The Sugar Smart Diet: Stop Cravings and Lose Weight While Still Enjoying the Sweets You Love (10 page)
Authors: Anne Alexander,Julia VanTine
10.8
POUNDS LOST
AGE:
60
ALL-OVER INCHES LOST:
10.25
SUGAR SMART WISDOM
“Set a goal and just start. If you want to become more physically active, walk or do another activity you enjoy every day, and before you know it, it will become a habit.”
WHEN CAROL WAS GETTING READY
for her Sugar Smart photo shoot, she asked her family for their opinion on what to wear. As she modeled several outfits, everyone reached a consensus—she had to go shopping. “Nothing fit; everything was too big!” she said proudly. “When I went shopping, I bought size 6s. I couldn’t believe it! I haven’t been that size in 20 years. It’s a great feeling.”
With her new svelte figure, “Shopping was fun; the way it used to be before I gained all the weight,” said Carol. “After I had a hysterectomy in my forties, I noticed it was harder to lose weight. When I quit smoking in my fifties, I got into the habit of snacking, and the weight really piled on. I’d always been a runner, and I even increased my mileage over the past 4 years. When I started running more, though, I started eating more at night, snacking on all the wrong things like cheese crackers, Chex Mix, and licorice. I had a licorice addiction. I’d eat a whole bag in a day.”
Carol started the Sugar Smart Diet because she wanted to get her snacking—and her licorice habit—under control. The first week was hard, and Carol was feeling sluggish during her runs. However, she adjusted the timing of her meals and snacks so she was eating enough before she hit the pavement. Now she has so much energy, she has increased her workouts from 4 days a week to every day, often doing multiple activities such as running and walking or walking and inline skating. Healthwise, Carol had big drops in her total cholesterol (64 points, the best result in our test panel) and triglyceride levels.
And Carol succeeded in breaking her excessive snacking habit. “After you clean out the sugar and junk in your body, you start to lose the cravings for those things. You feel better and want to continue,” says Carol. “I’ve lost the desire for snacking and for sweetness.” She does allow herself a treat once a week—a handful of licorice. “It’s easy to stop now. I’ve worked so hard to lose this weight, and I don’t ever want to gain it back.”
THE SUGAR SMART DIET RULES
R
eady to kick some sugary butt? Good! Over the next 32 days you are going to break the hold sugar has on your body and your brain and shrink your sugar belly for good. And it is going to be simpler—and sweeter—than you might think. The Sugar Smart Diet infuses each day with health and pleasure, always including some way to tantalize your taste buds. Brownies are delightful, ice cream divine, but the sweet life outshines even their considerable charms.
Before you begin, get familiar with these eight rules. Each addresses a small but crucial component of sugar freedom. Some of them guide you toward eating the right foods in the right ways, but they focus on more than what to eat and what not to eat. (That sounds too much like a diet!) Others are designed to help
you find pleasure and comfort without turning to sugar. In every phase of the plan, we offer practical ways to put each one into daily practice. Commit to them, and they’ll lead you to a life of joy and good health, punctuated with the pleasure of a sweet treat Every Single Day. Once you’re free of the sugary shackles that bind you, what
can’t
you accomplish if you want to?
Does that sound like an exaggeration? Let me assure you, it’s not. I can honestly say that once I got sugar smart and changed my relationship with sugar, it changed my life. Read any of our test panelists’ success stories and you’ll see that it changed theirs, too. Now it’s your turn. Here’s a snapshot from your future: You’ve shrunk your sugar belly, but you’ve also accomplished so much more. You’re healthy and energized, calm and craving free. You’ve crushed your dependence on sugar but reclaimed the pleasure. You’re in control. These eight guidelines can set you free.
Begin your day with breakfast—and pack it with protein.
You’ve probably heard this a million times, but breakfast really is the most important meal of the day, especially if you’re looking to slim down. In fact, eating a morning meal is a common habit among people who have lost weight and kept it off. Breakfast skippers are 4.5 times more likely to be obese than breakfast eaters, a study in the
American Journal of Epidemiology
showed. Another study from the Harvard Medical School found that eating breakfast led to better blood sugar control, cutting in half the odds of having high glucose levels.
What you eat is important, though. Start your day with a bowl of cold cereal (even whole grain), a bagel, a muffin, or some fruit, and chances are you will be ravenous in just a few hours. Why? Those meals are primarily carbohydrates—and quickly digested ones at that. Glucose levels spike and insulin is released, glucose levels drop precipitously and you’re left scrounging for something else to eat.
The antidote: Pump up the protein. It slows digestion, and research shows that calorie for calorie, protein is more filling than carbohydrates or fat.
Researchers at Saint Louis University found that overweight women naturally took in about 160 fewer calories at lunch when they ate protein-packed eggs in the morning versus a bagel.
Other research shows that protein in the morning makes it difficult for sugar cravings to take hold later on. University of Missouri researchers had 20 overweight young women who routinely skipped breakfast either eat one of two morning meals, cereal or eggs and beef, or no breakfast at all for 7 days. On that last day, the women took part in a 10-hour test that included an all-you-can-eat dinner of microwaveable pizza pockets, as well as an unlimited evening snack of foods such as cookies, cakes, apple slices, and yogurt. The results? The high-protein egg-beef group produced less of the hunger-stimulating hormone ghrelin and more PPY (a hormone that, like leptin, signals fullness) than those who ate cereal. MRI scans showed reduced activity in areas of the brain associated with cravings. In the end, the protein group reported a 30 percent increase in feelings of fullness and consumed 170 fewer calories from their evening snack smorgasbord.
Breakfasts on the Sugar Smart Diet are hearty—around 300 calories, with at least 20 percent of those calories coming from protein. Your breakfasts will include plenty of lean-protein items, from Greek yogurt and peanut butter to eggs and low-fat cheese. (If you haven’t tried the fluffy, high-protein grain called quinoa, you’re in for a treat!)
