Portions: half as much

So a very simple way to measure portions ... my husband is a very handsome and meaty 230 lbs. I typically eat about as much as him ... if he has a Burger, then I have a burger. If he has a hot dog, then I have a hot dog. See what I'm saying? If my hunky husband is eating a whole hamburger, then what in the world am I doing eating the same size hamburger, unless, I'm looking to be 230 lbs myself!!! Seriously?! So my new formula is to eat half of whatever he's eating. Half a hamburger, half a hot dog, half a sandwich. Pretty easy portion solution. :-)

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Carbs (fructose & grains) to blame

Beginning to get the seriousness here.


This from Dr. Mercola ...

Fructose and Weight Gain

Taubes has also delved deep into the science of fructose,and his new book,Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About it, explains why a low-carb diet is the path to optimal health. His excellent New York Times article,Is Sugar Toxic? also shed much needed light on this issue. At the heart of the low-carb theory is this: You don't get fat simply because you overeat—you overeat because your fat tissue is accumulating excess fat. But why would your fat tissue continuously accumulate fat if you're not simply "eating too much and exercising too little"? Because:

1. Dietary carbohydrates,especially fructose,are the primary source of a substance called glycerol-3-phosphate (g-3-p), which causes fat to become fixed in fat tissue,and

2. At the same time,high carb intake raises your insulin levels, which prevents fat from being released The resulting equation is simple: fructose and dietary carbohydrates (grains,which break down into sugar) lead to obesity and related health issues.

Great cereal: Uncle Sam Wheatberry & Flaxseed

This is a new find! I got this goodie from Jorge Cruise - he's a fitness trainer and author of The Belly Fat Cure. He suggested to sprinkle a little Stevia on it, eat it with almond milk and it tastes like frosted flakes!!!
I tried it and I like it - my dear husband doesn't agree it tastes like frosted flakes, but says its okay. My girls like it too.

Cal: 190
Fat: 5g
Carb: 38g
Fiber: 10g (2 gsoluble, 8g insoluble)
Sugar: less than 1g

You can visit their website and register to receive coupons to print too!

UNCLE SAM COUPON


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Sweet Leaf Stevia

This is the best Stevia sweetener ... when Stevia first became available, I purchased some, but it had an awful chemical aftertaste. So I gave up on the stuff.

Then years later, I read on a blog somewhere that Sweet Leaf didn't have the bad aftertaste so I tried it! It is very good - just a clean sweet taste.

Does everyone know about Stevia? I guess I shouldn't assume that everyone does ... It is an all natural sweetener that comes from a plant. There are 0 calories and 0 carbohydrates.

I read recently that Stevia balances blood sugar levels, reduces cravings and contains antioxidants. Clearly, you can feel good about using it!

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76 Ways Sugar Can Ruin Your Health

Here's an article I've never forgotten ...

.pdf with references can be found here: http://www.fat-2-fit.net/sugar.pdf

76 Ways Sugar Can Ruin Your Health

Contributed by Nancy Appleton, Ph.D

Author of the book Lick the Sugar Habit

In addition to throwing off the body's homeostasis, excess sugar may result in a number of other significant consequences. The following is a listing of some of sugar's metabolic consequences from a variety of medical journals and other scientific publications.

1. Sugar can suppress your immune system and impair your defenses against infectious disease.

2. Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in your body: causes chromium and copper deficiencies and interferes with absorption of calcium and magnesium.

3. Sugar can cause can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline, hyperactivity, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, and crankiness in children.

4. Sugar can produce a significant rise in total cholesterol, triglycerides and bad cholesterol and a decrease in good cholesterol.

5. Sugar causes a loss of tissue elasticity and function.

6. Sugar feeds cancer cells and has been connected with the development of cancer of the breast, ovaries, prostate, rectum, pancreas, biliary tract, lung, gallbladder and stomach.

7. Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose and can cause reactive hypoglycemia.

8. Sugar can weaken eyesight.

9. Sugar can cause many problems with the gastrointestinal tract including: an acidic digestive tract, indigestion, malabsorption in patients with functional bowel disease, increased risk of Crohn's disease, and

ulcerative colitis.

10. Sugar can cause premature aging.

11. Sugar can lead to alcoholism.

12. Sugar can cause your saliva to become acidic, tooth decay, and periodontal disease.

13. Sugar contributes to obesity.

14. Sugar can cause autoimmune diseases such as: arthritis, asthma, multiple sclerosis.

15. Sugar greatly assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections)

16. Sugar can cause gallstones.

17. Sugar can cause appendicitis.

18. Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.

19. Sugar can cause varicose veins.

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20. Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses in oral contraceptive users.

21. Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.

22. Sugar can cause a decrease in your insulin sensitivity thereby causing an abnormally high insulin levels and eventually diabetes.

23. Sugar can lower your Vitamin E levels.

24. Sugar can increase your systolic blood pressure.

25. Sugar can cause drowsiness and decreased activity in children.

26. High sugar intake increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs)(Sugar molecules attaching to and thereby damaging proteins in the body).

27. Sugar can interfere with your absorption of protein.

28. Sugar causes food allergies.

29. Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.

