Category: bliefs

So many folks said that they appreciated the Sugar Sugar post the other day that I will follow it up with some of the substitutes I have found and used to overcome cravings and continue to enjoy some foods.

Your mileage may will vary.

Bread
Plain bread has an amazing amount of sugar in it and, depending on how processed it is, almost no fiber or protein. I LOVE my toasted, peanut butter sammich so I needed to find something.

To make sure that I have a balance of fiber AND taste in the bread without a lot of sugar I have found many (all?) of Dave’s Killer Breads to be a good balance. For a wholesome bread it actually has amazing staying power on the shelf too – which kinda makes me wonder about preservatives. Another time.

Sweet drinks
This is a tough one because there are lot of diet drinks but they nearly always involve something artificial as a sweetener. The only artificial sweetener I can stand is Splenda, which is based on sucralose. They say it’s safe but one of the differences between sucralose and sucrose (regular sugar) is the replacement of hydrogen and oxygen with chlorine. (had to look that one up)

Hmmm, I think I’ll use it only if I don’t have another option. And, for what it’s worth, the less sugar I have, the less often ‘no other option’ occurs – I’m getting accustomed to having less sugar.

However…I have a competing problem. You may recall a couple of posts about a condition which represents THIS!

and feels like THIS!

This condition-whose-name-only-brings-pangs-of-pain-and-shall-therefore-NOT-be-uttered requires me to drink a lot of water. That and I bike/sweat a lot – in fact [gulp, gulp] ahhhhhh – and if there is one thing that makes me drink plenty of liquid it is a sweetish taste which ensures I will come back to the well.

[tangent]
Ya know, there is a good reason for why humans tend to like sugar; evolutionarily speaking, sugar tends to be associated with more calories, which happens to tend to be associated with survival. Don’t blame yourself, really. Sugar is freakin’ awesome when you get down to it. I mean we are where we are in this world in part because of sugar; and dogs, and thumbs, and frontal cortex’s, and women, and cool knee joints, and our proximity to the sun etc etc…

In a nutshell, it’s not your ‘fault’ sugar tastes so amazing – it just is.
[end tangent]

So, in order to ensure I get more water I found I need to doctor it up a bit.

Recently I found an excellent solution that recently received my naturopaths stamp of approval.

Kool-aid mix, (or RealLemon lemon juice) and stevia. I don’t really like stevia on most things, like coffee or tea or even in baked goods, because I tend to get a pretty wicked, bitter aftertaste that usually overwhelms the sweet intent. It might be the particular stevia products I bought but when I mixed TruVia (stevia based brand) and even other Stevia based sweeteners with kool-aid I didn’t sense any aftertaste and it only required 6 little coffee packets for a two quart batch of kool-aid.

It really tasted delicious and the bitter flavor was either too weak or overwhelmed by the “sour” of the lemon/kool-aid.
A great part of stevia is that it is a naturally occurring thing extracted from the root of something or other. I’m going by memory on most of this and not gonna look it all up – call me lazy. Since stevia isn’t my favorite I don’t recall the details about it’s origins.

Either way, “naturally occurring” sounds better to me than “chlorine enhancement”.

Recently I’ve heard of* a safe and sane Gatorade replacement I am eager to try called ReCharge. (*Naturopath!)

Sugar Alcohols
One thing I learned in like, week 2 of my cold-turkey sugar-fast from a couple years back is that Malitol has a serious deleterious affect (effect?) on my gastrointestinal systems. Without going into details, let’s just say that the pack of Malitol-sweetened licorice I ate in one night resulted in a net loss. Hard stop.

Or would that be a gross loss?

Anywhoooo.
It turns out (thanks to my research on Wikipedia back in the day) that ALL sugar alcohols aren’t absorbed by your intestines in the same way as sugar is: Malitol, Xylitol, Sorbitol, Damnitol, and all the rest (okay I made that last one up)…it turns out they all create varying degrees of distress for your intestines in even moderate quantities. I am sure each person is different and granted I did chow down a super-dose that first time thinking I had found the panacea but I use these sugar-alcohols only sparingly if at all because for me – let’s just say they don’t sit well.

Did I say ALL?
I’m happy I don’t tend to quit looking for the panacea because along the way, during my quest for the sweet and holy grail of sugar-substitutes I quite stumbled into what turns out to be a sugar alcohol that isn’t the same as all the rest. Here’s a mouthful for ya – Erythritol.

[technical tangent]
Officially pronounced as əˈriTHrəˌtôl, but who reads that mess?
I think I’m right in saying eh-RITH-ri-tall.
[end technical tangent]

So Erythritol is just bloody unbelievable.

