lot of vivid and strange dreams. It's probably from too many vegetables & fruit instead of sugar.

This morning's still has me out of sorts. I was hanging out with someone I used to date. He was more like a blend of guys I've dated in an unfamiliar body. The spirit was familiar but the face was vague.

He started out harmless but became progressively sinister. He was running errands around town and I was tagging along, but we were not having a good time. We were bickering and after a while I realized I needed to get away.

We ended up at someone's house - a mcmansion-type house in the suburbs. Walking up to the house, I could see into the open garage a set of golf clubs strewn on the ground. I knew he was going to use one of those clubs to beat the shit out of me.

Then I woke up.

There have been many others, but mostly fun up til now. I loved the one where I was "skiing" on flat, red sand in Australia on short, wide skis and I was able to get up to to extremely high speeds just by turning side to side. Would love to go back to that one.

Then there was the one where I was a lesbian with a long-term partner, who wasn't David (duh) and he wasn't too happy about that (contrary to porn movie plots). That one was actually pretty sad. But he reassured me (while fully conscious) that he wasn't going anywhere.

I might need a cupcake pretty soon.

That Was Rough

Day 9 - feeling MUCH better. Got some exercise, good food, lots of sleep and quality time with David. I knew the sadfulness would pass, but it was a long, dreary week. It's felt like a month, really.

It hasn't been difficult to avoid sugar & caffeine (and booze), that's actually been easy. The depressed mood wasn't easy, but it makes sense.

Remember the super low-fat, high-carb diets of the 80s? I ate like that for years, especially being a runner - it's drilled into your head to avoid fat & load up on bagels, pasta, bread, etc.

It's a reasonable assumption that eating like that for many years can alter how your body produces & uses serotonin. At any rate, now that I've cut all that out, shit's been wonky but seems to be settling into a new rhythm.

The sugar cravings are gone - totally gone. This afternoon I stopped at Peet's for a cup of decaf and didn't gaze longingly into the pastry case. I used to *love* snacking on citrus bread or a maple scone with my coffee - didn't even think of it.

Now it seems like I'm craving vegetables and "clean" food, even when it's cold and foggy out. Last year at this time I was eating my weight in steaks, pork chops and potatoes - couldn't get enough. Didn't touch a salad for months. Nothing green. Green does not help insulate you from the bone-chilling cold (and boredom) of a Canadian winter.

And now I seem to be dreaming a lot more - really vivid dreams. Actual nighttime sleepy type dreams, not the I want to find a billion dollars in my bank account type dreams, which, if you're listening Universe, get to it - make it happen.

Hope the good feeling continues. If so, I may stay off sugar forever.

Serotonin Free

It's Day 8 and I'm still off sugar, booze and caffeine. Although it's impossible to be totally caffeine-free unless I give up decaf coffee, which I'm not going to do, so you can blow me.

It's been that sort of week. I thought it was PMS, which I want to think is mostly to blame, but now I'm DMS and usually by this point the mood issues are long gone.

Today was difficult. If we didn't have TV, I'd have spent the whole day staring at the wall. I did that once years ago when I lived in the Western Addition in a haunted house and my car got totaled and I couldn't quickly get the heck outta town. That wasn't a good time.

It hasn't gotten that bad, but today was the most depressed I've felt in a long time. I didn't think I ate that much sugar every day, but I definitely went on a bender during the holidays.

Way too many biscotti, chocolate chip cookies of all sorts, lemon tarts, pumpkin pies, and some dastardly petit fours from Trader Joe's in ridiculously delicious deep chocolate flavors.

I was bingeing like a drug addict right before checking into rehab. I wondered if I might be making a big mistake by doing that.

I'd started the decaf process in mid-December - I knew how painful cold turkey would be - but now I think I'm really starting to feel it. I'm getting that withdrawal headache in the afternoons and yawning. A LOT.

Thankfully the headache is mild, nothing like the cold-turkey variety that makes you want to saw your head off with a Leatherman and pour hot coffee into your skull.

The one bright spot is losing 2 lbs without even trying. That helps make some of the sadfulness worth it. If that keeps up, I'll gladly watch more bad TV while crumpled on the couch crying softly into my blankie.

Day 4, Sugar Free & Sobbing

Day 4 is almost over and it's been the hardest day yet. It's not helping that I'm watching the Food Network and they just showed us deep fried candy bars at the fair.

So many candy bars... dipped in thick, delicious pancake-like batter, fried into crispy, melty chocolaty & nougaty bites of heaven. I wept as I made plans to attend the next state fair, in any state, as soon as possible.

