Blog: No Sugar makes life a lot sweeter

It's incredible. I feel so much more free without sugar and/or sweets. I thought it would be awful but I find myself so much less anxious about food.

Take for example tonight. I've been baking a cake and I cut off the edges so there was a heap of cake scraps left over. Normally, I would have helped myself to more than a few of them. I would have then eaten dinner, but been secretly craving more cake. Post dinner, I would have gone back for more cake pieces until I felt overly full and high on sugar. And even then after being sickly full,  while going to bed, I still would have been wanting more cake.

Now I haven't had sweets for 9 weeks, and I don't really see myself going back to them anytime soon. I don't really even crave goodies any more. When I want something sweet, I go for yogurt with fruit, or frozen mango. Sometimes I'll even make myself white bread for a treat. But that's way more satisfying than straight sugary treats are.

I'm not saying I'll never eat sweets again, I'm just saying, for the time being, life is sweeter without the sugar!

Recipe: No Sugar Added Banana Bread

You'll need a lot of bananas for this one, but I find that if I dig through my freezer I'm able to dig up some lost soldiers.

Sadly I don't have a picture of the finished product.... it got eaten too quickly.


But the ingredients are....

Dry:
2 Cups flour, (can be whole wheat)
1 cup oatmeal
2 TBS cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 TBS Flax seed, or any other nutty addition

Wet:
6-8 Frozen Bananas
1/4cup Banana Syrup*
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup apple sauce
1 cup plain yogurt, buttermilk or milk (I had some left over half&half I needed to use... yum)


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and spray a 9x11 pan with oil or butter
Microwave frozen bananas. Then transfer the to a strainer over a sauce pan and let sit.
Mix the dry ingredients together
Mix the wet ingredients together except for the bananas and banana syrup

Press out as much of the juice from the bananas as possible. Transfer the sauce pan to the stove, on high heat. Bring to a boil and let boil for about 5 minutes. It should look quite frothy through all of it, just keep stirring it every so often to keep it from burning (although I'm not completely convinced it will burn as it has a lot of liquid). After about 10min it should be thick enough
Pour liquid into wet ingredients and add bananas, mix well.
Add  the wet ingredients to the dry, but don't beat, just stir until everything is wet (batter will be lumpy)

Pour  batter into prepared pan, bake 40-50 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean

Blog: SF Diet Day 2

Ok, I may have slipped up unintentionally.

From now on, no added 'starches' either, as they too are another form of sugar. Sadly, my cottage cheese had, under the 'less than 2%' category,  'food starch.' Shucks. But the container is empty, so I won't be buying that again.

Starches, Fibers and Sugars were still confusing me a little bit, especially after finishing the book "Sugar Busters!" today, which did not talk about glycemic load.  I'm a little wary of any diet that says to avoid carrots. Carrots are 85% water, and 100g of carrots only contains 10 grams of carbs.  7-8 of which are sugar. But in order to get the full Glycemic  reaction of  71,  you'd have to eat about 500 grams of carrots,  (the GI is based on a serving of 50g of Carbs of a certain food) which would be about 4 cups, (1 cup can weight roughly 130g). I know I have my binges, but 4 cups of uncooked chopped carrots, would be rough on a lot more than just my blood sugar.

I also, still find it hard to believe that a carrot is more than 87% water (http://www.botanical-online.com/carrots.htm). How is that possible?! Cucumbers must be almost all water... oh yep they are ... 96% (http://www.botanical-online.com/carrots.htm). Wow. Learn something new everyday.

I've also read a lot about (/it feels like I've always been told that) complex carbs are harder for the body to break down when compared to simple carbs.

Ok this is NOT always true. Starch is a complex carb, yet potatoes are really really easily broken down, yet fruits (who's carbs are mostly fructose and glucose) are sometimes (depending on which fruit) broken down more slowly.  This website, although I don't necessarily agree with everything it says in terms of carbs being an essential food group, explains it pretty well: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/reference_carbohydrates.asp

But other than that, day two went pretty well. Dinner was awesome; romaine with carrots, feta, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and beans: and I also made a huge pot of Bulgar Wheat cooked with a can of tomato sauce, chicken broth, garlic powder, and peas added afterwards... it was awesome and easy. I made it in the rice cooker!

Oh yeah and a dried peach or two for a little sweetness post  dinner... okay and maybe one between the salad and the bulgar wheat....

Blog: SF Diet Day 1 Complete

So the NSA (No Sugar Added) diet is underway.  I was fully prepared with food (see prev. post) so even though I was super lazy and didn't cook anything today except egg whites for dinner.

