Today I am going to mine the archives and provide you, dear reader with links to the books, documentaries, videos and articles that I have found over the last several months that inspired me to write to you. I know that you don’t read back through the backlog of my work like I do, so to provide you with the information contained in there, I must do it for you. Read on, and be sure you click the links so that you can see where I get all of my liberal eating ideas.
Back at the beginning of April this year, we started our Detox from sugar. The weekend before we binged on all things sweet, which was a little bit sickening, but it got us in the mood to quit the sweets. Articles like this one from Berkeley University got us on the path.
Soft drinks, sports drinks, fruit drinks, energy drinks, coffee drinks, cupcakes, cookies, muffins, doughnuts, granola bars, chocolate, ice cream, sweetened yogurt, cereal, candy. The list of sweet temptations is endless.
The average American now consumes 22 to 28 teaspoons of added sugars a day—mostly high-fructose corn syrup and or- dinary table sugar (sucrose). That’s 350 to 440 empty calories that few of us can afford.
How much added sugar is too much? Cutting back to 100 calories (61⁄2 teaspoons) a day for women and 150 calories (91⁄2 teaspoons) a day for men might mean slimmer waist- lines and a lower risk of disease.
By April 3 we were mining the internet for great recipes and found this site, where great recipes for the sugar averse are found neatly arranged and rated. We loved the pizza soup recipe because the leftover made a great meat-rich marinara for our spaghetti (squash) the next day. Find that recipe here….
On April 4th we found this video explaining how you get addicted to sugar, just like people get addicted to anything else…
Never skip a meal if you are not eating sugars and carbs. Not only will you feel lousy, the deficit in energy will send you into a starvation mode of body chemistry. This actually makes losing weight harder. It also makes it much more difficult to kick the sugar habit.
On April 14 I discovered the HBO Documentary ‘Weight of the Nation’. Watch at least the first episode, and then try the second one. If it does not motivate you to get on the bandwagon of sugar eradication then I don’t know what will…a heart attack maybe. This documentary is available free of charge wherever you go to watch internet video. Each episode is an hour long and PACKED with facts and recent science reporting.
On April 15 I listed lots of links to good meal ideas. Recapping my first two weeks of sugar-free life. By this time I was pretty sure that I could stay off of sugar from now on.
On April 16 I finally was clear of the demon. My mind was then alive and I could really write. It was the first post where the writer in me started to really emerge. Rereading this post makes me smile, as I can see how I will write from now on in that post.
The NIH (National Institute of Health) really does care about your health. This is their site, and there is good advice on how to keep weight off. I have some for you too, don’t drink any sugar, of any kind.
On April 21 we ended the formal ‘Sugar Detox’ of 21 days. Of course, our new lives had just begun, and my best writing and linking were in the future still. Writing every day is the second best thing to come of this experience. During the last three months I have found something that I can be truly excited, even evangelistic about. I have learned much and taught much since then.
Tomorrow I will go thru May’s posts and recap those for you too. I really think I need to create a page of just Links, that you could get to very easily, instead of having to wade backwards through over 100 posts. It’s a great deal of trouble, but it’s trouble that I don’t mind taking for you, dear reader.
Until Tomorrow!
One Small Change at a Time 
I agree with you on sugar–it is the cause of a lot of problems, but it was not the cause of my problems. I have been off of sugary drinks for many years and I did not eat sweet deserts very often. The cause of my problems,and the cause of problems for a lot of people in the US is omega-6. I was avoiding sugar and sweets but still gaining slowly. When I started my Oil-Change Diet, I lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks! You and I both know, that was not from calories–I did not increase my activities and there is no way even a zero calorie diet I could lose that much. That loss was from water retention caused by the inflammation and swelling. The 35 pounds I have lost since then is due to me consuming fewer calories than I burn (without increasing my activities)–it has just helped me to not eat too much. I now feel satisfied with a small amount of food and I do eat healthy fruits and veggies. I do not eat many carbs–I try to get most of my carbs from fruits and veggies.
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Wow that is great to know about the O6 inflammation link. I eat grass fed beef grown by a friend. I eat pastured chicken eggs and use lard from hogs raised naturally. I wonder if I’m getting enough 03 to O6.
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Grass fed meats are a good step in the right direction–they have a balanced ratio of 6/3 whereas grain fed meat is often 80% omega-6. There are many sources of omega-6 in the typical US diet, fried foods is one of the worst. My book provides simple list of basic food groups and their omega-6/3 ratio as well as recipes and ways to increase your omega-3.
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O3 and O6 come in 2 forms –long and short–the long is essentially the active form–ready to be turned into hormones. The short form comes for plant matter, the long form comes from meat and fish. Grass fed meat and dairy are close to 1:1, some of our grain fed grocery market meat can be 10:1 (6:3). Fish vary tremendously, salmon and mackerel are highest, most white flesh fish only has a couple hundred mg of O3. My book (on Amazon) explains the biochemistry and give the quantities of O6 in list of basic foods groups. It also has about 100 recipes with the long O6 they produce and a month of menus.
If you are interested in knowing your O6/3 ratio, you can order a blood test on Amazon–I think it is about $75. It will take about a month to get results, but all it takes is a simple finger prick that you blot on a pad and send in. Mine was 55:45 (6:3)– after a yr on my diet. That is a 75-90% reduction in heart death risk compared to typical US.
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