I Quit Sugar for Life (6 page)
Read I Quit Sugar for Life Online
Authors: Sarah Wilson
Simple answer: don’t worry, you’re probably not, so long as you’re eating the right fats. Your body is beautifully tuned to turn you off fat when
you’ve eaten enough. When we first switch to this way of eating, some of us can have a tendency to go a little too hard on the fat and it can take a few weeks for the body to adjust and
find the right balance. If you’re concerned you’re possibly over-doing it, here’s a trick: halve your fat of choice, say, a serve of cheese, after dinner. Wait 10 minutes
after eating the first half and see what your body says. If it’s had enough, you’ll know. If not, enjoy that other half!
Coconut oil is mostly made up of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs), which permeate cell membranes easily, do not require special enzymes to be utilised effectively by your body,
and put minimal strain on your digestive system.
These factors, and more, imbue coconut oil with a bunch of unique health benefits:
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It helps you lose weight.
MCFAs are sent directly to your liver, where they’re immediately converted into energy
rather than being stored as fat. This promotes ‘thermogenesis’ (the ‘burning up’ of your food), which increases the body’s metabolism, leading to weight loss.
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It curbs slumps and cravings.
Both carbs and coconut oil deliver quick energy to your body, but the latter doesn’t
produce an insulin spike in your bloodstream, while the former does.
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It’s the healthiest oil to cook with.
Which I’ve already had a chat about.
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It’s anti-viral and anti-fungal.
A ‘miracle’ fat called lauric acid makes up 50% of the fat in coconut
oil. Interestingly, the only other place it can be found is breast milk. Your body converts lauric acid into monolaurin, which has anti-viral, antibacterial and anti-protozoal properties. This
means that coconut oil is also great for controlling Candida (thrush), which is caused by a fungus.
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It’s anti-inflammatory.
There are many advantages to boosting your metabolic rate: your body’s healing process
accelerates, cell regeneration increases to replace old cells, and your immune system works better overall. When your immune system is functioning well, your body will be less inflamed.
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It’s REALLY good for thyroid issues.
Coconut oil can also raise basal body temperatures while increasing metabolism.
This is good news for people who suffer with low thyroid function.
Like me.
LET’S TRY THIS
EAT A SPOONFUL OF COCONUT OIL AFTER LUNCH
My number-one, hands-down, foolproof way to curb cravings is to:
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Grab a jar of 100% organic, raw and virgin coconut oil.
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Scoop out 1 heaped tablespoon.
(Option: mix with
⅓
teaspoon of raw cacao powder.)
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Eat as you would a scoop of mousse.
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Wait 5–8 minutes (walk around the block, hang out the washing, make a phone call).
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Now reflect on how satiated you feel, and how the sweet cravings have gone.
Eating it after lunch will nip that ‘Now I need something sweet’ hankering in its tiresome bud and keep you fighting full until dinner.
Introducing the TOFI
Heard of her? She’s Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside and her health is a real worry. She’s slim, with a low BMI, diets a lot and tends to eat a lot of sugar
(often via a big fruit juice for breakfast in the morning). If she carries any weight, it’s around her ribs or jawline. She also has a much higher risk of developing diabetes, insulin
resistance and cholesterol issues. How so? British scientists have found these TOFIs (very often young women) carry a lot of fat around their organs, which is not always visible from the outside,
hence they look thin. This is the fat that sugar converts to when it’s dumped onto our livers, um, via large fruit juices! (Fat from other food sources, on the other hand, is distributed all
over our bodies, just under the skin, contributing to higher BMI but not necessarily disease.) This organ fat is also the worst kind of fat, directly linked to metabolic disease. I see TOFIs
everywhere and their plight concerns me greatly.
Coconut water:
This is great stuff and is largely fructose-free, but the concentration of sugars in a coconut increases as the coconut matures. As the nut ages, there’s less water, and
therefore a higher concentration of sugar. So if you’re buying a coconut, pick a fresh one between four and six months old. If you’re buying a packaged version, check sugar content on
the label!
DIETS DON’T WORK. PERIOD. TRUE WELLNESS IS ABOUT BEING FREE FROM RESTRICTION AND EXTREMES.
That said, some diets can have
some valid nutritional principles at their core. True wellness is also about being open and cherrypicking helpful tips and tricks, and seeing if it works for you.
This is the boon of living without sugar – it gets your body off the sugar rollercoaster and able to determine the eating approaches that best suit you.
Know this: there is no perfect diet or eating approach. None are scientifically ‘proven’, including the sugar-free one. It’s all an experiment. Let’s
check out a bunch of dietary ideas that you might be able to cherrypick the best of:
CLEANSING, DETOXING AND JUICING
Juice cleanses, lemon juice and cayenne fasts, coffee enema retreats . . . the idea is that by flushing everything out and getting nutrients in an easily digestible (mostly
liquid) form we can get our bodies back on the straight and narrow. But here’s the funny thing: the body is already plenty capable of eliminating toxins on its own. And daily. It’s
called, ah, urination. Also . . .
