I often look back in terror on my university years when I was mostly making frozen dinners in the oven and could drink 1,5 liters of store-brand Cola in a day. I have a much healthier diet (drinking almost exclusively water) and exercise regime now, but sugar is still my Achilles' heel. I find that simply refusing to HAVE any sugary treats at home in the first place is the easiest shortcut. So the trick is to start already in the supermarket when you're tempted to grab e.g. some ice cream or candy for later. I try to avoid buying any sweets in the first place, which makes it much easier to say "No" later.
Yes. Our widower neighbor has zero self control and so he'll even bring some Costco sized box of sweets over and put them in our pantry because he won't be able to stop himself at home. 🤣
We try the following philosophy at home: “Do not bring anything home we do not want to eat,” as otherwise, it becomes a test of willpower, which at least I always lose eventually because I love sweets.
What are your thoughts about fruits, as most are sweet, too? Based on my understanding, they are healthy, but moderation is also a wise strategy.
Great philosophy. We have fruit and I'm torn. I eat much less than before because we've even bred fruit to be sweeter. Like Honeycrisp apples. They're better than an Oreo but they're still mostly sugar.
True. If we continue on this path of manipulation, we will run out of sweet foods.
Also, my other fear is that we will take the easy way out with obesity and start taking glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) to treat diabetes, obesity, and other diseases rather than exercising self-control as mindset may become eat anything and everything as I can always take GLP-1 and with not knowing the long term consequences of this medicine, it may be risky strategy.
For now, I recently read that obesity is decreasing in the US, and the prevalent theory is GLP-1, but it may be too early to pick this as a primary reason. Only time will tell.
I worry about drugs over will power. Because even if diabetes drops, the body still feels like shit with all that sugar. It's still in your brain, nerves, and more.
Overall, I am always looking to get answers to the following questions, irrespective of the incentive of the food and healthcare industries, but the quest continues:
I already asked this one: Are fruits good for you? If yes, how much should we eat?
Is the organic food better? If yes, why is it not encouraged? We do not have enough is probably the answer.
Offff. I’ll just toss my thoughts out there from what I’ve found.
Fruits are good but are more of a ‘candy’ now.
Organic food isn’t worse but it’s benefit is marginal. (home grown is best)
Carbs are hyper processed typically. They’re not bad but they have also been so modified as to be almost indistinguishable.
Animals always supplement. Think of a salt-lick. Vitamins just help the body when we don’t feed it well.
Dairy is healthy but most people need it broken down like cheese, yogurt, cultured milk / butter, etc.
I’ll add on in is that Meat/ Animal Fat is the least messed with and most misunderstood. I’ve done full carnivore diets a few times and I feel great but I do like my carbs.
Whole grains are good for you. Avoid highly processed food like bread as much as possible.
Some people do not get enough Vitamin D, so I will only take it if I have a deficiency.
My father has drunk milk his whole life (1 glass of milk) and yogurt; at almost 89, he is in excellent health. Even though he has slowed down physically, he is probably in the top 10% for his age. I have also been drinking milk since I was born, so I will continue to have milk but not other sugary items as much as possible, even though I love ice cream. The ice cream price is too low if you compare it with the cost of milk, so what is the food industry feeding us?
Doing the sugar detox is extremely difficult but the benefits from it are incredible. Better skin, younger appearance, more mental clarity, more energy, the list goes on. Somehow I became "allergic" to sugar. The blood test showed allergy but I really think it was my gut bacteria being in a state of disaster. This allergy was also the biggest blessing to where sugar is now only considered a nice treat once in a while (aka rarely) and my health has improved drastically!
The gut health is so important! Purging sugar does improve my digestion a lot. I've got IBS type symptoms and they significantly reduce when I cut out sugar. It's awesome to hear you're getting your health back. That sounded rough for a while!
Great thing to draw attention to, and I agree with the sentiment. I’ve tried making really deliberate decisions lately to better my health, and cutting out sugars almost entirely was a big part of it.
