Sugar - possibly the easiest thing to cut back on for weight loss!
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I'm really unsure how replacing "normal" food with their GF alternatives is eliminating those foods, but I guess the answer is I'm too young to understand because there's no way I could have experienced any portions of life yet.
Or something.
It's eliminating gluten. Which is a bit like eliminating added sugars, I guess.0 -
typical sugar thread..goes down in flames and pseudo science….-1
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I woke up to 99 notifications - all from this thread!!
I can't read them all, I have places to go, people to see. Two weeks to Christmas people and I have things to do.
But so far I have learnt
- that I will continue on my mission to cut out added sugar as it gives me the worst headaches and makes me feel yuck.
- I am going to stick with my Primal/Paleo style of eating - lots of meat, chicken, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, limited dairy and cheese, water and cut out and if possible even eliminate cakes, biscuits, lollies from my diet.
- I have no scientific evidence to back up my choice and if that is a problem then sue me. My way of eating has got me this far and at 60 years of age I am extremely healthy and active but 5 kilos overweight and that is only because of the fact that I started eating bloody sugar and now I can't stop!!!!
Good luck to you all on your choices and to those who say "Eat what you like, when you like as long as you stay within your calorie quota for the day" please try and make that healthy food as your body with thank you.
….not worth the effort….0 -
Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »
now that we can agree on ...0 -
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Well I see the point to the opening post, and I like it
haters gunna hate etc etc nice post OP (*) -1 -
I woke up to 99 notifications - all from this thread!! I can't read them all, I have places to go, people to see. Two weeks to Christmas people and I have things to do.
But so far I have learnt
- that I will continue on my mission to cut out added sugar as it gives me the worst headaches and makes me feel yuck.
- I am going to stick with my Primal/Paleo style of eating - lots of meat, chicken, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, limited dairy and cheese, water and cut out and if possible even eliminate cakes, biscuits, lollies from my diet.
- I have no scientific evidence to back up my choice and if that is a problem then sue me. My way of eating has got me this far and at 60 years of age I am extremely healthy and active but 5 kilos overweight and that is only because of the fact that I started eating bloody sugar and now I can't stop!!!!
Good luck to you all on your choices and to those who say "Eat what you like, when you like as long as you stay within your calorie quota for the day" please try and make that healthy food as your body with thank you.
….not worth the effort….
What's not worth the effort - reading the 99plus posts?
Christmas?
Cutting out sugar?
Eating fresh meat, fruit & vegetables etc?
Eating what you like, when you like (which is the one I don't care for) or
Encouraging people to eat healthy food?-1 -
miketoryan wrote: »personally i eliminated sugar all together (because outside of it tasting amazing and being in pretty much everything that is easy to eat really quick without doing any preparation I get nothing from it) and let me tell you, this is the ultimate exercise in willpower. But, I want, nay, I need to exercise my willpower. However, if my willpower fails, I might end up binge eating sugar and back to where I started.
It's tough. There are foods that have basically no carbohydrates in them that work to suppress most of my urges/cravings, but every now and then i still get this almost overwhelming urge to just eat a ton of grains/processed sugar/fruit, whatever is high in sugars. It's like quitting drugs cold turkey but it haunts you even weeks after you've given up sugar. It can be a nightmare.
Like, wtf. But I have to do it this way, because if I eat sugar then I want to eat more, and then a little later I want to eat more and it is all downhill from there where I'm getting most of my calories (and I'm overeating) from sugar and it's like i'm a snowball rolling down a hill getting more and more massive. And I'm not even one that has ever been heavy (my heaviest weight ever was 195, my current weight, I'm not even talking about years of being obese or anything, which, if I had to guess, most people that are obese have been struggling with sugar intake for years).
I just hope one day I wake up and never crave sugar again. It's so good and I don't want to put that stuff in my body, because it isn't doing me any favors. It isn't my friend, it's more like a local dealer always whispering in my ear that I should do more. And someone with not a lot of willpower (me) just can't deal with it.
(I forgot to mention) Many carbohydrates actually give me acid reflux. Despite the tremendous amount of pain I get from eating sugar and wheat, I STILL feel like I need it all the time. Eliminating those completely rids me of my acid reflux, yet I still have to exercise extreme willpower in order to stop myself from eating them (even though they make me want to rip out my esophagus).
I can relate to all of this including the acid reflux and these were the reasons I cut out wheat and added sugar in the first place. I feel amazing when I don't eat wheat or sugar but cannot understand my attraction to it. Once I start, it is difficult to stop and I find the best way is to try and avoid it as much as possible.0 -
GingerbreadCandy wrote: »What the– I let this sit for a day, and I come back to 315 new replies. Did someone start claiming sugar is heroine again or what happened?
