21-Day Sugar Detox

chocolate again last night but a good day for veggies, as I posted earlier.

My coffee treat is coffee with coconut milk. Otherwise I try to take coffee black, which is possible if the coffee is very good (homemade, of course).

Enough fat, enough protein, enough vegetables and enough exercise...by Monday I'll be thru with all the nonsense for awhile. I noticed NO interest in a glass of wine last night which was a good thing. I don't drink very much but I do notice that it takes a toll of some sort on me.

I also don't mess around with "gluten-free" substitutes. I do best with no grains. But it isn't easy to stay that way in this house.

My doctor has me giving "Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution" a try, after I expressed concern about my long term health. I'm 46 now, and my father had a heart attack in his mid-fifties, (and my mother had type 2 diabetes, and I was by her bedside as she went through a painful death last year). My doctor is not as worried about me as I am. My blood pressure has been a little high when I get my yearly physical, (150/90), but the doctor put a 24 hour monitor on me, and my pressure is fairly normal to low most of the time, dropping to (90/48) in the middle of my sleep.

Anyway, Dr. Gundry isn't really paleo. He starts on a similar footing, getting rid of grain products and sugars, including fruits, but he transitions into two other phases, adding back up to 1/2 cup of grains and beans a day in phase 2, along with his list of "good" fruits, and then moving into a more raw foods diet that eliminates most animal proteins. Admittedly, I like him better than a lot of lifestyle change writers because he's all for coffee and red wine, and he allows a little square of dark chocolate. He's also not that into specific amounts or counting calories.

To a certain extent, I think all these diets are a little kooky, but I thought I would give it a try for a year. I particularly want to see if my weight drops back down, (I weighed 165 in my twenties, 185 in my thirties, and I peaked around 205 in my forties), and if my allergies and asthma are better.

I'd like to think that moderation makes all things fine, but the truth is, if I eat a cookie, I end up eating eight cookies. If I eat a bowl of spaghetti, I go back for one or two more. When it comes right down to it, if you're going to have three bowls of something, it's better if it's leafy greens.

Quitting sugar isn't really that difficult, though my children keep making chocolate chip cookies. I'm finding what I really miss are bagels and toast. Oh for one little piece of whole wheat toast with some butter on it! And there are my daughter's cinnamon raisin bagels sitting on the counter! I could eat a little cream cheese, but it's not the same without the bagel.

After a month, my weight is about the same, but I look better somehow. (It doesn't make sense. If my belly seems to be shrinking, why does my weight stay the same?) I also have more energy, but it feels like nervous energy - it doesn't really feel like feeling better yet - though maybe that's because it's been icy on the roads so we haven't been out on our bicycles much, and we're on vacation, so there's just a lot of sitting around the house waiting for the weather to warm. (I'm not much of a winter outdoors person).

leslieann, I generally skip the grains as well. In most cases I view them as ingredients that dilute flavor, e.g. stir fry over rice is improved by skipping the rice. I do eat legumes, potatoes, and sweet potatoes. Most gluten-free recipes focus on replacing wheat with other grains and starches... I focus on just eating more vegetables.

Paul, is the toast w/ butter really about the toast, or is it about the butter? -- might be something to ask yourself. Maybe some butter on some sliced, roasted vegetables would serve as well? Cream cheese is good on sliced, roasted beets, sliced cucumbers, and other vegetables.

After 3 days off sugar and flour I can always tell the difference, particularly around my midsection. And when I focus on eating more fruits & veggies, my energy soars.

It's the combination of the toast and the butter. I've been using butter on spinach, etc. I miss the texture of breads, and I think there's a physical reaction to breads that I can only sum up as satisfying. I feel full after eating a salad or omelette, etc., but I don't have the same feeling of satiety. It probably has something to do with the addictive nature of carbs.

The first time I went gluten-free, as a month-long experiment, I felt hungry for the entire first week, even though I wasn't restricting calories or anything other than gluten-containing foods. Eventually I found that potatoes helped a lot. Now that I have more experience, I am generally happy with mostly fruits and vegetables, with some legumes, nuts, and small amounts of poultry and fish. I don't eat a lot of dairy but sometimes add some feta cheese to salads. For me, the fullness feeling is different on this diet - I feel less bloated, generally lighter, after meals. This is a positive result for me as it gives me more energy.

Before I discovered clarified butter, I was not using butter at all...no dairy, no wheat. I was eating rice, oats, dried fruits, etc. I got rid of a lot of symptoms but didn't lose much weight until I dropped the carbs a lot. VERY limited fruit, berries mostly and infrequently; no grains and no dairy EXCEPT this clarified butter, which, by the way, is also unsalted. My satiety increased when I started using this butter; I think that I was feeling pretty out of sorts with the no-bread stuff until I found a way to add butter back into my life. I also have been using celtic sea salt on my food as the butter is unsalted, and I was surprised to find that the salt helped me feel okay, too.

Of course I am still just leaning into a full return to my plan but thinking and remembering about what works is part of getting the mind in mode. Great leftovers today: sweet potatoes, a pumpkin (what will I do with THAT?), pulled pork, and leftover taco meat....lots of possibilities!

I can relate, Paul, to that feeling of yep, just had my bread..aaahhhhhh...but the desire for it is a craving. Cravings pass if we don't feed them; they get bigger when we DO feed them. (I KNOW this stuff but it sometimes doesn't actually make it into my behaviour). Wheat or bread is an easier craving for me than the chocolate one, partly because I have had significant crummy feelings after eating wheat and not so much (or not so obvious) with the chocolate. Or maybe I just haven't been "clean" of chocolate long enough.

Hi everyone,
Yesterday was a good day. The only hiccup was that I got a headache and a bit of a stomach ache after I had the xylitol in my coffee. Maybe I had too much of it and my body is not used to it. Today I will abstain and then try again tomorrow and see if the same thing happens. I munched on fruit in the evening - that's when my sugar cravings are the strongest.

Paul, muscle is denser than fat so that may explain your shrinking physique while the weight is staying more or less the same. I have the opposite problem -- when I slack off on exercise (and especially weight training), the fat is very quick to recolonize but I don't necessarily see it on the scale. Feel it in my clothes, though.

lhamo

How's everyone doing?

I did really well this weekend. No slip-ups for two days. I've been comping for the sugar with fruits and sweet potatoes - 3 pieces of fruit per day. That's too much sugar & carbs for me so today I'm going to start cutting back on that. No grains or dairy over the weekend either so that's good too.

I agree that the scale is not the best measure of progress.