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Tenth Post

Just finished reading Jason Seib’s new book AltShift, he and Sarah Fragoso have been teasing their podcast audience on The JASSA podcast about this new protocol for losing fat for a number of weeks. Got it, Read it, and been following it of the last week.  Different way of eating - essentially 5 days of LCHF followed by 3 days of MCLF (medium carb low fat), no sugar and grains or alcohol. Its all about getting the fat burning going again - when you have followed a way of eating for a long period your body adapts to the new style and adjusts your hormones accordingly. This protocol should fire up the hormones as you shift from one phase to the next. Looking forward to seeing how this goes.

link to new book http://altshiftdiet.com

Ninth Post

Well its been a while since I updated this blog.  i have changed the front page of the website so that you can see the change straight away.  Where are we now?  i have read plenty of books about nutrition and health and Maryanne and i are now low sugar, low carb and higher fat.  Why low carb? Well Maryannes weight plateaued for about 5 months and then all the reading indicated that she was processing carbs (bread, pasta aand potato in much the same way as she was with sugar. The mouth starts the process by producing amylase which starts breaking down starch into sugars so that by the time they hit the stomach they are effectively sugar. I also went low carb and then found that after a month or so when I ate bread that my stomach bloated up and I felt sluggish. 

I have stopped being a couch potato - thanks to Jason Seibs Paleo Coach and listening to numerous podcasts, Ive added a list of podcasts to the reading material page.  My exercise regime now is to lift heavy weights, I have found a coach, Isaac King at Fit Club in Paraparaumu, he has been teaching me to lift weights - dead lift, squats, bench press and exercises to assist my core strength. I have added walking and using stairs. One other part is an app by johnson & johnson - 7 minutes which adds High intensity training - about 4 minutes of hard out exercise. Jogging and distance work is a definite no no, just adds stress to the body.

Four components to health - nutrition, exercise, stress and sleep.  As a shift worker I really struggle to have a regular sleep pattern, need to take all electronic devices out of the bedroom - work in progress.

Eighth Post

I am reading more and more books about different diet / eating regimes.  In looking at what they have in common shows that it is what they are removing from thier diet to a large extent that may be what is working for the proponents of the diets.


They are all removing processed carbohydrates and seed oils.


I am now trying a low carbohydrate high fat diet, and after a week have lost a further 2 kg and do not feel hungry. I am eating more and more saturated fats. 

Seventh Post

On holiday in the USA and we have had a struggle initially trying to find sugar free food without the bad oils.  So many products here use canola oil, and the breads are all very sweet.  I found some loaves of bread at an Organic Market in Honolulu, Ezekiel loaf was available and very nice to eat, in Kona we have only found sourdough bread at Cosco.  Got some dextrose at a home brew supplier in Anchorage, still looking here in Kona. i have added some extra page links into the site for people who are either visiting or living in USA, I hope this assists in the quest for freedom from added fructose. The best way to avoid added fructose is to cook your own meals but if you dine out then eat Meat and Salads dishes and ask for the dressings on the side. Avoid fried foods as most use oil for cooking.

Sixth Post

Hi all,

Just added a link to a seminar in Wellington for 9 June to discuss nutrition.  I will be away so unfortunately unable to attend.  The Whole9 follow the paleo diet which is close to what we advocate but take it a little further.  We still use glucose /dextrose for baking, Check out their site. (www.whole9life.com) 

Fifth Post

I have added some more reading material about cholesterol and tests that are available overseas, still trying to find out whether we can get them done here in NZ in case anyone wants to follow up on their cholesterol.

I have also added some material in about ketogenic diet where one cuts out carbohydrates and eats meat, fat and low carb vegetables. The cutting of the white carbs - potato, rice, bread and flour or at least reducing them in your diet may assist those of you who find that their weight has plateaued. Maryanne hit a flat spot and now is back on track with her weight loss.  

i have also added a photo link to shots of me, before and now.  

If you cannot find dextrose or dont have a homebrew shop nearby, try asking your supermarket to get some in and tell them that you can get 5kg online from an auckland supplier for $16.50 - or try this link. http://www.brewshop.co.nz/dextrose-brewing-sugar.html

Fourth Post

Discussions with DieticianNZ today was interesting, they say they base their advise on scientific research but still choose to ignore the fact that sugar makes you fat.  An Otago university study of a large number of medical studies found that if you eat fructose you will get fatter and if you consume glucose you will lose weight.  This was countered by the claim that it takes a while for the information to filter through.  They were not interested in any of the books that I have read as they are not scientific interventionist experiments but rather empirical based studies.

 

No wonder we are all getting fatter – the dieticians who are advising people have blinkers on and are not interested in finding out if the message they are transmitting, which is what they are doing – all one way traffic, is the wrong message.

 

Ancel Keys message where he found that if you took 7 specific countries and plotted their fat intake vs. their heart disease you got a near perfect correlation.  What he failed to state was if you also plotted their sugar intake vs. heart disease you also got a near perfect correlation.  When you look at the 22 countries that he studied as a whole there is no correlation at all with fat intake.  He was responsible for the message that we should eat less saturated fat.  He ignored the effect of sugar.