• It is naturally derived from fruit sugars via fermentation or manufactured for mass-consumption by fermenting glucose.
• It IS absorbed by our intestines; no laxative effect, no bloating or gas from the Roman Feast which your intestinal bacterial colonies may have with the other sugar alcohols.
• And crazy of crazies, this stuff actually starves oral bacteria (probably most or even all sugar-eating bacteria) so it actually PROMOTES oral health. The jury is still out on what other good bacteria it may starve in our bodies. Probably a good reason NOT to eat it by the spoonful.

It isn’t cheap but it can be purchased in bulk, even on Amazon, and you can get a brand called Sweet Simplicity which I have used a LOT for coffee, sprinkled on pancakes, and even baked cookies with it.

Except for it’s price this represents my ultimate victory in non-sugar, natural, sweeteners.

Better For you but still Sugar
At Ouijimaya I found Coconut Sugar – a lot like regular brown sugar but with a really low glycemic index and because it is based on coconuts and only lightly processed it also has all kinds of goodies like potassium, zinc, magnesium, etc. Odd to think of having brown sugar be part of your vitamin regimen – but there it is.

And holy moly – this stuff is GREAT in coffee.

And last but definitely not least – Chocolate
Got your attention didn’t it.
Well don’t get tooooo fired up but I know chocolate is a biggie (Hi Schmub!) and so it deserves special attention.

I was told early on (naturopath again) that I could use dark chocolates as a sweetener in things like trail mix and so I tried it and it was good.

I started out on something like 50-60% dark chocolate and it was kinda bitter, but it salved the craving for chocolate quite well and now, after two years on a mostly low-sugar diet…

[sweet memory tangent]
There was that one time when MyMermaid made me gingersnaps the old fashioned way – I think I ate 18 cookies in about 18 minutes and finished off the last 18 the next day, hot out of the oven like that. OMG.
[end sweet memory tangent]

…I am now quite capable of having 85% Cacao chocolate bars (like Theo) during a movie and except for the caffeine rush that may keep me awake until 3AM I don’t think there is much of a problem with the sugar hit, cause there isn’t much of it. In fact there are lots of other good things in Cacao that tend to offset (at least psychologically) the negatives. There is a fair amount of protein and fiber in dark chocolate. Weaning yourself off of processed, milk-chocolate, isn’t all bad with good dark chocolates like these available.

Whew, there you have it. Who knew I had so much to say about sugar.

If you’ve got more ideas, I am pretty happy with what I’ve found but I do like to experiment on myself so, bring ’em on.

Before I get around to my recent ride reports (HPC at PIR and 100MON) I just have to write this down.
Mostly for myself, because I am proud to have found a reliable cause-n-effect relationship and because, you know, I have a few relatives who might have some of the same things going on – this might put a bug in their ear.

Sugar.

My body doesn’t like it.
Rather, my brain LOVEs it – honey, candy, jellybeans, cherry sours, gum drops, hot tamales, kool-aid, I could keep going. But the rest of my body “freaks out” – and that is a direct quote from my attending naturopathic physician.

A short history.
Several years ago I was ‘diagnosed’, by the blood mobile, with hepatitis. I was too young to care and blew it off – I was healthy.
Skip forward 5 years and my life insurance exam also noted high liver enzymes indicative of someone with either hepatitis, heavy drinker/smoker, overweight, or…”It must be the ‘or’ I said…cause none of the others apply”. The ‘or’ I found out was a small cadre of individuals blessed with fatty liver for ‘no reason whatsoever’. I pay more cause the life insurance company only needs one excuse.
Skip forward 5+ more years and a ‘regular’ checkup with my medical doctor showed high cholesterol. Prescription? – “more exercise, it isn’t that high”

Uhhh, I already bike to work nearly every day and I am currently training for the Seattle To Portland classic – putting in 100s of extra miles each month.
Oh…well then take some of this medicine and we’ll check back in 6 months – oh and that medicine might cause some flushing, don’t be alarmed.

Fearing the loss of the better part of my lower intestine, they didn’t bother to explain what flushing was, I again prepared to completely blow it off but maybe having gotten wiser or maybe succumbing to the preponderance of independently verified data AND recognizing that my traditional doctor and nurse hadn’t recognized me for who I am individually I stumbled across a naturopathic physician.

I’ll skip the iterations of blood tests and trial and error in the interest of brevity but I met with her every couple of months for a year as she tried all the usual suspects in search of a root cause. She was also addressing the symptoms and narrowing down the cholesterol numbers to a rather singular portion of the “overall” test – my triglycerides.