30. Sugar can contribute to eczema in children.

31. Sugar can cause atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease.

32. Sugar can impair the structure of your DNA.

33. Sugar can change the structure of protein and cause a permanent alteration of the way the proteins act in your body.

34. Sugar can make your skin age by changing the structure of collagen.

35. Sugar can cause cataracts and nearsightedness.

36. Sugar can cause emphysema.

37. High sugar intake can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in your body.

38. Sugar lowers the ability of enzymes to function.

39. Sugar intake is higher in people with Parkinson's disease.

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40. Sugar can increase the size of your liver by making your liver cells divide and it can increase the amount of liver fat.

41. Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney such as the formation of kidney stones.

42. Sugar can damage your pancreas.

43. Sugar can increase your body's fluid retention.

44. Sugar is enemy #1 of your bowel movement.

45. Sugar can compromise the lining of your capillaries.

46. Sugar can make your tendons more brittle.

47. Sugar can cause headaches, including migraines.

48. Sugar can reduce the learning capacity, adversely affect school children's grades and cause learningdis orders.

49. Sugar can cause an increase in delta, alpha, and theta brain waves which can alter your mind's ability to think clearly.

50. Sugar can cause depression.

51. Sugar can increase your risk of gout.

52. Sugar can increase your risk of Alzheimer's disease.

53. Sugar can cause hormonal imbalances such as: increasing estrogen in men, exacerbating PMS, and decreasing growth hormone.

54. Sugar can lead to dizziness.

55. Diets high in sugar will increase free radicals and oxidative stress.

56. High sucrose diets of subjects with peripheral vascular disease significantly increases platelet adhesion.

57. High sugar consumption of pregnant adolescents can lead to substantial decrease in gestation duration and is associated with a twofold increased risk for delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.

58. Sugar is an addictive substance.

59. Sugar can be intoxicating, similar to alcohol.

60. Sugar given to premature babies can affect the amount of carbon dioxide they produce.

61. Decrease in sugar intake can increase emotional stability.

62. Your body changes sugar into 2 to 5 times more fat in the bloodstream than it does starch.

63. The rapid absorption of sugar promotes excessive food intake in obese subjects.

64. Sugar can worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

65. Sugar adversely affects urinary electrolyte composition.

66. Sugar can slow down the ability of your adrenal glands to function.

67. Sugar has the potential of inducing abnormal metabolic processes in a normal healthy individual and to promote chronic degenerative diseases.

68. I.V.s (intravenous feedings) of sugar water can cut off oxygen to your brain.

69. Sugar increases your risk of polio.

70. High sugar intake can cause epileptic seizures.

71. Sugar causes high blood pressure in obese people.

72. In intensive care units: Limiting sugar saves lives.

73. Sugar may induce cell death.

74. In juvenile rehabilitation camps, when children were put on a low sugar diet, there was a 44 percent drop in antisocial behavior.

75. Sugar dehydrates newborns.

76. Sugar can cause gum disease.

Sugar and aging - ew

I certainly have lots of info on sugar and its evils. What first caught my attention in regards to sugar was an infomercial on PBS on Nicholas Perricone in early 2003 ... he was selling his skincare and discussing health related topics and mentioned ... SUGAR CAUSES WRINKLES!  Whaaa? Seriously, that was the first reason I found to stop eating sugar, and I did.  I lost 6 lbs in 6 weeks and was amazed.  Then I learned about starch and ... that's another post.

And of course, I'm still concerned about aging ... although I forget about it sometimes ... here is a comment from Dr. Mercola on sugar and aging:

Sugar Accelerates Aging

The harmful effects of too much sugar extend even beyond their impacts on insulin, and are two-fold, as Dr. Ron Rosedale, who is widely considered to be the leading anti-aging doctor in the United States, explains.

“We know sugar increases insulin, but even by itself sugar is bad for you … Glycation is the same as oxidation, except substitute the word glucose. When you glycate something you combine it with glucose. Glucose combines with anything else really; it‘s a very sticky molecule.
Just take sugar on your fingers. It‘s very sticky. It sticks specifically to proteins. So the glycation of proteins is extremely important. If it sticks around a while, it produces what are called advanced glycated end products (A.G.E.s).
That acronym is not an accident. If you can turn over, or re-manufacture, the protein that‘s good, and it increases the rate of protein turnover if you are lucky. Glycation damages the protein to the extent that white blood cells will come around and gobble it up and get rid of it, so then you have to produce more, putting more of a strain on your ability to repair and maintain your body.
That is the best alternative; the worst alternative is when those proteins get glycated that can‘t turn over very rapidly, like collagen, or like a protein that makes up nerve tissue. These proteins cannot be gotten rid of, so the protein accumulates, and the A.G.E.s accumulate and continue to damage.
Glycated proteins make a person very pro-inflammatory, so we age and, at least partially, accumulate damage by oxidation. One of the most important types of tissues that oxygenate is the fatty component, the lipid, especially the poly-unsaturated fatty acids, and they turn rancid and glycate.
The term for glycation in the food industry is carmelization. It is used all the time to make caramel. So the way we age is that we turn rancid and we carmelize. It‘s very true, and that is what gets most of us.”

So eating sugar will not only increase your insulin levels, which in turn will contribute to premature aging, it will also increase the formation of AGEs in your body, which also contribute to chronic disease and aging.