Can You go without sugar?

All you folk with joint pains, have you ever tried taking high-strength Glucosamine tablets? I had persistent residual pain after dislocating my ankle several years ago, but within a couple of weeks of taking Glucosamine, it was as good as new.

Was just told I can't have sweets FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. Unbelievably bummed. Can have baklava, since it's made with honey. Anyone know any other good, non-sucrose filled tasty treats??

Dude, that is unhappy news. I'm sorry to hear that.

Condolences. But honey >>>>>>>>>>> sugar every day of the week imho. Also, the variety of honey, depending on what the little buzzers were pollinating, is amazing.

Thanks, dudes. Honey is amazing, no doubt. But it's used so limitedly. I wasn't ever a big sweets person but damn. Would kill for a milkshake right about now.

Honey is basically fructose and glucose - if you can have those, you can make all kinds of sweets and custard/puddings/etc.

Also, there's so many new low/no carb sweeteners on the market - maltitol, xylitol, sorbitol. They can give some people gut trouble, so you have to build up your tolerance. Erythritrol is pretty good.

Yeah I just can't have sucrose. Infections latch onto it.

wtf? define sweets. there is sugar in everything.

xpost.

eat fruit and chocolate imho.

I can't help you with low carb ice cream because my alternative sweetener versions have all turned out awful. But you could whip cream sweetened with honey and freeze it. There's also a greek/mediterranean dessert called honey pudding - basically a light milky custard flavored with rosewater you drizzle honey over.

You might be able to find agave nectar sweetened stuff in specialty/health food stores - it's fructose/glucose too, like honey.

Cool. Thanks for the suggestions.
Just had to hand back the awesome zucchini bread my friend made :(

I'm currently taking the low-carb path, by choice though - it's tough, really really tough on some days, but doable. I'm sorry about the zucchini bread.

fucking hell mang, does this mean I can't have SUSHI?? Cause of the sugar in the rice?

What a bummer!

This is...kind of crazy?? Are we talking some kind of systemic candida or fungal infection outbreak or something?

This is a bummer. I am not a huge eat candy everyday kind of guy, but damnit if the well-placed piece of candy or soda doesn't hit the spot.

Tell me this won't effect your booze intake. Please.

Nah I can have booze, thank god, cause the sugars in it aren't sucrose. Though I don't know about something like cane sugar rum.

Granny, who told you this? Was it a doctor or a nutritionist?

My GI doctor. Was diagnosed with Crohn's a few weeks ago. He's a leading expert on it, so I'm hesitant to go against his recommendation. Haven't turned up much on the internet re: crohn's=no sucrose (though I only spent about 15 mins searching last night). The one thing I did find related to it was an even stricter diet. Like no sucrose plus no pasta, rice (no grains basically). Fuck that!

So...macrobiotic?

Granny - you may want to webmail Curtis. He has Chron's (not a secret or anything, he's written about it here before) and would probably be a really good person to talk to about anything involving it esp for someone with a new diagnosis.

That's a slightly different thing, you'd said that it was about avoiding infections. I'd still get a second opinion, esp. if he's a DO. (I couldn't find anything about avoiding sucrose, either. I did find stuff about cutting down your intake of all natural sweeteners, but not that. I did find stuff on that more restrictive diet that you talked about, and noticed that it was being promoted as a cure for half the ailments known to humankind. Bleah.)

Well as I understand it, infections latch onto sucrose more easily than anything else. A Crohn's flareup is basically an infection of the intestines (hence the alternate name for it: regional enteritis). It'd be hard to get a 2nd op since I'm on HMO, but not impossible.

I always thought it was more inflammation rather than infection.

I mean infections can arise as complications of Chron's but in and of itself it's an inflammatory autoimmune disease which isn't the same as an infection, right? That said, maybe there is a link between sugar and inflammation in the body.

-itis does mean inflammation, what was I thinking. But I *think* how it works is that you get an infection, the white blood cells go overboard attacking it, and that causes inflammation and other damage to the intestines.

See this is where I get confused/it gets confusing. Hopefully someone with more clinical knowledge can contribute. I think though that in terms of autoimmune stuff like Chron's they're not necessarily sure what triggers the inflammation so maybe the Dr. is just trying to cover all the bases? Not saying he is wrong by any means, he's the expert. I just think it's interesting because I've never heard of the sugar/infection link in relation to Chron's before.

this is my doc, though this looks to be pretty outdated: http://homepage.mac.com/sholland/hollandcv.html

Northwestern, Loyola, patent for diagnosing Crohn's...pretty impressive. The surgeon who referred him to me said he "loves" Crohn's.

