OT Yay Me!

YAY you, indeed! What a great way to go after it! My son just told me yesterday he has a whole folder on his computer called Blind Spots. Things he discovers like, in plain sight but we don't see it. I think I'll share this with him. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

Karen, Queen of Squishies

That is really good news! Barbara in SC

Yes, yahoo to your new you. 30 lbs. is a great loss. Glad the whole family is doing well with the new way of eating. How is Ash doing with it all? Taria

I have been losing weight steadily since May, and today I hit the 30 pounds lost mark.

I have not been on some arcane diet. I have not been using one of those 'eat only our food' programs, nor have I joined a gym. What I have been doing is rooting hidden sugar out of my diet, the whole family has been. After eliminating the obvious, sugared drinks, sugar in coffee or tea, etc., we went to war against food containing high fructose corn syrup. We have been seeing it on labels for ages now, but never thought there was enough in non-sweeties to make a difference. There is.

It hasn't meant a lot of big changes, in a lot of cases it has just meant changing brands. We are eating more Aldi's store brands, they are actually the best low to average priced brand for not putting junk in their food.

We still eat sugar, but we eat it where we want it, not in everything from catsup to mac and cheese.

Everybody in the house has lost weight, but I have lost the most. I think that at least part of that is that I am hypoglycemic, and all that extra sugar was keeping a constantly slightly elevated insulin level going, and that was dragging me down. I definitely have more energy at least.

NightMist

If I lost 30 lbs, Dr. Phil would be banging on my door wanting me to appear on his show as world's skinniest woman - But - the having more energy with less sugar sounds intriguing. How very nice to have that bonus. Good, good for you, NM. Polly

Taria, Ash has no problem with it whatsoever. He still gets the odd treat and that is just fine by him. We have never been a family for frequent sweets as in candy and things. We only actually have dessert a couple of times a month, and this time of year that is very likely to be fruit based with minimal sugar in it, that I prepared. Except for the holidays, on an average we probably get more sugar from fresh fruit than we do from sweets and such. Just goes to show you how much added sugar they are actually sneaking into boughten food these days. Read your labels, it is in everything. Though you might have to take the time to learn some of the things they call it to make it seem like there is not as much.

Well Miz Polly, I have never been one of those "buck O five" girls. I have had some pretty serious curves since I was about 11. I stayed betwixt 140 and 160 for a long long time. Then one of my doctors prescribed me a drug that not only turned me into a raving psycho bitch, it made me gain better than 50 pounds in a little over a month and a half. The weight is what made me quit it. That weight gain stuck. I tried walking an extra mile every other day, I tried aerobics machines, I tried all sorts of exercise, and it just would not budge. I tried a diet Dr Hotty gave me, and that made me gain another 10 pounds. He was perplexed because he could tell I had a lot of muscle under the soft layer.

The more energy with less sugar thing is purely because I am genuinely hypoglycemic. When you are hypoglycemic and you eat sugar, your pancreas panics about it and dumps too much insulin into your system. Kind of like being the exact opposite of diabetic. The most obvious effect of too much insulin, what you can see, is your energy drops, you may become confused and lethargic, you may even pass out. Since when that happens the only thing to do is eat _more_ sugar, though just a tiny amount does the trick, some people have gotten the notion that hypoglycemics need to eat candy all the time. Not so, avoiding sugar and sticking to slow metabolizing carbs is the best bet for avoiding an insulin dump in the first place. So when DH decided that the whole family should start avoiding added sugar in food I was purely delighted just from a basic health perspective. We had had some very serious rows about some of the food he would bring in on his shopping days. He thought I was being overly picky, I thought he was underestimating how much sugar was actually in there. Turns out I was right, but since he came to the same conclusion wholly independently all by hizself and with no input from anybody, I am not going to point that out.:P

NightMist

Well done!!

-Irene

On Sat, 20 Aug 2011 12:31:20 -0500, NightMist wrote (in article ):

Congratulations! Happy dancing for you!

Maureen

I don't think I could give up sugar in coffee. Or half and half.

I didn't think I could either. But I got used to Stevia in it quite quickly. Do an experiment, every time you put sugar in your coffee put the same amount into a separate container, and see how much sugar you are eating via your coffee at the end of a week. If you only have a cup or so a day it probably won't be more than a quarter to a half pound or so. If you drink as much coffee as me though, it comes out to a LOT. When you stop and think that 3500 sugar calories is a pound on you, you start adding up the bits you get daily.

Half and half isn't so bad. Sure it has some fat in it, but it has less fat than the powdered stuff. The powdered stuff is also loaded with sugar. It makes half and half look positively healthy. We tend to use evaporated milk at our house because DH is a bit of a fats nazi.

NightMist

quoted text -

The way I eliminated sugar/cream from my coffee decades ago was to simply start using a bit less of each. The first taste is always rough but you can get used to it. Once I was used to that reduced amount, started reducing each again. After a couple of weeks I was down to using 1/2 tsp. vs. 2 heaping tsp. per cup and just a splash of cream. Decided the fixing was more trouble than it was worth and just started drinking it black. Now I can't even think of drinking coffee any other way. Even a shot 'o something as a dessert treat is too sweet for me. And I only drink iced tea and did the same thing with that with the sugar. Now I only drink unsweetened tea.

I gave up caffeine for awhile when trying to keep cysts at bay. I went over to decaf tea with nothing added rather than creamed coffee. With only that change I lost two pounds in a couple of months. The cysts didn't care one way or the other so I went back to coffee. I am using less cream though. The little changes do add up. Habits are tough to break though. Taria

I didn't think I could either. But I got used to Stevia in it quite quickly. Do an experiment, every time you put sugar in your coffee put the same amount into a separate container, and see how much sugar you are eating via your coffee at the end of a week. If you only have a cup or so a day it probably won't be more than a quarter to a half pound or so. If you drink as much coffee as me though, it comes out to a LOT. When you stop and think that 3500 sugar calories is a pound on you, you start adding up the bits you get daily.

Half and half isn't so bad. Sure it has some fat in it, but it has less fat than the powdered stuff. The powdered stuff is also loaded with sugar. It makes half and half look positively healthy. We tend to use evaporated milk at our house because DH is a bit of a fats nazi.

NightMist

You GO GIRL!!! Congrats! ME-Judy

Indeed, Yay for You!! Hidden corn syrup is just insidious. I had no idea th= e big burger chains put sugar (in some form, probably corn) into their burg= er meat. No wonder it tastes so good and then leaves you feeling so bad in = a few minutes. I mean, we all know a fast-food burger is too big and has to= o much fat, but who knew it had sugar that would make us crave it more? Sne= aky, sneaky, sneaky. And all propped up with your federal tax dollars subsi= dizing the corn industry.

Well, congrats on losing weight, NM. I know you must feel better and look b= etter. Good job getting y our family in on the game of rooting out unwanted= sugar without becoming so strict that it becomes a drag.=20

Sunny

Woot! Woot!

As part of my WW diet regime, I cut out 90% of processed foods, and use mosly raw ingredients. That helped me a lot.