My two thoughts:
1) sugar in excess is very bad. But, it’s virtually impossible to eliminate entirely and I would never advocate anyone should because it’s so hard. But, it is fairly easy to limit. I always suggest people keep most all the things they want, and figure out how to keep it minimal. Rather than 5 cans of soda a day, limit to one. If you have a dessert tonight, try and limit the intake tomorrow. You can still have what you want, just in moderation.
2) making healthier choices is really hard and you give up a lot. But being severely overweight and constantly sick is, in my opinion, even harder. So I’ll take the less hard and try and maintain a healthier lifestyle.
Exactly, Jared and I were talking about that when we wrote this. His analogy of the credit card debt is great. You need to control your finances and you need to pay off the debt. That doesn't mean eliminating the credit card all together.
This was excellent. I myself subscribe to the debt concept of diet and exercise, and let's just say I've also managed to kick the can down the road a bit on dealing with my own lust for refined sugar largely through good genetics and intense physical workouts on a regular basis for decades. Now, I just walk every day, so I have to be way more careful.
Also, the analog for visualizing sugar as the actual ailment in the area: that's gonna help a lot of folks.
Fascinating. I'd be curious as to what you think of high sugar consumption in highly athletic environments. Say if someone, let's call them Mandy, were to eat nothing but honeybuns but then traverse twenty miles.
I’d say your liver is going to HATE you since it has to process it all. Burning it quickly might help but your body still has to metabolize and react to that influx.
> The pancreas can no longer make or regulate insulin, therefore glucose remains free-floating in the blood and accumulates in other parts of the body. Sugar in the blood is also transported throughout the body unlocking more diseases.
Something I'd add here: you didn't mention liver, and it is very easily forgotten when it comes to sugar. All sugar that body processes has to go through the liver, so if it starts failing (because you overloaded it) then it's extremely easy to get diabetes. Liver just can't keep more sugar inside itself, can't process more of it into fat so it just dumps it to blood.
It's like filling up an already full glass. It just starts spilling everywhere.
It’s probably worth noting that all the foods discussed in this post are processed foods, with added sugars. Fruits, vegetables, milk, etc. all have sugars in them, but these sugars tend to be released into the bloodstream more slowly than do the sugars in highly processed foods.
Yes, true. I would add that fruit has also been bred to be much much sweeter. Honey crisp apples and cotton candy grapes come to mind. These would be bad necessarily except we are already ingesting a ton of sugar.
The analogies here are spot on an easy to understand. Sugar, and to a lesser extent, carbohydrates, lie at the root of most medical issues in the developed world.
What’s odd is that this crises was, to some extent, created by science. In the 1950s, a spike in heart disease led scientists in search of a cause. They pinned the blame on cholesterol and fat in our diets. Despite no solid evidence for doing so.
Food producers removed fat from food, but because food will not be palatable when you do so, replaced it with carbs and sugar. These “heart healthy” products were, in fact, no better for our hearts and overextended our pancreases by overloading us with sugar. The rest is history….
Now we know better, but you have entire generations still refusing to eat butter, the yolks in eggs, and fat on meat while reaching for candy bars.
I've just turned 60 and enjoy chocolate, I eat it in moderation. How much 'healthier' is (say) 80% dark chocolate when compared to standard dairy milk chocolate?
Here are a couple things that might sound crazy, but maybe someone will find benefit:
Around 5yrs ago, I was having a real problem with stopping at the donut shop on my drive home from work. Couldn’t stop, like the car had a mind of its own. Probably 2-3 years of this. Finally I saw a hypnotist and thought it was a waste of money. 6 months later I realized I hadn’t had a donut from anywhere, not even when people brought them in to work. Haven’t touched one since, and when I see a donut it’s like seeing a piece of paper or something inconsequential like that.
The second thing is that I got a Continuous Glucose Monitor and used it for a month. I experienced the effect “what gets measured, gets improved.” Amazing what I learned about portion size, macro composition, etc. I changed some of the simplest, easiest things and now I know my “spikes” are much flatter. I also know exactly how much a food bender affects my body. They say this is extreme if you’re not t2 diabetic, but I don’t ever want to be.