It does look v impressive! My mom has UC and I have a couple of good friends with Chron's which is why it's interesting to me. Also, I have an autoimmune eye thing and find AI illnesses pretty fascinating in general although I wouldn't say that I "love" them. Anyway, it would be interesting to find out more about the sugar thing so that you can figure out what sort of sweet alternatives you can have.

Without sugar there would be no rum. The defense rests.

rant

For the life of me I can't see why fat and sugar must be regarded either as pure manna from the gods or as the root of all evil. Health does not begin and end with our diet. Food should not be viewed as medicine nor as entertainment, but the media constantly try to warp it into one or the other. Just eat a balanced diet with few heavily processed foods, and get a reasonable amount of exercise, fer chrissake. How hard is it to say that and what more needs to be said?

/rant

^^^ I apologize. This pov stews around inside me and must be spewed out from time to time.

I have Crohn's and have never been told to avoid sucrose.

And you don't have many flareups?

I'm cutting out sweets cold turkey. Haven't had any since a bowl of ice cream on Monday night. I think this headache I've got now may be related. I'm letting myself have moderate amounts of fruit and alcohol, but no candy, cookies, ice cream, or sweetened drinks.

It's hard, because I have kids and like to keep cookies and ice cream around the house. The only problem is, I always end up eating more than they do. How fucked up is that?

Well, people have different dietary needs. For example, I often wake up with the craving for coffee and a muffin. I feel bad about my pathetic addiction to muffins, I know I should have some carrot sticks or a celery at 5 AM! But I need the energy and I'm not gaining weight by eating that garbage!

Don't beat yourself up about it.

sweets cold turkey is an awful way to have turkey

I keep really early hours, and what sucks is that sometimes I crave a bran muffin or a bagel = not, like, a brownie or a Grandma's cookie...and the convenience store down the street from me doesn't carry them! Although the nearby deli has decent bagels but my local supermarket only has that frozen Lender's shit. WTF I have Jewish neighbors....bring the bagels back. Right balance of carbs and salt!

Some sweets are more satisfying than others. Chocolate in the morning doesn't work for me.

xxp: I can't beat myself up about it. I'm too listless and fat.

That sucks. I don't think an ice cream a few days a week is going to kill you. A lot of people give up more processed junk and carbonated beverages and that helps. It's more important to feel healthy than be really thin.

See, I can't stand getting up in the morning and everything at the store is some bad version of an egg mcmuffin or some muffin that has 40 grams of fat!

All those granola bars are too syrupy.

Yeah, I'm sure I'll let myself go back to ice cream at some point, but at present, it's part of a barrage of white sugar intake that I've been inflicting on my body.

For me, the dairy gets me sick sometimes, although I need the fat and calcium. It's expensive, but sometimes tofutti does the trick. Also I put tofu in a blender with fudge and peanut butter (coffee too) and then froze it...it was pretty good!! You don't have to use white sugar.

One thing I'm noticing right now is that it's easier for me to go without eating, in general. Like, I notice that I'm hungry, but I'm not falling over dead about it. I'm not jumping out of my chair when the clock strikes noon to go grab lunch.

Can anyone verify this experience?

it wd be in keeping with yr metabolism leveling out - refined sugar is hell for insulin spikes iirc

i've been told by people whose advice i ignored that after a few weeks without refined sugar you shd find yourself not wanting it or even actively finding it unpleasant but i cdn't manage that experiment

jesus i wish

Yeah, I was scooping out ice cream for my kids' dessert last night and found myself thinking that it would taste way too sweet.

even when i watch what i eat mealwise i compensate with sweet snacks, gah

I am trying really hard to cut down on sugar, too. I've been good for about a week and a half now. My two biggest sugar traps are coffee and hot cereal (usually oatmeal or cream of wheat), which I have been adding absurd amounts of sugar to my entire life. About six months ago I had managed to kick the sugar in the coffee by replacing it with agave nectar, but that only lasted about a month and all it took was one cup with sugar in it and it was all over. Trying again and so far so good! I struggled through a few bowls of unsweetened oatmeal, but the other day I picked up some of that coconut manna that Jaq mentioned on the paleo thread and followed the oatmeal recipe on the jar (oatmeal, coconut manna, hemp seeds, honey), and it was pretty delicious.

