No Sweet Taste Test

[Nancy LC]

Ok, I made it through my first day... sorta. I had 2 diet pepsi's and I totally forgot my mustard sauce has splenda in it. Oops. I think I might have also chewed a piece of gum. Still, a big improvement over what I was doing... eating a dozen or so sugar free popsicles.

I ate a butt load of meat yesterday. Ham for breakfast, salad for lunch with chicken breast and nuts, and turkey for dinner (cooked in rosemary, marjoram and basil from the garden and lemon juice from the bottle). It was delicious.

It is hard for me to think of eating turkey without slathering this mustard sauce all over it. But I will try.

I think I'll try to get to the store and buy mayonaisse and make some deviled eggs.

We've got crazy-ass fires in my city right now and lots of roads are closed... we shall see if this store trip is even possible.

[Nancy LC]

Oh yeah, I should mention I lost a pound. No big surprise seeing as how meat-centric my diet is right now.

[Heidihi]

I have been reading and reading about this ...you know what? I am going to try it as well ..I have been on Atkins for a long time and am actually sick of it (argh I can not believe i just said that!) ...I want to stoke my fire and enjoy more fruits that is for sure ...

sometimes in life you feel rootbound and repotting is a good idea ...my roots need to spread and I need to loose this wt I gained ...

it looks like a very sound way of eating to me and if I can give up my sugar free gum addiction (I can easily consume a pack a day if I dont watch myself) ...what's to loose except fat????

I am so sorry about your fires ...a friend of mine just ran with his cats and has no idea about his house ..and i have not heard from him so I am worried now ...

take care and stay safe!

I hunt and gather food already ..kind of a hobby of mine :D

[Nancy LC]

Going to try which? Paleo or no-sweet taste challenge?

I think eating too many fruits might derail someone if they're still trying to lose weight. I think I am coming to realize I am extremely carb sensitive.

[Daryl]

Nancy, be careful with the fires over there!

[Heidihi]

Going to try which? Paleo or no-sweet taste challenge?

I think eating too many fruits might derail someone if they're still trying to lose weight. I think I am coming to realize I am extremely carb sensitive.

both! I am going to completely give up sweeteners and try being a a paleowoman

I am kind of excited about going this new route

I love fruits :D even human ones!

[Nancy LC]

Well... fruits would be sweet wouldn't they? :)

[Nancy LC]

Nancy, be careful with the fires over there!
I'm making dinner for my 3 sets of friends who had to evacuate, and their hosts. Squash Thai curry and rice for them, I'll skip the rice though.

Everything is ok so far in my area... well at least no evacuations. :)

[Bat Spit]

Nancy-
Off topic but bless you for taking in evacuees. I was evacuated back in 2000 for 2 weeks during the fires in NM. It is beyond horrible. So many people lost so much. Be careful, and keep your cat carrier handy!

Staying away from sweet makes such a huge difference. It completely resets your palate after a few days and makes it so much easier to get by with less.

[PlaneCrazy]

Good luck on the fires, and good luck on the sweet fast. I still drink Diet Pepsi. That's the one last vestige of my bad old ways. So far it's not keeping me from loosing, or at least not noticably, and it hasn't triggered any urges for other sweets, but then I'm not eating any other sweets at all.

A mainly meat diet definitely helps with sweet cravings but it can be a little challenging to make it interesting. I've been getting more creative with my cooking. That helps a great deal when eating mainly meat. Tonight was pork chops quick browned then braised in organic chicken broth. After they cooked, which was pretty quickly, then add a dash of herbs, reduce the broth and whisk in some butter and a splash of lemon juice at the end to make a quick sauce.

Stuff like that, quick, easy, and low carb makes an almost all-meat diet much easier to look forward to. I'm sure with your Thai expertise, you should be able to think of all kinds of interesting twists.

Good luck, I'll be thinking of you. Hopefully the Santa Ana winds die down soon.

Plane

[Heidihi]

I'm making dinner for my 3 sets of friends who had to evacuate, and their hosts. Squash Thai curry and rice for them, I'll skip the rice though.

Everything is ok so far in my area... well at least no evacuations. :)



I am so glad everything is ok ...and just so you know .. my master plan here is to make a killer fruity and hot curry pemmican that will knock socks off!!! :D

I am so on this ...

I had 4 pieces of gum but otherwise did not touch a thing (whoops edited to add I ate a lot of food ...mostly salad things and smoked chicken and some really nice eggs.. but nothing that had sweetener in it)..thanks for starting this threadjust the motivation I needed right now!

(I thought I would avoid even the fruit until I tried this for a week)

good luck and stay safe
Heidi

[Nancy LC]

Well, was only going to do this for 3 days but it is going so well, might as well keep it up!

[Heidihi]

I can last a week I am sure this is not so bad you are right NancyLC
I am down to one piece of gum yesterday (I sound like a smoker!)

and I have been eating what appears to me as quite Paleo! but since I was already a non crapfood Atkins eater I did not have far to reach just giving up the dairy is really not easy I am down to 2oz of cheese or half cup yogurt a day..and no cream or butter this week..

I thought I would die but havent yet!

