Words of Wisdom

The old lady I couldn't get away from, peered at my can of coke and said

"It'll rot your teeth, that stuff!"

I pointed out that it was Zero Coke and had no sugar in it, but she was undeterred.

"Have you seen how it gets rust off things? Any idea what it does to your insides?"

Ah, well, that'll be the acid in it, just like in vinegar. Nobody suggests that pickles rot you insides. In coke, the carbon dioxide bubbles dissolve slightly, making a weak carbonic acid. Indeed, stomach acid is way stronger than any acid you are likely to voluntarily ingest.

So, in a spirit of politeness, I asked the old lady what she preferred, if coke was such a demon drink.

"Tango, Vimto or Strongbow," she replied, without a hint of irony.

Back to the Beginning, Again.

There was an old man called Michael Finnegan,
He grew fat and then grew thin again,
He kicked up an awful din-igan,
Poor old Michael Finnegan,
Begin Again.

According to last week's news, the powers that be have decided that lack of exercise does not cause obesity. It seems that fat people only move less because they are fat, rather that moving less caused the fatness in the first place. It is, it seems, all down to junk food and scoffing massive quantities of calories, rather than anything to do with burning them off.

This doesn't come as a huge surprise. After all, last weekend I spent six hours doing a Grade 1 scramble up a 3000ft Welsh mountain (Grade 1 means any more severe and you get to use ropes). I got down off the massive beast of a lump of rock, ached for three days and guess what? Yep, I put on 2lb.

The news is kind of depressing though, because I can buck myself up to do tons of exercise, but I have absolutely no will when it comes to not eating. I am almost autistic in my inability to understand a negative: not, stop, don't, never, refrain

Max wanted me to fill in a month of sugar-free dieting, together with my sugar levels. He thought that if I ate no sugar, my blood sugar levels will go down. I don't think homeostatic control of blood sugar levels works like that. Whilst you can make your sugar levels high by eating lots of sugar, you cannot alter your fasting level by having a sugar-free diet. By definition, you are testing your fasting level... when as much sugar as you body can deal with, has been taken out of the system.

Let me explain:
Imagine the insulin in your blood is a fighter pilot, shooting down invaders (sugar molecules). It doesn't matter how many there were to begin with, the fighter pilot will work to shoot down the invaders until there are only 5 invaders left in the sky, then it will stop shooting. This is fasting level. It won't start again until there are more than 5 about again.

With diabetes, the pilot's radar is damaged. It stops firing when there are still 8 invaders out there. It can't see the rest.

Max is suggesting that I limit the number of invaders. I don't think that limiting the invaders will make the pilot's radar work again.

To bring the amount of invaders back down to 5, if the pilot stops shooting at 8, I would have to stop taking in sugar or carbs which are converted in to sugar. I would have to empty my liver of glycogen, which is a sugar store, released over 8 hours, and I would have to use up the released sugar in some way (activity). Once all these sources of 'invaders' had stopped coming, then, maybe, my blood sugar levels would fall.

I'm guessing that if I fasted for around 16 hours, not counting the time when I'm asleep and not moving, I might start to get my sugar down to where it should be. Of course, the minute I ate something, it would shoot back up and I'd have to start all over again. Michael Finnegan.

Anyway, I filled in the sheet with what I eat and my sugar levels. I managed a fortnight before I got bored and despondent. On the few days I did manage to go sugar-free (and let's face it, there weren't many), my blood sugar was exactly the same as on the sugary days. Homeostasis is a wonderfully consistent mechanism.

What I did notice, coming back to what I've been saying all along, is that I eat too much bad stuff. I have turfed sugar out of my lunch-box and replaced it with a large ice-cream after work! Doh!

I need some sort of avoidance plan to stop me putting fat and sugar into my body. My obesity has nothing to do with weird dietary problems. It is simply eating too much of the wrong crap. I can imagine I'm going to end up as one of those fat mammas with their teeth wired together, who get stunned looks from their doctors when they admit to liquidising Mars bars.

Please help me stop!

Experimenting with Drugs

Forget opiates..... anti-histamine is where it is at!

Too Good to Miss

A must read, for all those confused by food fads.
Click here for link to original article.

Reproduced below:

FAT CAUSES FAT
by The Daily Mash.