I'll probably be doing a lot of baking for Christmas, though, so we'll see how that works out.

Quit sugar almost totally last year for a while & still don't have it too much. After some bad temper swings early on, felt like my mood and appetite levelled out and I felt much much better for it; it helped me lose a ton of weight (with some other diet basics) and definitely don't want it the way I used to (though I'm having a bad December).

Makes me feel quite off when I do have it now - rushy and and a bit short-tempered. I found it weird how constitutive of me that short-energy-burst cycle must have been since childhood, without my really noticing.

yeah I either get really sluggish or really aggro

Cut out most sugar for a month, use honey or something. Some people use fruit sweeteners. Your body will adjust.

i have a vanilla coke right here. my diet is not optimal right now and i should probably take care of myself better

i'm sure ilx doesn't already know that i have had a tendency to eat non-optimally

anyway, how's everyone doing w/ this right now who's struggled w/ it?

struggled/struggling

I fell of the no sugar wagon months ago, drinking too much soda right now imo

*off

i ate 10-12 pieces of salt water taffy today, so no. i cannot.

sugar is my greatest vice.

i have rules, which while not perfect they do keep me within acceptable boundaries. i can buy a soda, but never a case of sodas. i can have dessert or a cookie, but never can i bring home more than one or two. while this has lead to me desperately marching out late at night to get a soda or whatever, it's prevented me from it just as many times. in return i am allowed to drink as much beer or whiskey as i want since, bizarrely, those things dont have nearly the hold on me that sugar does.

i am a sugar fiend.

^^^

now i have a snapple and a milky way w/ me that i got not too long ago

looks like ryan's got a system. i do not. there's gotta be some halfway thing like that that works. but maybe i'll just go off it. idk. it tastes good.

also, like, sometimes coke makes me feel better

and it's something to look forward to

and something to enjoy

but it also causes problems and i gotta imagine longterm there's gonna be a reckoning

I try to control myself but no, sugary drinks, kilos and kilos of chocolate, a spoonful or two in tea and coffee, I'm more sugar than man.

oh, and Skittlebrau, obviously.

that would be cool if you could achieve a state where your blood sugar level was 100% and you didn't die

my life's aspiration

and it's something to look forward to

i will seriously buy a soda (Boylan or Fentiman's for me!) as a reward or just as a nice thing to do for myself. i think of life as just periods between sugar comas.

but seriously, i think if you wanna cut back a good way to do it is to make it ceremonious or special. like "this is my sugar for today and im gonna make it good." it's a small start but those are the most manageable. it's not about giving anything up but exerting some control over your relationship to it--in a way that makes it more pleasurable, hopefully. that's the idea, anyway.

that's not such a bad idea: to be like, i can have one of these a day, and after it that's that. maybe even leave it for later in the day to get the full effect.

I don't take sugar as a separate part in anything i prepare. I may be taking it as an already added ingredient in things but still try to avoid that where possible. Except when i go to the cinema or on long trips where I still feel the need to get bags of sweets. & I do eat the occasional slice of bread peanut butter and honey

I guess sugar of a kind is almost unavoidable since fruit contain it, though obviously not the processed type. Desmonds the diabetes introductory group equates drinking large amounts of orange juice with drinking heavily sugared drinks. I would think there would have to be some difference since one has processed sugar and one doesn't. I do like drinking half pints of not from concentrate fruit juice with dinner.
But iotherwise have tended to eat cereal without sugar added though noty sure what healthstore granola has added already, also drink coffee very black.

I tried, for a while, to take no sugar in my tea.

sugar is also my vice - even when i went off it completely, and 'recalibrated' my taste buds, it was the easiest to return to. i get unhinged at dessert bars

let's go.

i was going to purposefully not put sugar in my coffee this morning as a beginning step 2 cutting down & i proceeded to add sugar completely automatically w/o even thinking

estela!!

I've eliminated sugar from tea and coffee over the last two years, having previously thought I couldn't imagine drinking either without, but I think I've upped my consumption of chocolate bars. So what was previously an afternoon cuppa with a teaspoon of granulated sugar, is now a sugar-free cuppa with a four-bar KitKat. Oops.