I had that thought too, and was all excited, but nothing so fun.0 -
Way to hang in there Ana and Sabine - nice staying power.0
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lemurcat12 wrote: »and I've done kind of extreme things at Lent from time to time and not gone crazy.
It's funny you mention that. I was raised in a RC household and many years I would give up sweets and chocolates for Lent. Did I go crazy and binge on everything in sight? Well no. It was perfectly doable. Yet try it in the context of dieting and oh boy....
I think dieting is a cruel joke meant to create hell on earth personally
Yeah, it's much easier if there is some greater reason for the deprivation. IMO, a focus on health actually works here, and is a ton easier than just eating less, but that's me, it might not work for everyone.
I used to go vegan for Lent regularly, plus no sweets. This year I'm considering no coffee/caffeine, which is way harder (for me) than giving up sugar. It's true that the week of Good Friday I'd usually be thinking about the lamb I planned to have for Easter dinner, but I never binged post Easter, whatever I did.0 -
So my experience, just to chime in since if there is an actual food/sugar addict, that would be me - 20 years of binge eating and fixation on sweet foods (as in, if they were there, hard not to think about them, going back and forth from candy jar all day, and over the course of the day being able to go through a multiple boxes of cookies and candies).
Three years ago I cut out all added sugar and went very "clean" and "unprocessed" It worked great, I lost cravings for sugary foods and lost 45 lbs, BUT, when I did occasionally have something off my plan it felt very compulsive and hard to stop. Like I was on the edge of failing. Eventually those going-off-plan moments came more and more frequently until I pretty much reverted to my old habits all together and regained all of the weight.
This time around is similar in that I've drastically reduced sugary and snack type foods, but if I want them I will have them. This has been a small miracle for me. My fixation on sweet foods is basically gone. When I do have something (about every 1-2 weeks it is a small portion and I'm completely satisfied, e.g., a couple of days ago I had a sample lindor truffle). I was at a party last night with lots of christmas cookies, looked at them but my desire to eat them was about 2/10 and simply did not. No feelings of deprivation.
For me I truly believe making big changes to my dietary makeup has helped hugely. Perhaps it is so important because I have insulin resistance. At any rate, limiting added sugar type foods is just so helpful, but at the same time, eating that way most of the time leaves me with the ability to vary when I want to. Tracking my food is helpful there too as it allows for more flexibility while still knowing I will lose weight. The other factor which I personally hypothesize has made a big difference is upping my dietary fat levels.0 -
girlviernes wrote: »So my experience, just to chime in since if there is an actual food/sugar addict, that would be me - 20 years of binge eating and fixation on sweet foods . . .
Tracking my food is helpful there too as it allows for more flexibility while still knowing I will lose weight. The other factor which I personally hypothesize has made a big difference is upping my dietary fat levels.
Me too -- binge eater since I was six, but I've been binge free for 10 years, after I went off desserts and sought help from professionals.
I regained some of the weight I lost because of overeating, and coming here to MFP has really educated me in terms of calories and macros. I've never counted calories in my life, and while I had heard of proteins, carbs, and fats, I had no idea they needed to be counted out or eaten in certain percentages. Tracking my food has been amazingly helpful, and coming to these forums has been very educational (including the people I disagree with the most -- some of them know a lot about nutrition and I've learned a lot of useful information).
Today is a perfect example -- I knew I had a Christmas dinner at a restaurant tonight, so I logged all my food, saw that I had 750 calories left, and hopped on the restaurant website to see what I could eat within that limit. I ended up getting chicken and gnocci soup, rosemary chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, and some wine, and I proceeded to eat until I was stuffed to the gills.
The soup supposedly had only 250 calories but it was incredibly rich and creamy, so I wonder . . .
Oddly, the only time I've been tempted to reintroduce desserts into my diet is since I've been on MFP. The arguments made for "eat everything in moderation" are very compelling, and I've found myself thinking more than once "They might be right, and I could just have some dessert in moderation." Then I get that feeling you talked about, and I've decided I'll be better off trusting my own personal history with desserts and not some random stranger's theory.
Good for you for being able to reintroduce those foods back into your diet. Some one else suggesting upping my fat levels, and once I understand more about macros I may tinker with the percentages.