23-06-10

THE fat that is in food could be the same as the fat that is in people, experts claimed last night. A tower of deadly beige Calling for a ban on food fat, researchers said that millions of consumers were eating it without even knowing that it could be the same stuff that makes up 90% of their bottoms. Julian Cook, from Reading University, said: "It does seem to be mainly beige foods, like pie and crisps and chips and I suspect that's where we've been going wrong. "For decades it was assumed that it was the beige that was making everyone so fat. That's why we advised people to stop eating sand and waxed pine furniture. "Plus, Fern Britton wears a lot of beige, so it wasn't like we were just guessing." He added: "We did some lab tests by putting tracksuit bottoms on a monkey, but that proved inconclusive. It was then that I turned to my enormous lab assistant Roy in exasperation, but he said he was too busy eating a load of chips and crisps. "On a hunch, I asked Roy if he ate a lot of crisps and he said yes, he liked all food that contained 'fat'. It's not often scientists get to say 'eureka', but I did feel as if I had just cracked a large one. "We're currently working very hard to find out what 'fat' is, but it does sound very similar to 'fat' and is even spelled the same way. And as you know, scientists don't believe in coincidence. Not really big ones anyway." Mother-of-two Nikki Hollis said: "It sounds like some crazy superstition. But on the other hand, they are experts. I'm torn." And cake enthusiast Stephen Malley added: "If you could see my belly button you'd notice it doesn't still have have an umbilical cord attached and that's because I wasn't born yesterday. "It's caused by beige. Even a child knows that."

Still Crazy After All These Years.

OK, so I was trying to give up sugar. I was doing quite well for a few days. I swapped the 30% sugar muesli bar in my lunchbox for a banana. Joe (my man) managed to find me some zero sugar yogurt that was edible, if a little grainy. Things trundled along for a couple of days until yesterday.

I tend to eat lunch huddled against a computer screen, trying to get things done in the limited time available. It also stops me eating the biscuits that are always available in the staffroom. Anyway, I don't pay a lot of attention to what I'm eating. Time is short. I did get to the end of my lunchbox yesterday feeling "Was that it?" but in the absence of anything left to eat, I just got on with the lessons and thought no more about it.

Oh dear. After work there was a meeting. By 4pm my stomach was starting to hurt, but I couldn't understand why. By 4.45pm I was nearly doubled over with the pain and couldn't wait to get out of there.

I cancelled meeting my friend for an exercise class, scoffed several of the staffroom biscuits and drove straight to the supermarket. OK, I'm not proud of it, but the pain was so bad. Sandwich, muesli bar, banana, malt loaf, orange juice and still the pain hadn't gone. My stomach was bloated full of wind and swollen like a beach ball. The food helped, but it didn't make it go away. It had gone too far for that.

When I got home I drank half a litre of water and ate some Cheerios.

I couldn't understand it. Was the pain hunger, or gall stones, or was my skirt was too tight or hadn't I drunk enough all day or had I eaten the wrong things? Six hours later I was still suffering. I shouldn't be that hungry, I'd eaten the same the day before and not had any bad effects.

Finally Joe came home and told me he had just put salad in my sandwich, instead of chicken or cheese (stupid me, hadn't noticed).

So I'd missed out on my usual muesli bar, the calories in the yogurt and to top it all I'd had no filling in my sandwich. Add to that a long meeting and you have a recipe for disaster.

This is why I don't stick to diets.

They hurt.

The bad news is, the progress I had made in cutting out sugar has all been undone because today I am still sore and wanting to put nice things into my abused body (like ice-cream and Jaffa cakes) to make sure it doesn't have to deal with the pain of hunger again.

One step forwards, two steps back. :o(

I must have FRUIT!

Anyone remember that film from about 1980 called the Time Bandits? A bunch of irreverent, rat-eating dwarves stole the blueprint of the universe from God and spent the film trying to escape from his omnipresence by jumping through holes in the space-time continuum. Don't worry, it made sense at the time.

Anyway, these itinerant dwarves hurtled across time and space and, no matter when or where they went, for some reason they always ended up landing on or otherwise messing up the plans of various characters played by Michael Palin. In one scene, possibly memorable only to people like me, who have seen the film too many times, Palin ends up tied to a tree with his lady-friend.

He pulls a mildly panicked face, as though he is about to soil his breeches, and says

"The old trouble is starting again!"

"Oh dear!" says the lady friend, resignedly.

Palin then pulls a face that only a mother could love and cries out

"I must have FRUIT!"



Well, I have been eating a lot of fruit, as a substitute for sugar, this week. I dread to think what it is doing to my insides. How many bananas, pears, apples and kiwis do I need to eat before I get to pay the price?

Let's face it, much more of this and I think that old trouble will be catching up with me, too!

Sugar Free?

Today I went sugar free, as much as is possible without baking my own bread or something.

Sugar free oats made into porridge with semi-skimmed milk and a handful of raisins.
Tea, milk, no sugar
Benecol yogurt drink
2 slices of poppy seed bread with margarine
2 apples, 1 banana, 1 pear
Sparkling water
Chicken pesto sandwich
Shepherd's pie with peas.

Emotional effects? None that I have noticed. Will see how tomorrow goes.