Also, I work in an open-plan office where people are continually bringing in sweet stuff from all over the world. You don't get away with a trip to Jordan, Canada, Spain, India, wherever without having to bring back (airport-bought, no doubt) sugary goods. There's a bit of a baking culture in one department too. You could graze on crap all day.

cup of steaming hot black coffee paired with a chocolate bar - take a bite of chocolate then take a sip of the coffee, letting the coffee melt the chocolate IN YOUR MOUTH - so decadent

I've eliminated sugar from tea and coffee over the last two years, having previously thought I couldn't imagine drinking either without, but I think I've upped my consumption of chocolate bars. So what was previously an afternoon cuppa with a teaspoon of granulated sugar, is now a sugar-free cuppa with a four-bar KitKat. Oops.

― Michael Jones, Tuesday, 20 August 2013 13:04 (10 minutes ago)

tea without sugar i adapted to very quickly

with coffee i still add sugar sometimes if the coffee isn't that great and/or i just want something with more calories in lieu of proper food

please note that i do not dilute my sugar with liquid (coffee, soda, etc) -- i take it straight in candy form, usually.

Except for a teaspoon of honey in my morning tea, I don't eat sugar at all. Except I do miss those Hail Merry raw chocolate ganache tart things.

I could far more easily go without sugar than salt.

I had a raging sweet tooth for decades, but it seems to have dropped off a lot in the past 5 or so years. No idea why. Still take a teaspoon in my coffee in the a.m., and the sugar in fruits and and in some condiments (ketchup, errrrr other stuff I'm not recalling). Oh and sometimes I make pickles that have some sugar in them but aren't particularly sweet in the end. But man if I had to choose between sweet desserts and cheese for the rest of my days, I wouldn't have to think about it for even a nanosecond.

lol i can tell my levels are fucked up right now.

i mean, this MIGHT have something to do w/ sugar.

if i go get a vanilla coke right now there's a chance i will feel more "normal" or w/e

are you sure that's not an exisential normal rather than just a glycemic normal

huh?

maybe you're just thirsty and need to drink water

i haven't done well w/r/t eating or anything really in the consuming department today but this isn't exactly a new thing for me

i haven't even finished getting dressed today. so i think i should do that and go get a soda at walgreens.

Working long shifts in a restaurant where often all i manage to ingest are broken cookies & fountain drinks = i don't wanna think too hard about this question

has anyone tried to reduce their sugar intake by eating higher quality sweets? when I found myself hooked on stuff like pretzel M&M's and Twix Peanut butter cookie bars, I tried to improve my habits by trading the convenience store crap for lolgourmet candies like Ritter Sport bars and Brookside chocolate-covered acai jellies. I figured the upscale candy would be so rich and fulfilling (and expensive) that it would satisfy all my candy needs for 3 or 4 days, but then I'd end up eating the whole Ritter bar in 20 minutes and buying some M&M's later that same day, because German dark chocolate sugar highs don't really last any longer than ordinary Mars/Hershey's/Nestlé sugar highs. It's not easy to ration your candy when you're really only eating it to fulfill a base craving.

regardless of all that, I've nearly cut my candy consumption in half in recent months, partly because I no longer live next door to a convenience store and partly because my dentist found two cavities during my last visit. the lack of ready access to junk food and the measurable damage to my body have steered me away from junk food more effectively than a bare act of will power ever could.

I really only started eating candy compulsively after I lost a distressing amount of weight (something like 15 pounds over the course of a month) last summer, and I convinced myself that I could eat anything I wanted as long as it would help me beef up. with all the rubbish I've been eating lately, I think I've only put on about 3 pounds over the past year, so one of my main motives for eating a lot of candy has been effectively put to rest.

well shit, now I am eating chocolate chips straight out of the bag

Skittles and coke this evening

Ate something like 9000 cookies today

I'm not supposed to eat sugar per my GI doc. I'll buy sugar-free sweets (generally Russel Stover, or from this choc shop if I'm in the area) and have 1 every other day on average for dessert. Sugar version of methadone, satisfies the craving, but you're fully aware it's not nearly as good as the real thing. Every couple of months or so I'll allow myself to have a real deal sugar concoction, and OMG I nearly lose my goddamn mind when I do, brain's pleasure center firing like 4th of July. I like to tell myself that the rarity of these sugar experiences increasing my enjoyment of them makes up for not being able to have it on a regular basis, but we all know that's probably bullshit. But that factor in addition to sugar being "toxic" and possibly root of many health problems allows me to not want to kill myself for not being able to have a Snickers or a nice banana shake whenever the mood strikes.

