MY STORY

Part 6:

My next big hurdle that I was wanting to tackle was to eliminate excess sugar from my diet. People do not even realize how much sugar they eat in a day. Today the average American consumes almost 152 pounds of sugar in a year. This is equal to 3 pounds, (or 6 cups) of sugar in one week. I don’t know about you but just the thought of that much sugar makes me sick.

A book I highly recommend that worked for me is “Sugar Impact Diet” by JJ Virgin. She explains, “If you’re eating healthy but just can’t seem to lose the weight, you’re not alone. Sugar is the single biggest needle mover when it comes to your health and the number on the scale, but sugar hides in places you’d never expect: whole foods, diet foods, packaged foods, dressings, even sugar substitutes. And it’s not enough to cut out or cut back on sugar, you have to cut out the right kinds of sugar. Different sugars react differently in the body. High Sugar Impact foods cause weight gain, energy crashes and inflammation. Low Sugar Impact foods fuel your body for prolonged energy and promote fat burning.

If you google “Sneaky Sugar Inventory and mark all of the foods you eat on that inventory, It will blow your mind. It did mine. I began implementing her recommendations of eliminating sneaky sugars out of my diet and eating less sugar impact foods and found to my surprise that it was not as hard as I thought it was going to be. Once you get the excess sugar out of your diet and you go back to something you used to eat, it is so sweet it is sickening.

Sugar works against your hormones, and, therefore your body holds on to excess weight. When you cut back or eliminate sugar from your diet, you can easily shed excess fat.

I have found that if I had a sugar craving, I would eat more protein or fat and that craving would go away. Also I started eating dark chocolate for a treat. Seventy 70% cacao or more. The dark chocolate allowed me to have a treat and not feel deprived. My sugar of choice is ice cream. I can enjoy ice cream once a month or every 6 weeks with my chocolate fix, rather than every week.

I continued to read and learn and grow and change my lifestyle. One day my son turned me on to podcasts. He introduced me to “The Model Health Show” with Shawn Stevenson. I loved that this man took a devastating back diagnosis and decided he was not going to let it ruin his life. He started researching and using clean food and movement to change his life. He is changing other people’s lives through his podcasts.

I had grown up in the era of low fat to be healthy. We ate margarine instead of butter. This more fat way of eating came very hard for me. I was afraid that if I ate fat, I would get fat. I started incorporating the more fat lifestyle but it took me several years to become comfortable with that lifestyle change.

I was introduced to Dave Asprey, Bulletproofexec.com. I started using some of his health hacks by adding more good fats and eliminating grains, sugar, and vegetable oils. Dave Asprey went from 300 lbs. to a healthy weight just by eliminating grains, sugar and bad fats and adding healthy fats. He also introduced me to a Paleo way of eating. It closely patterned Jillian Michaels recommendations.

Then along came Keto. My husband and I both tried the Atkins Diet years ago where you ate very low-carb or no carbs and ate mostly fat and meat. That did not work for me. Fore one thing I could never get into ketosis. Ketosis is what you want to be in to make this diet work. Ketosis is what I struggled with to make the Keto Diet work as well. I do better with a little more carbs in my diet.

Stay connected for the rest of my story…