Can’t stomach food too early in the morning? No problem. Eat it by 10 a.m. and breakfast will still help quell late-day cravings.
Never go hungry—eat five times a day.
We told you why you shouldn’t skip breakfast. Now we’ll tell you why you shouldn’t skip lunch, dinner, or snacks, either. We know—sometimes that’s unavoidable. You’re staring down a can’t-miss deadline. Your pet is ill, and the vet appointment trumps lunch. Or you’re just honest-to-goodness not hungry, so you figure that if you skip a meal you don’t want anyway, you’ll save a few calories.
But there’s danger in meal skipping—weight and sugar belly peril. If you
cut down on the amount of food you eat for an extended period of time, your body is going to slow things down to conserve its energy supply. If you’re looking to flatten your sugar belly, that “starvation response” is the last thing you need. Meal skipping is also a guaranteed way to fire up sugar cravings. Skipping meals lowers blood sugar levels and causes you to overeat the rest of the day to make up for missed calories.
However, we’re predicting that you won’t want to miss any meals or snacks while you’re following the Sugar Smart Diet. Made with nourishing and delicious whole foods—such as whole grains, beans, lean meats/poultry/fish, nuts, unsweetened low-fat dairy, eggs, and veggies—they’ll fill you up and give you the ideal balance of lean protein, energizing carbohydrates, and healthy fats to steady your blood sugar and insulin levels and extinguish cravings for sugar.
Jolt your taste buds with flavor, not sugar.
What’s the difference between the two? As delightful as sugar is, it always tastes the same, with variations on sweet and sickeningly sweet. On the other hand, flavor is wonderfully diverse and surprising. If you’ve ever laid a branch of fresh rosemary on chicken as it bakes, seeded a deliciously fragrant vanilla bean for a special dish, or topped a sliced tomato with basil leaves still warm from the garden, you know how much flavor fresh herbs and spices can add to everyday fare. And as you’ll learn, sweet spices, such as cinnamon, can ease cravings for sugar, which can help you stick to a healthy eating plan.
The dried herbs and spices in your spice rack are the workhorses of everyday cuisine, but when a dish calls for fresh herbs, do your best to use them. Leafy basil, cilantro, parsley, mint, dill, and thyme are far more flavorful than their dried counterparts. And when you chop them, the fragrance they release is an olfactory delight.
And don’t forget other flavor boosters—balsamic vinegar, lemon and orange zest, roasted peppers, hot sauce, toasted nuts, and sugar-free salsa, to name a few. One of my favorites is extra-virgin olive oil. I love its grassy, fruity
flavor on salads and vegetables and in soups; even a little drizzle gives me that “I’m full” feeling. I used to think that was because of the fat, but get this—the oil’s aromatic compounds seem to be a factor that makes it so satisfying. Just getting a whiff reduced the number of calories people consumed at a meal and even improved their blood sugar response, according to a study from the German Research Center for Food Chemistry. Amazing!
As you move through the phases of the plan, identify which flavors thrill your taste buds and commit to exploring the diverse array of flavors that nature offers. Have you drizzled really good balsamic vinegar over poached pears? Have you grated fresh ginger or chopped citrus-scented cilantro to create a homemade salsa? Enjoy the spiciness of freshly cracked pepper on your salads, or treat yourself to fresh vanilla beans. Stir your coffee or tea with a stick of cinnamon. Toss a serving of plain, air-popped popcorn with a teaspoon of smoked paprika—its deep color and intense flavor go way beyond what you get from the regular type. The more adventuresome you are, the more you’ll grow to appreciate flavor and put sugar in its rightful place in your daily diet.
Andrew Weil, MD
GIVE IT A WEEK.
The taste buds soon habituate to a lower overall level of sweetness in the diet—this starts to happen in as little as a week. Foods that once seemed palatable soon seem cloyingly, even sickeningly sweet. A side benefit is that reducing sugar consumption and heightening your sensitivity can reveal a wonderful, subtle sweetness in foods that once seemed to have no sweet notes at all. Certain oolong teas, for example, have a pronounced natural sweetness that I came to appreciate only after I had ratcheted down my consumption of sweet foods.
MAKE SUGAR PART OF A MEAL.
Generally, the only added sugar I consume is the modest amount that is added to high-quality dark chocolate (70 percent cacao). My reasoning is that the fat in the chocolate slows the spikes and dips in insulin and blood sugar. If you do eat a food with added sugar, the healthiest way to do so is to make sure that the amount of sugar it contains is modest and to have it with foods that are full of fiber, protein, and fat to slow metabolism and control the rise and fall of insulin.
DON’T SIP SUGAR.
The least healthy way to consume added sugar is to drink it in the form of a sweetened beverage. The sugar dissolved in soda is maximally bioavailable. The rise in blood sugar is nearly vertical, and the upcoming dip is correspondingly precipitous.
GET BACK TO BASICS.
Added sugar is a relatively recent invention in human evolutionary history, and we have absolutely no need for it. Added, refined sugar in the diet appeared only in the last 1,500 years or so and in abundance only in the last century. There has not been nearly enough time for human beings to metabolically adapt to consuming copious amounts of sugar. When it comes to imagining life without it (or less of it), imagine yourself as the end product of hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and as a creature exquisitely adapted to thrive on a diet of unprocessed whole foods.
ANDREW WEIL, MD,
a leader and pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, is founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where he is also the clinical professor of medicine and professor of public health and holds the Jones-Lovell Endowed Chair in integrative rheumatology. He is the author of numerous books including
True Food: Seasonal, Sustainable, Simple, Pure
and
Spontaneous Happiness.