Pre-Workout:
Banana + 2% Cottage Cheese
Post Workout:
Watermelon
Almonds
2% Cottage Cheese
Throughout the day and in no particular order
more Almonds,  too many more.... :)
more Cottage Cheese w/ frozen Blueberries
Carrots w/ Humus
Homemade Hashbrowns in waffle iron! (AWESOME)
Fresh Mango
Frozen Mango
large Egg White Omelet w/Carrots, Parm and Garlic Salt
Banana with PB x2
Romaine w/Cucumber, Tomatoes  and Humus
1% Milk
Fish Oil pill

I feel pretty good today! Minus the fact my body isn't recovering well from this stupid injury I'm getting over.

I'm hoping to feel more up to cooking tomorrow! Wish me luck

Blog: SF Diet Starts Tomorrow! (always does...) hah!.... no but for real this time:)

Ok so I think it's time I mapped out my plan.  This diet is less of a 'fad diet' and more of an 'awareness exercise.' 
I'm not planning to stick to the strictest portion of it for more than 7 days. 


Goal: Recognize how much 'sugar added' I eat every day
Caveats: Will still use Gu  replenish and recovery  powder for during and post workouts


Week 1: Absolutely NO added Sugar foods. Everything from ketchup to cereal to sausages will be out, unless of course they don't contain any of the following: 

• Agave nectar, Brown sugar, Cane crystals, Cane sugar, Corn sweetener, Corn syrup, Crystalline fructose,  Dextrose, Evaporated cane juice, Fructose, Fruit juice concentrates, Glucose, High-fructose corn syrup, Honey, Invert sugar. Lactose. Maltose, Malt syrup, Molasses, Raw sugar, Sucrose, Sugar, Syrup 

 From: 

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/added-sugar-on-food-labels/

I'm also avoiding all fake sugars for many reasons, which I'll post about later

I'm not going to worry about sugar that naturally occur in foods quite yet. I've done a little reading on GI indexes and I haven't done enough research to make create an informed eating plan based upon the indexes.  

The Glycemic Index rates how much a food affects your blood sugar from 1 to 100. You can get a feel for what foods are high on the GI here:  

http://www.high-fiber-health.com/glycemicindex.html

Anything lower than 55 is in the good zone, meaning it won't disrupt blood glucose levels too much.

Things that make a food have a lower GI rating:

Whole Wheat, Whole Bran, less ground, closer to the way nature created it

More fat and/or protein present will slow digestion

More acidity present will limit glucose absorption into the blood

But the more I read, the more I find out that GI is not the whole story. The Glycemic Load is just as important. The following article, quickly explains the difference, but here was one good quote from it: 

 "However, the average serving size of a baked potato is about 150 grams (5.3 oz) and contains 17 grams of carbohydrate. Conversely, a Mars® candy bar serving size is only 60 grams (2.1 oz) but contains 40 grams of carbohydrate. The boiled potato has a glycemic load of 17, while the Mars bar is 26. Thus, even though the potato has a higher glycemic index, the Mars® candy bar has a greater effect on blood glucose than the potato even though the size of the Mars® candy bar is less than half that of the potato. Dr. Jeukendrup, a respected sports nutrition researcher, reports that foods with a glycemic load of > 20 are high, 11-19 are medium, and < 10 are low (8). The following table lists some common foods with their corresponding glycemic index and glycemic loads. http://www.nsca-lift.org/HotTopic/download/Glycemic%20Load.pdf

So it looks like Glycemic Load is pretty important as well. But alas, I have digressed.

Ok, so NO SUGAR ADDED diet starts tomorrow. Just got back from Sams, loaded up on a lot of fresh and wholesome food. I may have overdone it, but I wanted to be as prepared as possible, so I could always have an NSA (No Sugar Added) food at hand. 

Here's my shopping list:

- bag of pre-cut, pre-washed Romaine

- 5lb bag of Carrots

- 6x10oz cans of Chicken

- 4 large tons of Plain Greek Yogurt

- 36 Eggs

- 4 pints Egg Whites

- 2 bags of Frozen Berries (to put in yogurt and oatmeal)

- 25 Bananas (frozen and then in a blender, it's like ice cream)

- 6 fresh Mangos (2 may already have been eaten....)

- 3lb tub low-fat Cottage Cheese

- 5lb block of Feta Cheese

- 2 qt tub of Cherry Tomatoes

 Already had on hand:

Oatmeal

Chicken Breasts

Milk

Frozen Mango

Frozen Veggies

Zucchini

Dried Peaches

Ok wish me luck!