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Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

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Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#131

Post by bluntfang »

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…

>There's actually not that much evidence moderate sugar intake is bad for you

There's plenty of evidence that foods in America are loaded with above-moderate sugar levels, so it's generally hard/expensive to receive moderate sugar levels.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#132

Post by EForEndeavour »

nradov wrote: post #99
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…

I don't think you really mean "artificial" sugar? The vast majority of sugar comes from natural sources: cane, corn (maize), beets. Cutting down on foods containing added processed sugar is certainly a good idea.

While you can press sugar out of sugarcane and beets yourself, you need extensive enzymatic processing to convert corn into sugar, specifically high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS): https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/modern-foods/the-... (grain of salt: link contains some GMO fearmongering)

So no, added sugars typically aren't synthesized de novo from chemical elements. But the industrial production of HFCS from corn feedstock is artificial in every sense of the word.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#133

Post by pnutjam »

johnkpaul wrote: post #73
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…

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…

Do you eat other carbs that convert to sugar, like white bread, pasta, or pretzels?

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#134

Post by Afton »

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…

I initially did a 'dirty carnivore' type diet for around 18 months. I took it up because of the fairly extreme praise that a family member for the diet, and its effects on her mental and physical well-being.

In the end, I lost a bit of weight, and I never really had to think about when to eat (skipping meals was easy on this diet if it was inconvenient, and I'd just make it up later. On a higher carb diet, I find hunger to be a more insistent sensation with worse effects (tiredness, irritability, headache). But since eating 'on time' is usually pretty easy to do, the diet had no great impact on my life. But I can't discount my family member's subjective and objective results either. Even in this thread you can find lots of folks talking about how great it is. I suspect this is just a YMMV kind of situation.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#135

Post by amanaplanacanal »

dkarras wrote: post #121
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…

I'm curious and don't know much aboutdiet sorry, are you on some sort of ketogenic diet? Without any -ose how does your brain fuel itself?

The liver converts protein and fat to glucose in small amounts as needed. look for "gluconeogenesis".

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#136

Post by amanaplanacanal »

snarf21 wrote: post #120
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 al…

Yeah, sugar is pretty addicting. I used to be a cigarette smoker. Limiting myself to just a few cigarettes a day would never work. Cold turkey worked just fine though.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#137

Post by tw1010 »

beat wrote: post #114
tw1010 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Slow carb is a pretty good alternative if you don't want to be as strict: https://medium.com/@erinfrey/everything-you-need-to-know-abo....

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#139

Post by ZeroFries »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #129
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…

> Fructose is low GI, and most of it is converted to glucose in the gut, anyway. The first half of this sentence (fructose is low GI) is factually correct. The second half (most fructose is converted to glucose in the gut) is factually incorrect. The entire sentence and comment oversimplify sugar metabolism. tl;dr: control your fructose intake. First, nitpicky corrections: about half of ingested fructose is converted…

It takes high doses of sugar for frutose to not get converted in the small intestine.

https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/comments/S1550-4131(17)...

Lustig is a highly biased source. I would be interested in summaries of controlled studies which aren't cherry-picked comparing iso-caloric diets of sugar vs fat.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#140

Post by ZeroFries »

will_brown wrote: post #122
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…

>If anyone can link me evidence that moderate sugar intake promotes worse blood sugar regulation (compared to saturated fat, especially) in healthy, non-diabetic populations, would love to see it. I think you should reframe this...and ask if anyone can link evidence of a case of type 2 diabeties or non alcoholic fatty liver disease where the patient didn’t consume sugar/carbs (those cases don’t exist). I think histor…

The vast majority of the population eats sugar and carbs, so it's not surprisingly the majority of diabetics consume them, too. Moreover, there are plenty of populations which consume very high carb diets who don't suffer from diabetes.
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