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Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

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Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#111

Post by e40 »

nindalf wrote: post #64

For the first 3.5 months of this year I was completely off artificial sugar. That meant fruit was ok, but any kind of dessert wasn't. It was hard initially but after a couple of weeks it was easy. I didn't feel the craving to eat dessert like I always did. I also felt much better and more productive now that my insulin levels were more stable than before. On my previous diet I had regular sugar highs and lows (which…

It was around 2-3 weeks for me, too. I went off sugar last year for 3 months and lost some weight. The problem I always have that eventually I had a little, then a little more, repeat, until I'm having it several times a week. It's insidious.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#112

Post by msiyer »

jtreminio wrote: post #105
msiyer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a sign of my system being cleaner than it was before. Onion and garlic are extremely potent medicines. They are not food. They have antibiotic properties and kill bacteria. Our guts have microbes. Now, connect the dots...

Garlic and onions are high in fructans which trigger IBS in millions of people a day. My wife enjoyed and _loved_ galic for 30+ years before her IBS kicked in. Garlic is extremely bad for IBS because bacteria gorge themselves and produce a ton of gas, which causes horrible intestinal pain. A study [0] recommends garlic and onions as key foods to restore a healthy, balanced microbiome. I have never heard anyone before…

>>Rather, they let a specific kind flourish...

... at the expense of others.

Garlic is mentioned exactly once in the study. It is just included with a bunch of other things. Nothing to conclude here.

Garlic is, by no means, a food. Any study that recommends it as food is not a proper study.

Garlic is an extremely potent medicine.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#113

Post by rusk »

kaoD wrote: post #93
rusk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're too crunchy and taste like... cardboard Whenever I read this kind of thing it makes me sad that people don't realise that actual fresh veg of the kind that you don't buy in the store is actually delicious.

Actually, I often eat fresh hand-picked vegetables (close relatives live in a small village). It's mostly a matter of personal preference. Raw tomatoes are great. Lettuce? Chard? Carrots? Meh... but cook them and I'll eat a ton. Raw vegetables are just not my cup of tea.

Tomatoes and Lettuce are the two things most people that have only bought shop produce know nothing about. I was amazed the first time I had fragrant lettuce. There's nothing in our cultural orientation that teaches us to expect it. I guess it doesn't attract the same kind of profit margins ... but if you're wise to all this and you still don't like it well that's fair enough too!

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#114

Post by beat »

tw1010 wrote: post #66
skrebbel wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing "just" about doing keto

There's no need to go hungry while doing keto. Once you realize this it becomes a lot easier. Just eat when you have cravings (but stick to low-carb things), that's it!

It doesn't mean going hungry, but it does mean taking some pretty extreme measures, because any day that exceeds keto-level carbs is going off the wagon and requires another physical reset to get back into keto.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#115

Post by beat »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #92
SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or ignore 10 millenia of evolution, if you want to look at it that way.

People ignore that - we have clear evidence that you can adapt to drinking milk in that span of time, why is that people think we haven't otherwise adapted to an agrarian lifestyle that's existed just as long?

The success of agrarian diets doesn't mean they are healthier than what might be called paleo. Rather, it has a host of other side effects - a larger, more stable food supply means a larger population. A large population means specialization. Farming means staying in one place, forming permanent communities and permanent tools/storage that can't necessarily be carried by hand. Agrarian societies can develop new technologies and field dedicated military forces. They can develop writing. Etc.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#116

Post by jrace »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #51
msiyer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stay away from artificial sugars. We have no idea what diseases they might be causing.

That is like saying please stay away from vaping as a way of stopping smoking. Great advice if you can, horrible advice if you can’t. Perfect is the enemy of good.

Except vaping has known and unknown health risks.

Saying "I the only way to stop smoking is to vape" is also horrible advice.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#117

Post by johnkpaul »

inciampati wrote: post #109
johnkpaul wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome, congrats! I'm at 2.5 years of no artificial and as close to 0 "natural sugar" as possible. I don't have any fruit and I don't drink milk but have the lactose in cheese sometimes. I also have tomatoes sometimes so there is a little glucose in that. Generally, if I could, I'd have 0 -ose completely. It's done wonders for my A1C and weight. It definitely gets easier after the original weaning. Now it doesn't ev…

Out of curiosity, what kind of foods are your staples?

Butter, oil, bacon, pork rinds and eggs

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#118

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

beat wrote: post #115
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People ignore that - we have clear evidence that you can adapt to drinking milk in that span of time, why is that people think we haven't otherwise adapted to an agrarian lifestyle that's existed just as long?

The success of agrarian diets doesn't mean they are healthier than what might be called paleo. Rather, it has a host of other side effects - a larger, more stable food supply means a larger population. A large population means specialization. Farming means staying in one place, forming permanent communities and permanent tools/storage that can't necessarily be carried by hand. Agrarian societies can develop new techn…

But if we acknowledge we adapted to it, we can't just assume that paleo is better for us strictly because it's "more natural" - we adapted to make milk natural for us to drink as well. And if we reject that - how can we say that our adaptation to a paleo diet is then better as it's part of our evolutionary tree?

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#119

Post by johnkpaul »

Nasrudith wrote: post #77
johnkpaul wrote: post #58

At what stage, if any, are we going to call sugar an addiction? "Craving" being the word used here is very obviously an indicator of the strength here and there are negative consequences to having too much. I don't know what other leaps need to be made to formalize the addiction category.

The problem with those criteria is we would need to ask at what stage are we going to call water an addiction? It also fufills those details. Really just because it can be classified as an addiction doesn't mean it should. The real criteria of concern is "does it cause problems /in this case/". Otherwise you end up with a hysterical neo-puritanism of trying to create a perfect life by excision of all vices.

I don't agree, but I also don't know the formalisms around addiction to articulate my argument precisely.

I have never heard of water intoxication happening with growing frequency over decades. I have also not heard of water intoxication having support groups, nor of water being described as a craving.

Additionally, there are no humans that have lived without water for years of their life. I have lived without sucrose for years of my life and I expect that there are others as well.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#120

Post by snarf21 »

ZeroFries wrote: post #103

There's actually not that much evidence moderate sugar intake is bad for you, at all. All this talk about "sugar" swings is completely off base, IMO, especially considering most starches are much higher on the GI and II scales than sugars. Fructose is low GI, and most of it is converted to glucose in the gut, anyway. Higher consumption is converted to fat, but most vilifying sugars promote fat, so what's the differen…

Anecdotally, I agree that it isn't that moderate carbs is bad and low carbs is good. The one thing that I feel is not talked about enough is the human aspect. Some people can limit themselves to a small helping of carbs, others can't. For a lot of people, the only good strategy is denial. If I know I'll be tempted to eat too much pasta or drink too much orange juice, I have to just not buy it or order it at all.

I always talk about this analogy. It is really hard to eat 8 medium oranges with a meal, it is trivial to drink a 16 oz bottle of orange juice. It is also pretty easy to have a second 16 oz bottle of orange juice (but no one is likely to eat 16 medium oranges). Most people struggle because life is stressful and eating the whole bag of chips is a release. It is hard to stop after 10 chips when your day was sh!t. Just my two cents....

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