One of the worst things to happen to the American diet was the "low-fat" = healthy. It was almost universally substituted with sugar and people were led to believe a fat free yogurt with artifical flavors and sugar was better for you than a plain full fat. I Love sugar. Limiting it is hard, but it is much easier if I'm not trying to adhere to the falsity of (my current understanding) a low fat diet where I'm perpetually hungry.
100% low fat was a horrible campaign. It not only led to sugar obesity but also dementia! I find that if I go full fat I'm satiated. If not, like you said, I'm perpetually hungry. Sugar is weird in that it doesn't satiate hunger at all. It just feeds the dopamine.
I often look back in terror on my university years when I was mostly making frozen dinners in the oven and could drink 1,5 liters of store-brand Cola in a day. I have a much healthier diet (drinking almost exclusively water) and exercise regime now, but sugar is still my Achilles' heel. I find that simply refusing to HAVE any sugary treats at home in the first place is the easiest shortcut. So the trick is to start already in the supermarket when you're tempted to grab e.g. some ice cream or candy for later. I try to avoid buying any sweets in the first place, which makes it much easier to say "No" later.
Yes. Our widower neighbor has zero self control and so he'll even bring some Costco sized box of sweets over and put them in our pantry because he won't be able to stop himself at home. 🤣
Does he sometimes show up at your doorstep with withdrawal symptoms at 3AM?
Not that bad. 🤣
We try the following philosophy at home: “Do not bring anything home we do not want to eat,” as otherwise, it becomes a test of willpower, which at least I always lose eventually because I love sweets.
What are your thoughts about fruits, as most are sweet, too? Based on my understanding, they are healthy, but moderation is also a wise strategy.
Great philosophy. We have fruit and I'm torn. I eat much less than before because we've even bred fruit to be sweeter. Like Honeycrisp apples. They're better than an Oreo but they're still mostly sugar.
True. If we continue on this path of manipulation, we will run out of sweet foods.
Also, my other fear is that we will take the easy way out with obesity and start taking glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) to treat diabetes, obesity, and other diseases rather than exercising self-control as mindset may become eat anything and everything as I can always take GLP-1 and with not knowing the long term consequences of this medicine, it may be risky strategy.
For now, I recently read that obesity is decreasing in the US, and the prevalent theory is GLP-1, but it may be too early to pick this as a primary reason. Only time will tell.
I worry about drugs over will power. Because even if diabetes drops, the body still feels like shit with all that sugar. It's still in your brain, nerves, and more.
Overall, I am always looking to get answers to the following questions, irrespective of the incentive of the food and healthcare industries, but the quest continues:
I already asked this one: Are fruits good for you? If yes, how much should we eat?
Is the organic food better? If yes, why is it not encouraged? We do not have enough is probably the answer.
What is the real story with carbohydrates?
What is the real story of taking the vitamins?
What is the real story about dairy?
Offff. I’ll just toss my thoughts out there from what I’ve found.
Fruits are good but are more of a ‘candy’ now.
Organic food isn’t worse but it’s benefit is marginal. (home grown is best)
Carbs are hyper processed typically. They’re not bad but they have also been so modified as to be almost indistinguishable.
Animals always supplement. Think of a salt-lick. Vitamins just help the body when we don’t feed it well.
Dairy is healthy but most people need it broken down like cheese, yogurt, cultured milk / butter, etc.
I’ll add on in is that Meat/ Animal Fat is the least messed with and most misunderstood. I’ve done full carnivore diets a few times and I feel great but I do like my carbs.
What have you been finding?
Here are my findings and observations so far:
Fruits are good in moderation, and you should try different ones.
Organic food as a replacement for highly pesticide GMOs. Here is the dirty dozen list (https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/health/dirty-dozen-produce-pesticides-2023-wellness/index.html)
Whole grains are good for you. Avoid highly processed food like bread as much as possible.