OUR BODIES DETOX BEST WITH – WAIT FOR IT – SUGAR-FREE FOOD.
There’s also this: liquid diets leave you hungry (solids take almost twice as long as liquids to leave your stomach) and constipated (you need fibre for your gut to move
and to maintain the right kind of bacteria to keep things active), and will slow your metabolism (the calorie decrease can send the body into starvation mode, causing you to store energy). Plus,
juices are often full of fruit, beetroot and carrot, which, when the fibre is removed, are instant sugary fat dumps to the liver, served in a cute bottle.
There are certainly benefits to resting your digestion from time to time. But I have some simpler, smarter suggestions.
LET’S TRY THIS
Liquefying your meals can have benefits – it can be quite soothing and can give your digestion a break. But puréeing instead of juicing your vegetables is a
far better way to go. You retain the fibre (and extra nutrients in the skin) and it can also help you metabolise any sugar content. Eat/drink a Green Glowin’ Skin Smoothie for breakfast
each morning for a week, with some fat (avocado, nuts, coconut oil), and you’ll be flushingly clean in no time.
FASTING
I don’t like the idea of food deprivation for days on end – it’s too emotionally taxing for most of us. But I can see the benefit of giving your guts a good
rest in regular spurts, and intermittent fasts, such as the 5:2 and the Alternate Day Fast, are backed by some sound science and logic. Clinical trials show that reduced caloric intake a few days a
week reduces circulating sugar and fat levels and reduces blood pressure, inflammation and oxidative stress. Research at the US National Institute on Aging’s neuroscience laboratory suggests
fasting is a mild form of stress that stimulates the body’s cellular defences against molecular damage, thus improving longevity. Other studies show a 14–16-hour food break can have
similar benefits. This gels with me as it’s easily done, even daily.
LET’S TRY THIS
THE OVERNIGHT ‘FAST’
Try not eating after 7 pm each night and eating breakfast the next day at the end of your morning routine (see Code 5). Whaddya know? You have yourself a daily 14-hour
fast. I find this approach is quite effective for setting my appetite for the day. Only try this technique if you’re curious or if you feel your digestion might be over-taxed, of
course.
PROCESSED FOODS CONTAIN EXTRA CALORIES
DER, RIGHT? A RECENT STUDY FOUND THAT IF YOU EAT A 600-CALORIE SERVING OF WHOLE-MEAL BREAD WITH REAL CHEESE, YOU EXPEND TWICE AS MUCH ENERGY DIGESTING IT THAN IF YOU EAT 600
CALORIES OF WHITE BREAD WITH PROCESSED CHEESE. REAL FOOD – IT’S A HEALTHY WORKOUT!
Fans of this approach maintain that cooking reduces a
food’s
enzymes and the fewer enzymes in a food, the more our own
body’s
enzymes must be drawn
upon to break down a meal. The more of our own enzymes we use, the quicker we age . . . Got it?
Sure, some uncooked food in our diet, daily, is a good thing. However, many of the vitamins and minerals in vegetables are embedded in the plant’s cellulose cell walls,
which require cooking to break them down. So many of the valuable nutrients in raw vegetables end up not being absorbed by the body. Also, ‘raw food’ products often contain a ton of
agave and coconut sugar, with the sell-in that it’s raw. Yeah, raw, but toxic. So, what to do?
LET’S TRY THIS
NOT BLASTING THE CRAP OUT OF OUR FOOD
There’s a middle ground here – we can preserve enzymes
and
access vitamins and minerals by cooking our food slow and low.
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‘Sweat’
your vegetables gently at a low heat instead of stir-frying. I’ve touched on this already.
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Slow-cook
your meat and legumes instead of frying or boiling them. Many of the recipes in this book use this method, as
you’ll soon learn.
Eating a combination of cooked vegetables with some raw stuff is a great idea.
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In summer, eat a salad regularly. In winter, bear in mind winter vegetables are rarely suited to eating as a salad so instead, try adding to
your steamed vegetables or cooked meals some chopped raw carrot or red onion or – best option – some fermented vegetables (see
here
). I like to stir a tablespoon
or two through my Midweek One-Pot Meals (see
here
). The activated enzymes in cultured food overcomes the ‘tough cell’ issue I mentioned.
GLUTEN-FREE EATING
If you have a gluten intolerance, coeliac disease or, indeed, any kind of auto-immune disease, you know not to touch even a speck of gluten, right? Even a speck will remain in
your system for six months and wreak havoc. For everyone else on the planet, sensitive or otherwise? Well, gluten contains toxins. These toxins are wheat’s only defence against predators
(us). Plus, products today contain way more gluten than they did even just 20 years ago. Further, we’re eating more of it today than ever before (on average 6–8 servings a day). Ergo,
we’re consuming increasing quantities of a toxin that causes digestion issues and inflammation, and leaches valuable minerals from our bodies. Add all this together and you can probably see
why gluten is causing so many health issues.