[Nancy LC]

As I finish the Gary Taubes book and my mind is spinning 100 miles an hour with everything new I have learned, I wonder if my metabolism isn't messed up beyond salvation.

That's why I'm doing this "no sweet taste" thing. I think my body isn't going into lipolysis when it should. Which means, it must have insulin running around at all times. The evidence for this is that, I've been eating mostly meat for about 4-5 days and I'm not in ketosis and I'm not losing weight. I wake up hungry in the wee hours, which shouldn't happen on the diet I'm following.

Well, I can get more rigid. I can eliminate the veggies, I feel better about doing that since reading Taubes, and the nuts (don't eat that many). And perhaps extending my sleeping fasts will help too. I had been eating around 9-10 am, but I can endure until noon.

[waywardsis]

Nancy, how's the fire situation?

Do you think that you release insulin just from the taste of sweet? And I agree that longer IFing will probably help. Can't hurt, anyway.

[Nancy LC]

Well, I always doubted I did, but that's one of the reasons I'm avoiding the sweet taste. Gary's book cited some research about insulin release from no-calorie sweet tastes. But as Gary's book points out, there's two parts to storing fat. One is insulin but then you also have to have that chemical available (which comes from glucose or fructose) to be able to activate the fat storage, which I should have damn little of.

[Nancy LC]

Better new now! I have dropped those 5 pounds I gained from my nasty bingeing. My time-of-the-month was interfering with weight loss. I am suspicious that the naprosyn I usually take for my cramps might have caused me to hold onto weight too. I hate taking that stuff but I am in a lot of pain for two days every month and it really helps.

I have also stopped taking my Sulfasalazine, just to see how that would work out. I tried a few months back and immediately had problems. This time, everything seems MUCH better! Really no difference in how I feel. It has only been 3 days though, I think I need to give it longer.

[ProteusOne]

Well, I always doubted I did, but that's one of the reasons I'm avoiding the sweet taste. Gary's book cited some research about insulin release from no-calorie sweet tastes. But as Gary's book points out, there's two parts to storing fat. One is insulin but then you also have to have that chemical available (which comes from glucose or fructose) to be able to activate the fat storage, which I should have damn little of.
I just picked up Taube's book, BTW.

[Nancy LC]

Cool! Let me know how you like it.

[Bat Spit]

I am suspicious that the naprosyn I usually take for my cramps might have caused me to hold onto weight too. I hate taking that stuff but I am in a lot of pain for two days every month and it really helps.

I take it too. Not that anyone loses weight during TOM, but NSAIDS deplete potassium. Try upping that when you need to take them. It helps me.

[Heidihi]

well Nancy I hung in and am still having one piece of gum a day but I want to thank you for posting this thread because I have not touched anything sweet (except the one single piece of gum a day and I am going to stop that when this pack runs out ..I do sound like a smoker!) until today when I am having an apple and am quite happy about that...I am done with the AS that stuff is crap and it is just an excuse to continue with the crapfood habit ..

so thanks for this I know your intent was different than mine but you sparked me and I appreciate it!

good bye artificial sweeteners forever!!! I am done with those!

fruits however.. come back to mama!!!!! man I missed my fall apples (no triggers here thank goodness)

[Nancy LC]

I've lost just over 7.5 pounds since I posted this... what 8 days ago? Holy former-cow, I never lose weight that fast.

I don't attribute it to the giving up of artificial sweeteners because I'm using them again. However, I redoubled my efforts to stay very low carb. I think I've realized my fat cells are exquisitely sensitive to insulin. My thought was intermittent fasting might help with that, since it helps so much with blood glucose control for diabetics as we've seen in the IF thread. So I extend my overnight fast until noon.

I've also had a touch of something upsetting my tummy. So perhaps that is what is responsible. Although I am not one to lose weight when I'm sick, I usually gain or stay the same.

On the same note, I got off the medication I was taking for my autoimmune arthritis. It doesn't have weight gain as a side effect and I didn't gain weight while taking it. But it did give me pernicious anemia which might have contributed to me feeling like pooh a lot of the time. The good news is... I haven't had any relapse in the arthritis so far. We shall see how it goes! My doctor will probably be mad, he wanted me to stay on it for life. But I just needed to see if I really still needed it or if the changes I have made were enough to resolve my issues. Hopefully he'll be happy that I'm so symptom free. :)

Well, usually around this time I get cocky and have a binge. I hope it doesn't happen! Yesterday I did really well. I had fish at noon (a huge portion) and some coconut milk with lime juice as dessert. Then I had fish again for supper with spinach absolutely drenched in butter (yeah, I need to make ghee again, I'm lazy). Then dessert was one of my microwaved, instant chocolate cakes (cocoa powder, eggs, sweetener).

I've also been putting coconut oil in my coffee, it seems to help me get through the morning fast. Although this morning I haven't been hungry at all.

[frankly]

I need to make ghee again.

I was just thinking about that this morning. I've never done it but will make a batch this weekend. Are there any special considerations in regards to temperature or time? Do you strain it?

[Nancy LC]

Just google it, tons of directions out there that'll explain it much better than I can. It is very easy to do.