Today i have sugar on my mind… Literally. Let me digress.
A few years ago I really started packing on pounds, was constantly thirsty, fatigued, and spent more time running to the bathroom than I did living my life. A quick trip to the doctor, and viola! “You sir are type two diabetic”. Well shit.
I immediately cut out all the bad stuff, no more cokes,candy bars, cake, donuts, etc. That staved it off for about a year. Then my blood sugar was creeping up again. “what now???”
So I started doing the research. I was in for the shock of my life. Seriously. In this day and age it may sound a little naive, but I learned the truth.
Today’s food manufacturers put sugar in EVERYTHING. And I mean everything. Let me be more specific. If you walk into a supermarket and set out to buy only products that dont contain processed sugar, (excluding the meat and produce department), you can’t do it. FACT. Salad dressing, that’s healthy, right? 3 grams of sugar a tablespoon. How many people put a tablespoon of dressing on salad? it’s more like a half a cup. Keep in mind that a snickers bar contains about 20 grams of sugar. Eating a healthy salad will give you approximately a candy bar of sugar. Think about that. Spaghetti sauce? Might as well eat cupcake. You get the picture.
A couple of absolute shocking facts. Enfamil, the popular baby formula. 13 grams of sugar PER BOTTLE. We are addicting our babies to sugar before they can eat solid food!
Another shocker. Planters peanuts. PEANUTS FOR GODS SAKE!!! Pure protein. Great for you. Nope Good Old Planters loads them with sugar. It goes on and on.
Why? Well somewhere along the way of processing food, the manufacturers realized that we humans are addicted to certain combinations of things. Addicted = more food sales. The Devil’s trilogy is a combination of sugar, salt and fat. We can’t stop. Can you say doritos? Well, dear friends, almost everything we buy has been chemically formed and tested to combine this formula into product that we will buy again and again. The end result is that we as a whole are eating more sugar per day than ever in the history of humans.
How? Let’s analyze a daily healthy diet. Let’s start with breakfast. Orange juice, cereal, toast and milk. Orange juice is pure sugar. And it’s not real juice anyway. Its squeezed oranges that have been drained of the water, made into a paste, then shipped to the packaging plant. Water is re-added, along with sugar, preservatives, flavor and color, and then bottled. THAT – is what you are drinking,. PURE SUGAR. Milk. Guess what food additive they add to milk? Yup sugar. – And milk has it’s own natural sugar in it. Lactose. Double Dose. Cereal. Pure sugar. Most is made from wheat, rice, corn or oats which all contain natural sugar. Then they just pour sugar over the top of that because it makes grains taste better. Even Special K or Cheerios have a ton of added sugar. Pour some sugar laced milk over the top of that! Toast. Your enemy. White bread is one of the worst things you can put in your body. Zero nutritional value, and about a candy bar of sugar.
So let’s recap. A healthy breakfast we all enjoy… 30 to 50 grams of sugar per sitting. And that’s just breakfast.
By the way. The American Heart Association suggests no more than 25 to 35 grams of sugar a day.
Let’s move on to lunch. A coke, a PB&J, and a bag of cheetos. Another 60 grams of sugar.
Dinner. How about Pizza and a beer? 50 grams of sugar.
160 grams ingested. 25 to 35 grams suggested. And that’s without snacks, energy bars, Starbucks, etc. Add another 60 grams. And we do that every day. Unless we go to the moves and have some candy, Popcorn and cokes. Then double that.
OK. so enough of the lecture. It’s not hard to see why we are the fattest we’ve ever been – (All sugar that the body can’t process turns into fat.) And not hard to see why most adults will be type two diabetic by the time they hit 50.
So here’s where this all comes to light. And the reason for my post…
My blood sugar A1c (unit of measure for blood sugar for about a three month period), has been running at about 9.5. That’s high. Not diabetic coma high, but certainly “i’m slowly eating away at my liver, kidneys and circulation, etc. (Told you it’s been high). And I refuse to take meds. Metformin, Insulin, etc. Nope.
Type two is totally curable with change in diet, exercise and of course sugar intake. So here I am. About a week in. My blood sugar is starting to come down in a good way. I’ve gone from a 9.5 to an 8.6. Not bad. Still a long way to go. My goal # is 6.0. So I enter into this holiday week being void of all yummies.
OK. So not one of my usual posts. But just sharing a personal journey with anyone willing to listen. And hopefully someone may actually get a benefit from the story. Who knows. I will keep chugging away and I will continue to post my results. Let’s see where this goes. Hopefully in a healthy direction.
Thanks for listening. Cheers!