With a host of supplements, vitamins, and more minor medications meant to address the symptoms my numbers were slowly coming down but the triglycerides were still in the 250’s when 2 winters ago she recommended going off sugar – as much as possible.

The science, the explanation, and my habits (see aforementioned list of candies) all pointed to this being an issue so I stopped, pretty much cold turkey for about 4-5 months and took the blood test again.
We were dumbfounded – with no new medications my tryglycerides came down to 67.

67! What the heck did you do?
I stopped eating sugar.
Well I should say so…and I think we found your achilles heel.

Indeed we had…in fact, in the coming months, I noticed that I no longer used my skin cremes for eczema…for the most part I wasn’t even having eczema any more.
Right after that I took the leap and began tapering my asthma medication. Now, for most intents and purposes, I don’t need my asthma medication either. I commute hard by bike nearly every morning and only after a cold (or after pie) do I find that I might have a use for some asthma rescue medication – very mild usually.
Long term preventative meds? Totally not necessary.
That has been a lifelong thing with me, since that morning when I was a toddler stumbling into my parents bedroom barely breathing.
The docs said it might go away with age – it didn’t. But they didn’t know anything about the sugar factor.

Skip forward one more year to yesterday. My recent tests came back after 14 months of NO supplements and a steady increase** in sugar and simple carbohydrates estimated by me to be peaking at roughly 40-50% of BN (Before Naturopath) – and my numbers are right on the edge of tolerable.

** read that as me slowly giving in to the difficulties of reducing simple sugars and carbohydrates entirely.

So now, my goal is to tighten the sugar-belt a little bit, some sugar or simple carbs in moderation (if I can stick to it in moderation) will be fine, make sure and balance that with protein intake and fiber (to make it harder for my body to absorb it) and it seems I have found a good balance. We estimate that based on these new findings I can probably eat whatever I want sugar/carb-wise during an endurance event (like 150 miles around the mountain…ohh man those Oreos tasted good that time).

And I remain, for the most part, asthma free, eczema free, medicine free, and on a path to not expressing those genes I clearly have which turn sugar into triglycerides at an alarming rate in my body. Lot’s of triglycerides tend to turn into (or at least be related to) things like hypertension, high blood-pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and probably other bad things.

Oh, and I almost forgot – my liver enzymes are way below normal.
WHA WHA WHA??
This seems to be the last thing to move in the right direction. The blood mobile, the life insurance company, my medical physician, none of them could explain it – for that matter neither can my naturopathic physician. These particular enzymes used to be over 50, as low as 40 on the medicine, and now they are 25 – without any supplements or medicines of any kind, unless you count coffee.

Hell! I dunno!??
Wrapping this up – suffice it to say that sugar and I will have a long-distance relationship from here on out – with an occasional tryst, chaperoned by my bike…naturally.

Now…about that Vitamin D!??

This Sunday I will be racing in The Fat Cyclists 100 Miles of Nowhere event.

Things I like and/or eagerly anticipate about this race.

• The Cause: Registration dollars go to LiveStrong to fight cancer
• The Distance: 100 Miles is a great distance – far enough to sound awesome to 99% of your friends and family and not so far that you can’t muster the next day.
• The Fattie Family: I will be racing against hundreds of fellow Fatties in hundreds of categories and the stories that will ensue will be worth being a part of.
• My Family: Arguably the best thing about this event is that my own family will be able to attend – You know – if you can’t bring your family to the race, bring the race to your family!
• The Location: It is unreasonably close to my residence – I think bathrooms, food, mechanics, and other support will be easily accessed with lines MUCH shorter than any other race I have ever attended.

That brings up the one thing I am not eagerly anticipating about this race.

• The Course: Since I live on a hill and because it just so happens that there is a 1.025 mile loop within spitting distance of my door event organizers chose what turns out to be what many racers have complained is an unnecessarily challenging event – net elevation gain will, of course, be zero but along the way, with several rollers and a large handful of false-tops, the elevation profile will result in approximately 14,000 feet of climbing.

I can only hope that the pro’s outweigh the con’s on race day, Sunday June 5th. If you want to come down to the race – start time is 5AM with an expected finish between 11AM and 12 Noon PST.

I am feeling good, beginning my tapering today, and so I will make a gutsy prediction –

I will take the win in The Bald-Headed, Front-Wheel-Drive-Recumbent category.

My strategy will be to make an early breakaway and then hold off the peleton using my superior aero technologies (both recumbent AND bald) and then on the climbs I will engage the strong climbing ability of FWD.

So…ahhhh-I’ll be pretty much unstoppable.