 

We now know that when we have a product advertised as low fat that it will have added sugar to make it palatable and addictive.

 

I also had a discussion with Diabetes NZ, they at least listened and I am awaiting a response from their dietician, they however recommend a maximum of 1 teaspoon of sugar with any meal, but do not have a change to the low fat message. I am pleased to say that they were open to discussion.

Third Post

News Flash - The NZ Warriors nutritionist has taken the Warriors to sugar freedom.  Lee-Ann Wann has removed processed foods from their diet.

People ask why am I not making money from this website, the answer is someone got me sugar free and I am so grateful for the change it has made.  I want to pay it forward.  I also want our children to grow up without having the sugar addiction.  

Second Post

Just got results from Maryanne's blood tests as well as mine from a few weeks ago.

Previously Maryanne had a HbA1c of 42 mmol/mol which was borderline diabetic.  New results are HbA1c of 36 mmol/mol, which puts her well out of the diabetes risk.  My reading was HbA1c of 33 mmol/mol.  So having glucose in our diet instead of sugar (glucose plus fructose) has improved our health.

Also to date I have lost 15.5kg since starting out in June 2012 about an average of 1.5 kg per month.

First Post

Going Sugar Free and avoiding Seed Oil

I started out looking for a way to help my wife avoid moving from a diagnosis of insulin resistant to the next stage of type 2 diabetes. I was also weighing in at 96.5 kg and not getting any lighter.  I was actively researching and helping her find a suitable diet, when I flew with a copilot who had lost 10kg after reading "Big Fat Lies" by David Gillespie.  I bought the book that day and went home, started reading and didn't stop till I got to the end, I skim read bits of it but a light went on in my head and from that moment I resolved to cut out sugar and remove seed oils where possible from my diet. Maryanne didn't have any say in this process! She however, had listened to me as I read the book, reading excerpts out loud that I found entertaining or highly informative.  The next morning WE and it was both of us, went through the pantry and refrigerator removing any product that had more than 4% sugar - judged that by using the ingredients list and using 4g or less per 100g of sugar, unless it only had glucose or a variation of glucose in the list.  Our kids who were at University suddenly found that they had full larders! We then removed all the seed oils and threw them out or gave them away.  I must admit it left the shelves very bare.  So next step was off to the supermarket to restock with suitable products, we spent a lot of time looking at the nutrition information on the back of packets, also trying to decipher the actual ingredients as some state that they have no added sugar ... liars!  - they actually had agave syrup or honey which are both high in fructose.  Fortunately we had the sugar free app on the iPhone which allowed us to find the good, the bad and the artificial sweeteners.  Oils take a whole lot more deciphering as they are quite often hidden behind the moniker of "Vegetable oil".  Having now also read "Toxic Oil" by David Gillespie we are finding our way through the process but need a simple guide.  I think the best way will be to find the good products and list them.

So sugar free for a couple of weeks and we started to see some weight loss and lose the craving for sugar, however a party with all sort of snacks and alcohol put me back for a few days but quickly sugar free and tracking downwards again.  Sometimes when my weight plateaued I would kick the weight loss off by decreasing one of my meals for a couple of days, then my body got used to a lower intake level and appetite control was also starting to work and I found myself feeling full on much smaller meals.  I followed David's two week quite plan quite rigidly at the start whilst we were discovering what we could and couldn't eat.  Found a really nice recipe for chocolate brownie on his web site / forum which we have modified slightly now to give us a quite moist brownie with a delicious chocolate flavour, even our sugar addicted friends find it tasty and cannot tell that it has no white sugar only dextrose. Another favourite has become vanilla ice cream made with dextrose, finally found a reason for the ice cream maker bought in a moment of "gosh that could be good to have" and then left to fill up space in the pantry.

 

I started researching sugar further and came across two other useful sources of information.  "Pure White and Deadly" by Professor John Yudkin, and a You Tube video of a lecture by Professor Robert Lustig, who has also now written a book "Fat Chance".  I have by now gotten really passionate about being sugar free and freely lecture people about the evils of sugar, my wife says more like evangelical!  I have taken to writing to Professors of nutrition in New Zealand universities with some at least having the courtesy to reply even if they are not necessarily convinced of the merits of being sugar free. I have also written to the health minister and received the usual fob off - that of being directed back to the Ministry of Health website and their standard doctrine of eat less fat, more fruit and vegetables and sugar in moderation.  No one defined what moderate sugar intake levels were!  We ate about 2-5kg on average annually at the turn of the century and now consume on average 40kg annually, a large movement in whatever might be called moderate. Imagine that stacked up on your shelves!! How much sugar do you buy each year!

Our focus till now was predominately upon getting sugar free, and I would say we have been successful, I no longer crave any chocolate or sweet desserts and Maryanne has lost the urge to buy sweets particularly liquorice. 

I put together as much information about getting sugar free into a online box account and set it up so that other people could access the information freely - let's try educating from the bottom up and get as many people as possible onto the sugar free revolution so that businesses will try to reduce the sugar in their products and in turn we will become a healthier, happier nation.    


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