Some people do not get enough Vitamin D, so I will only take it if I have a deficiency.
My father has drunk milk his whole life (1 glass of milk) and yogurt; at almost 89, he is in excellent health. Even though he has slowed down physically, he is probably in the top 10% for his age. I have also been drinking milk since I was born, so I will continue to have milk but not other sugary items as much as possible, even though I love ice cream. The ice cream price is too low if you compare it with the cost of milk, so what is the food industry feeding us?
Doing the sugar detox is extremely difficult but the benefits from it are incredible. Better skin, younger appearance, more mental clarity, more energy, the list goes on. Somehow I became "allergic" to sugar. The blood test showed allergy but I really think it was my gut bacteria being in a state of disaster. This allergy was also the biggest blessing to where sugar is now only considered a nice treat once in a while (aka rarely) and my health has improved drastically!
The gut health is so important! Purging sugar does improve my digestion a lot. I've got IBS type symptoms and they significantly reduce when I cut out sugar. It's awesome to hear you're getting your health back. That sounded rough for a while!
Great thing to draw attention to, and I agree with the sentiment. I’ve tried making really deliberate decisions lately to better my health, and cutting out sugars almost entirely was a big part of it.
My two thoughts:
1) sugar in excess is very bad. But, it’s virtually impossible to eliminate entirely and I would never advocate anyone should because it’s so hard. But, it is fairly easy to limit. I always suggest people keep most all the things they want, and figure out how to keep it minimal. Rather than 5 cans of soda a day, limit to one. If you have a dessert tonight, try and limit the intake tomorrow. You can still have what you want, just in moderation.
2) making healthier choices is really hard and you give up a lot. But being severely overweight and constantly sick is, in my opinion, even harder. So I’ll take the less hard and try and maintain a healthier lifestyle.
Exactly, Jared and I were talking about that when we wrote this. His analogy of the credit card debt is great. You need to control your finances and you need to pay off the debt. That doesn't mean eliminating the credit card all together.
Totally agree, the credit card analogy is a great one to remember.
This was really kind of scary and sobering. I love my sugar but now I'm worried...
This was excellent. I myself subscribe to the debt concept of diet and exercise, and let's just say I've also managed to kick the can down the road a bit on dealing with my own lust for refined sugar largely through good genetics and intense physical workouts on a regular basis for decades. Now, I just walk every day, so I have to be way more careful.
Also, the analog for visualizing sugar as the actual ailment in the area: that's gonna help a lot of folks.
Thanks. I lucked out with genetics too and now I'm getting much more focused on breaking the shackles.
Fascinating. I'd be curious as to what you think of high sugar consumption in highly athletic environments. Say if someone, let's call them Mandy, were to eat nothing but honeybuns but then traverse twenty miles.
I’d say your liver is going to HATE you since it has to process it all. Burning it quickly might help but your body still has to metabolize and react to that influx.
Well, the damage is done I guess. Hypothetically.
Better follow it up with some whisky to balance the liver out. That's what I feed mine to keep it happy.
> The pancreas can no longer make or regulate insulin, therefore glucose remains free-floating in the blood and accumulates in other parts of the body. Sugar in the blood is also transported throughout the body unlocking more diseases.
Something I'd add here: you didn't mention liver, and it is very easily forgotten when it comes to sugar. All sugar that body processes has to go through the liver, so if it starts failing (because you overloaded it) then it's extremely easy to get diabetes. Liver just can't keep more sugar inside itself, can't process more of it into fat so it just dumps it to blood.
It's like filling up an already full glass. It just starts spilling everywhere.
That's really good information. I didn't realize that about the liver. We certainly beat the crap out of that organ!
Oh we do beat it badly, especially if you have a lot of "fuel" in your diet, be it fat, sugar or alcohol.
Not to mention all microplastics, heavy metals and other toxins.
It's so heavy working organ and we think about it "yeah it filters toxins and alcohol", where it takes part in so much more.
