I Quit Sugar So You Don't Have To, pt 2

Should you quit sugar?

Following months of extensive reading, research, trial, error, and some pretty heavy falls off the wagon, I have concluded the following:

Is sugar addictive?

There are two schools of thought on this: Yes, and No. Some books says Yes. Some books say no. Hope that helps.

OK, to go slightly deeper here, whether or not sugar is a chemically addictive substance, it is clear that it is habit forming, we crave it, and some people certainly exhibit signs of physical addiction on it.

Is sugar dangerous?

It is bad for your teeth. It can mess with your weight and blood sugar, and in volume over time can bugger your body’s ability to control your weight and blood sugar, which leads to all sort of well known problems.

But for most people, and especially people prone to extreme restriction, orthorexia, over exercising, and really most eating disorders, talking about sugar as toxic, addictive, a vector of disease, an feeder of cancers, gouts and diabetes, is profoundly unhelpful. If you want to use sugar - or these books on sugar - as something to beat yourself (or anyone else) with, then just don't. If you can't pin-point sugar as the really problem in your life and health - maybe as a diabetic, pre-diabetic, Liver patients, some Autism and seizure patients, some cancers, some IBS (FODMAP-ers) or the obese and super obese... really wouldn't pick this scab. If a part of you knows that orthorexia is the problem, not the eating, steer clear. There is too much new and unpopular science here to help you.

Reasons to quit sugar:

Sugar makes lots of people fat. Lots of people hate fat people.

Society is similarly unkind to the toothless. 

If you can’t have a good, healthy relationship with sugar (or INSERT YOUR POISON HERE) then the argument for abstinence is pretty compelling. 

And you don’t need sugar. Your body creates all the sugars it needs from the rest of your diet, any diet. So you can live without it, and if you can’t live without it, that might be the problem

Are some sugars better than others?

High Fructose Corn Syrup is terrible for all sorts of reasons. Socio-politically we are all in the pay of Big Corn. Behavio-evolutionarily speaking, we are all in thrall to King Corn. You know those parasitic wasps which lay their eggs in those ants which then hatch in their brain and drives the ant round like Krang in his man-suit? That's you that is. Corn, sweet sweet corn syrup, is the wasp, driving us puny humans to cut down our rains forests to plant more, eat more, crave more, plant more. If existence is but a dream, it is a dream in the mind of Corn.

Eating fruit is fine though. Crack on. The fibre and vitamins more than make up for the inherent sugars. What about honey or agave? Your body can't tell the difference between all the things it breaks down in to glucose and glycogen. It's just harder to drink the litre of honey equivalent to one large bag of Tangfastics unless you're a performance artist or Winnie the Pooh.

The best sugar of all is Cadburys Twirl. #Fact. 

What are your top dieting tips, you weight loss guru, you?

  1. Never eat anything you would be embarrassed to be discovered eating e.g. two pizzas, XL marshmallow surreptitiously shoved into mouth during a meeting which you then have to swallow whole when your boss directs a question at you, a human child.
  2. Certain calories don't count if consumed in the bath, on the way to or from the gym, or Between 1am-7am when it is quite possible you were sleep-eating 
  3. Fish are friends not food
  4. Avoid anything with marketing copy that addresses you in the first person, so as to imply strongly that it is the food and not the marketing company speaking directly to you. "I'm a squishy treat! Enjoy me as part of a balanced diet of other Talking and Sentient Foods."
  5. Eat food, not to much, mainly Twirls. 

And how much weight did you lose during your experiment?

Fuck off, I didn't. #thinspo

HOPE THAT HELPS.