Cheers!-1 -
Gosh some of you people have come through some very difficult times and it makes me understand why you are so passionate about this subject. To tell a binge eater to just "Stop, show some will power or exercise moderation" or to be told "it is simple - exercise, calories in, calories out - what's the big deal" Grrrrrr must be so annoying as your experience would tell you something is missing. I hope you all find the answers and I think a part of it would lie in self worth and to be told you are lazy or an idiot would be the last thing you would need.-1
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I woke up to 99 notifications - all from this thread!! I can't read them all, I have places to go, people to see. Two weeks to Christmas people and I have things to do.
But so far I have learnt
- that I will continue on my mission to cut out added sugar as it gives me the worst headaches and makes me feel yuck.
- I am going to stick with my Primal/Paleo style of eating - lots of meat, chicken, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, limited dairy and cheese, water and cut out and if possible even eliminate cakes, biscuits, lollies from my diet.
- I have no scientific evidence to back up my choice and if that is a problem then sue me. My way of eating has got me this far and at 60 years of age I am extremely healthy and active but 5 kilos overweight and that is only because of the fact that I started eating bloody sugar and now I can't stop!!!!
Good luck to you all on your choices and to those who say "Eat what you like, when you like as long as you stay within your calorie quota for the day" please try and make that healthy food as your body with thank you.
….not worth the effort….
What's not worth the effort - reading the 99plus posts?
Christmas?
Cutting out sugar?
Eating fresh meat, fruit & vegetables etc?
Eating what you like, when you like (which is the one I don't care for) or
Encouraging people to eat healthy food?
tearing your post to shreds….because you will just droning on and on and on about the sugar and paleo …
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DeirdreWoodwardSanders wrote: »I've eliminated any other non-glutinous foods that I enjoy eating in the past, binged, and was unsuccessful.
Here's my basic problem with your position.
You gave up gluten because it caused an abnormal reaction in your body -- you crap yourself. No gluten, problem solved. YOU = +1, QFT, BACKED BY SCIENCE (even though you self-diagnosed)!
I gave up desserts because they caused an abnormal reaction in my body -- I binged on them. No desserts, problem solved. ME = special snowflake! gif sh*tstorm! LAZY! LACK OF WILLPOWER!
And before you flip out that you never said lazy, rest assured that I'm expanding my argument to include the rest of your ilk.
When someone posts a thread saying "Help! I am addicted to sugar! Should I eliminate it?," said ilk is "all ORLY?" and "tell me how your apple addiction is going?"
First of all, frutose is not sucrose. They are two different chemical compounds that belong to the same family.
Second, it should be patently obvious to you that when people are complaining of sugar addiction, they are talking about Oreos and pasta bars, not fructose. They are talking about foods, not isolated chemical compounds, that are most likely made of sugar, flour and fat. To jump from "sugar" to "fructose" and then raise your battlefield flag there is disingenuous at best.
Third, when people eat food, all kinds of interesting things happen in the body and the brain, including the brain receiving signals that the stomach is full. That you can't conceive of the possibility that in some people, those signals might be messed up and cause binging instead of satiety is just the worst kind of intellectual dishonesty.
Over-eating something and experiencing physical discomfort are two very different things. I used to binge on a number of things, all of which are still in my diet now and I do not binge on. Actually, one time I ate TWO sweet georgia browns in a day because they are just that good. Fit just fine into my day, too.
Also, you're assuming then that people do not binge on "healthy" food. I used to eat 3-4+ pomegranates in one sitting. I also used to eat 2-3 bags of cherries in a sitting. A few hundred or more peas from the garden in one sitting. I basically ate to the point of making myself way too full, and in the case of pomegranates they caused me canker sores. It was the exact same pattern I had with eating chocolate. And yet I still eat peas (no longer home grown unfortunately) and pomegranates and cherries no problem without eating ridiculously large amounts in a sitting.0 -
Dude, this is way better than trying to finish my last final paper or study for my last two final examsTheVirgoddess wrote: »Way to hang in there Ana and Sabine - nice staying power.
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Gosh some of you people have come through some very difficult times and it makes me understand why you are so passionate about this subject. To tell a binge eater to just "Stop, show some will power or exercise moderation" or to be told "it is simple - exercise, calories in, calories out - what's the big deal" Grrrrrr must be so annoying as your experience would tell you something is missing. I hope you all find the answers and I think a part of it would lie in self worth and to be told you are lazy or an idiot would be the last thing you would need.
I used to be a binge eater though, and CICO + IIFYM + moderation basically helped me no longer binge. None of this has to do with willpower though - it is not a struggle for me to just eat something tomorrow that doesn't fit into my macros today.0 -
Whatever combination you use Ana, it is working for you and that is a good thing. You sound to me as though you are happy now. Good luck with those exams. At least this is a distraction for a short time but it might be time to buckle back down and study. 0
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