All the fat you lose? Has to go through liver. All sugar you ingest? Through liver too! Medication? Liver!
I wouldn't be surprised if liver problems were a root cause of many metabolic diseases.
It’s so important that your body can rebuild it even if you cut half of it away.
That’s a great addition! It impacts so much more than the list recorded here.
It’s probably worth noting that all the foods discussed in this post are processed foods, with added sugars. Fruits, vegetables, milk, etc. all have sugars in them, but these sugars tend to be released into the bloodstream more slowly than do the sugars in highly processed foods.
Yes, true. I would add that fruit has also been bred to be much much sweeter. Honey crisp apples and cotton candy grapes come to mind. These would be bad necessarily except we are already ingesting a ton of sugar.
The analogies here are spot on an easy to understand. Sugar, and to a lesser extent, carbohydrates, lie at the root of most medical issues in the developed world.
What’s odd is that this crises was, to some extent, created by science. In the 1950s, a spike in heart disease led scientists in search of a cause. They pinned the blame on cholesterol and fat in our diets. Despite no solid evidence for doing so.
Food producers removed fat from food, but because food will not be palatable when you do so, replaced it with carbs and sugar. These “heart healthy” products were, in fact, no better for our hearts and overextended our pancreases by overloading us with sugar. The rest is history….
Now we know better, but you have entire generations still refusing to eat butter, the yolks in eggs, and fat on meat while reaching for candy bars.
Exactly. Max Lugavere found this when he dug into his mother dementia (type 3 diabetes) she was heart healthy and lost her mind.
I haven't heard anything more about the type 3 diabetes thing in a decade or so, is this still an active theory? I imagine the mechanism is unclear.
It's still a theory and whether they find a mechanism it appears that reducing sugar improves cognitive health.
I've just turned 60 and enjoy chocolate, I eat it in moderation. How much 'healthier' is (say) 80% dark chocolate when compared to standard dairy milk chocolate?
I love chocolate too. Dark chocolate is healthier for two reasons.
1. Less sugar. Often much less.
2. Less fillers.
I enjoy dark chocolate in the evenings.
Here are a couple things that might sound crazy, but maybe someone will find benefit:
Around 5yrs ago, I was having a real problem with stopping at the donut shop on my drive home from work. Couldn’t stop, like the car had a mind of its own. Probably 2-3 years of this. Finally I saw a hypnotist and thought it was a waste of money. 6 months later I realized I hadn’t had a donut from anywhere, not even when people brought them in to work. Haven’t touched one since, and when I see a donut it’s like seeing a piece of paper or something inconsequential like that.
The second thing is that I got a Continuous Glucose Monitor and used it for a month. I experienced the effect “what gets measured, gets improved.” Amazing what I learned about portion size, macro composition, etc. I changed some of the simplest, easiest things and now I know my “spikes” are much flatter. I also know exactly how much a food bender affects my body. They say this is extreme if you’re not t2 diabetic, but I don’t ever want to be.
Great insights. Hypnotism is actually a really facinating technique that does work. The monitoring is a good idea too. Glad it's working out for you!
Direct and impactful! TY for getting my attention on this today. An important message.
Glad you appreciated it. Once Jared shared that mantra about sugar I knew we had to write about it.
One of the worst things to happen to the American diet was the "low-fat" = healthy. It was almost universally substituted with sugar and people were led to believe a fat free yogurt with artifical flavors and sugar was better for you than a plain full fat. I Love sugar. Limiting it is hard, but it is much easier if I'm not trying to adhere to the falsity of (my current understanding) a low fat diet where I'm perpetually hungry.
100% low fat was a horrible campaign. It not only led to sugar obesity but also dementia! I find that if I go full fat I'm satiated. If not, like you said, I'm perpetually hungry. Sugar is weird in that it doesn't satiate hunger at all. It just feeds the dopamine.
Chasing a high feeling that never leaves you fullfiilled.....
I resisted thinking of sugar in addictive terms....but that was an ego protecting defense, not protecting health or the body.