doing well with this

no soda in over three weeks

no candy either

i'll still have orange juice and shit that has some sugar in it

what i have to say beyond this probably goes more in "healthy snack ideas" or something tho

so off to that thread

Made a concerted effort 1.5 weeks ago to severely cut down on carbs and refined sugars. I'm not going full-tilt Atkins induction, but I have managed to stay pretty much below the 50g net carbs per day limit with the exception of one cheat day.

Oh wait, it was 2.5 weeks ago. Damned fleeting moments of brain fog.

It hasn't been an ordeal to not eat pastas and breads, and I haven't gone "GAH CAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE" more than once or twice. Basically mixed drinks are my downfall, but even there I'm just trying to drink spirits neat.

markers how do you feel? in the past when i've drastically cut carbs/sugar i go into ketosis tailspin and have a lot of fatigue/headaches until the clouds break and then i feel better than ever.

i've had some bad headaches for sure, which i think stress might've played a factor in, but the start of them coincided with my trying to pull this shit off, so i think that was at least a big part of why i was suddenly clutching my head at times. it was also caffeine though, which i was getting mostly from soda and an occasional tea too. if i drink tea now it can't have caffeine. i'm glad i did it though. i don't seem to have such sharp mood dips that probably coincided with sugar highs and lows or whatever. that being said, i've still been eating stuff like wheat thins, pringles, etc., and my plan starting today was to get off of them too, but we'll see if that happens

markers ✓

beyond the psychological benefits though, there's the physical stuff too insofar as i'm not polluting myself with that garbage

Soda was easy. I gave up caffeine four years ago.

i've lost my enthusiasm for most sugary foods in the last few years
i even find a lot of new world red wines too sweet now even though the residual sugar content there is small
an exception is coffee in the morning, where the sugar accentuates the caffeine rush

the other side of this is adding in good stuff. so far today i've had oatmeal, eggs, fruit, peppers, a little bit of a pork chop, and more, and not really anything i can recall that'd be classified as super bad for you.

xpost that's good though. you're probably not having too much a day then?

now i drink seltzer a lot

xposts: that's a pretty solid diet. and sustainable too, i think.

if i can get some of the other bad stuff out of it permanently that'd be good. as long as i can at least lessen the amount of it sooner rather than later.

find it more difficult to eat 'good' things than to avoid 'bad' ones

even then i don't integrate it with what i normally eat so i order salad with a steak but i have the steak and then afterwards the salad

i've been experimenting with a hemp protein + chia seed shake in the morning to head off the rush of midday hunger that ends up in me getting a grilled cheese sandwich or something.

has it been working?

a little bit! i've been trying to get my protein up (i try not to eat a lot of meat, for other reasons than health) to see if it'll help with cravings. been exercising quite a bit too and that can lead to bad dietary choices for me.

xp:
Carbs are fine in the form of starches, its the fructose (in HFCS, table sugar, and worst of all, agave) that has all the adverse health effects.

I went off all fruit, grains, and added sugar for about 5 weeks, and found it wasn't actually very hard. On the other hand, my weight didn't change and I didn't feel any different. My conclusion is that people have drastically different levels of sugar-crave and it's the people who crave it most who are the most badly affected by it, unfairly enough. (Or maybe: people who crave sugar more eat way more sugar than I do when I'm not restricting sugar, thus going down to near-zero is a bigger dietary shift? Like, I never put sugar in coffee anyway.)

There's much evidence in favor of some fruit consumption (files on berries and other fruit), particularly those with higher densities of flavonoids per calorie (in descending order: elderberries, blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, lemons, strawberries, currants, kumquats, raspberries, grapefruit...). Sure these range from 7-44% fructose (by calorie), but if you're taking them in with fiber (not as juices) that slows absorption, and the adverse metabolic effects largely arise from overloading the liver & kidneys where almost all fructose is metabolized, shunting them to the de novo lipogenesis pathway. Spread intake of 3 servings of whole berries/citrus through the day, avoid added sugars, and you're still only getting about 4% of your calories from fructose (vs. about 14% in the average American diet).