With my period about to drop any minute, I couldn't have picked a worse time to give up sugar. And not just sugar, but all simple carbohydrates - anything & everything that *acts* like sugar in the body.

That reminds me - I saw a commercial tonight that I almost can't believe. A mother is serving cups of red punch to a bunch of kids and another mom tries to caution her about high fructose corn syrup being unhealthy.

The punch pusher cuts her off and says, "Oh, right, high fructose corn syrup? It's from corn, it's natural and just like sugar, it's fine in moderation." What the WHAT? Can you believe that shit?

Now the high fructose corn syrup lobby is trying to tell us that shit is OK? Early last year the Washington Post published an article about HFCS containing mercury! And HFCS is made from genetically-modified corn - even worse - and the Farm Bill subsidizes this shit!

The Corn Refiners Association - Cornholers - should be drawn & quartered then lovingly dipped into giant vats of HFCS and set out to dry in the sun to become candied meat bits for the vultures.

To quote one of my favorite nutrition info sources, Dr. Mercola:

"Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, it’s also about 20 times sweeter than table sugar...

...The food and beverage industry doesn’t want you to realize how truly pervasive HFCS is in your diet -- not just from soft drinks and juices, but also in salad dressings and condiments and virtually every processed food. The introduction of HFCS into the Western diet in 1975 has been a multi-billion dollar boon for the corn industry."

Read Dr. Mercola's article on the devastating health hazards of high fructose corn syrup.

Just seeing this bullshit commercial strengthens my resolve to completely eliminate this crap from my diet. I may go back to eating sugar at some point, but it'll be sugar - it won't be this shit.

Shouldn't it be a crime to put profits before health, you fucktards at the Cornhole Refiners Association?

Day 2: Sugar-Caffeine-Booze-Free

And feeling great. Just avoiding simple sugars & booze for a full day helped drop a pound of water weight - that's impressive. It's amazing how your body bloats up when that shit is in your system.

Speaking of shit in the system, one friend of mine is trying to go vegan for the first two weeks of the year. Like my detox, she's doing it to see how she might feel after a couple of weeks.

I feel for her, since she's a dedicated athlete and will need plenty of high-grade protein to help her body recover from her workouts.

It sounds healthy in theory, but it's not natural. Our physiology is designed to use animal products. What they're not designed for is all the shit in our food supply, literally and otherwise.

One theory about going vegan/vegetarian is that it will somehow help save the environment. It's a noble thought, but I don't buy it.

That problem is way too big to be solved by going vegan. At any rate, I'm not about to stop eating good quality animal products thinking that will help save the environment. It's also not going to help my health.

The funny thing is, I've heard of some vegans eating at Taco Bell. They buy "food" from the largest fast food company that sells the shit found at KFC and Pizza Hut, among others. Ironic, no?

Anywho, to each his own, right? I need to go slaughter some bunnies now.

Happy New Year!

Is it? I don't feel all that happy. Could be last night's tequila - the current lack thereof - making me cranky. I don't feel hungover, just irritated.

Could be lack of sleep. We crashed early last night, 'cause normally *nothing* goes on in Alameda at midnight on New Year's Eve. WRONG.

For the first time ever, we were woken up at midnight by a loud racket of firecrackers, the clanging of pots & pans, noisemakers and whoops & hollers. I felt bad about being in bed, wondering when all the noise would stop. Maybe next year we'll join the party. Who knew?

But I also got a lot on my mind. I recently learned of the Bilderberg Group and I'm totally creeped out.

Nothing is known about the content of their annual, private meetings attended by our elected and/or appointed officials, financial & military leaders and the super-elite & super-wealthy.

A quote from one of the members:

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."
-- David Rockefeller

So now I'm thinking, California needs to secede and become its own country with its own president elected by California citizens without any campaign financing of any kind other than a small stipend from a nominal tax fund.

All corporate donations/lobbyists are illegal and absolutely no policies are made without complete transparency and voter involvement.

We make marijuana totally legal and regulate it, tax it, and sell it to the rest of the world, along with the technologies we develop, Hollywood movies - whatever. There's a lot left to work out yet - it's still pretty early in the day.

I'm still happy about giving up sugar, booze & caffeine - it's a relief, really. It's easier when there's a good excuse - a New Year's resolution - otherwise people flip out. Why!? Why would you do that? What a stupid idea!

Yeah, you're right - striving for better health *is* a stupid idea - I'll feel so annoyingly good and the weight loss will be so lame. What was I thinking? Happy New Year.