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Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

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Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#161

Post by goldenkey »

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…

I agree low carb diets are the healthiest. But for those like myself that cant totally commit, I just want to add:

Creatine supplementation has hugely improved my body's ability to attenuate sugar spikes. I feel amazing being able to handle high amounts of sugar by my muscles helping intake the sugar. If you have blood sugar issues or have diabetes, 2.5 mg of creatine daily is safe and has a great efficacy.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20881878/

The exercise portion is important because your muscles can reach peak sugar/ATP storage. Once that occurs that muscle wont really help attenuate your blood sugar any longer.. You need to drain the muscle reservoirs often to keep them as good sugar sinks.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#162

Post by emmelaich »

mvid wrote: post #102
nradov wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water intoxication will kill you. Almost anything can be harmful in excessive quantities.

That is pedantic. There is no realistic scenario where your brain will compel you to consume so much water you suffer long term detriment

People _have_ consumed so much water they've died or gone into coma.

But of course it's nothing like an "addiction"

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#163

Post by johnkpaul »

edraferi wrote: post #89
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…

One interesting milk option is Fairlife. It's processed to have more protein and no lactose [0]. Some health bloggers object to the process, here's a summary [1]. Overall I think it's a solid product. [0] https://fairlife.com/our-nutrition/ [1] https://www.stephshares.com/healthyeating/966/

Thanks! I've heard of this but never really researched it. I don't object to the process but I drink carageenan free heavy cream to achieve a similar taste/texture with no protein.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#164

Post by brownbat »

benj111 wrote: post #10
brownbat wrote: post #3

From the actual study: "8-week weight losses for ICT were 3.1% vs. 2.2% for sham. A marginally significant effect was observed for gamification to reduce the impact of ICT." This seems like a small effect for eight weeks of work. And gamification backfiring makes me worry this is all noise.

Didn't see any mention of a control, so could just be down to the classes beforehand. Nevertheless 2%-3% weight loss without 'dieting' is surely good, it's at least additive to normal dieting, and perhaps even more effective in that it can help in overcoming craving. Plus what rate of weight loss do you think is acceptable. Losing 25% of your bodyweight in a week may be the 'in thing', but it isn't necessarily health…

> Plus what rate of weight loss do you think is acceptable.

Great question, I estimated the math before the last post but let me unpack it so people can correct me.

If a man is avg US height of 5'9" with an obese BMI of 35 and weight of 240, then 0.5% to 2% each week would fit standard medical guidelines for effective dieting.

At that weight you can easily fluctuate by 1% each day.

So we have an eight week effect that is in total less than 1% over sham, a difference on par with standard daily noise and reasonable weekly goal. This is why there's a replication crisis in health research.

Also, sham is a misleading control here if we're actually interested in weight loss. Why not control for any diet at all? Even use the same time each day going for a walk, or probably even meditating on weight loss strategies, at this improvement rate the advantage will melt away. Sham is defensible if you don't actually care about weight loss, but in that case weight shouldn't be your metric. Best case is it's a horribly misleading study design.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#165

Post by brownbat »

imtringued wrote: post #9
brownbat wrote: post #3

From the actual study: "8-week weight losses for ICT were 3.1% vs. 2.2% for sham. A marginally significant effect was observed for gamification to reduce the impact of ICT." This seems like a small effect for eight weeks of work. And gamification backfiring makes me worry this is all noise.

1% is significant if it trains long term behaviour. Losing 2.2% in 8 weeks is useless if it is unsustainable if you will fall for the processed food trap again and regain your weight.

> 1% is significant if it trains long term behaviour.

Or maybe it can be added to other effects, or maybe the techniques can be refined from here.

You're absolutely right there are a dozen reasons small effects can still be important.

Sometimes it's just p-hacking though, or otherwise unreplicable studies. That's worth considering too.

I think we'd both welcome more research, maybe especially over longer terms.

Re: Training the Brain to Eat Less Sugar

#166

Post by Tomte »

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…

And don't overdo it.

I tried cutting out sugar several times passing on fruit, even vegetables like carrots.

I never managed to do it for more than a week. Now I try to do what you have done and don't eat desserts, chocolate, etc. And eat processed food sparingly.

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