Friday, August 13, 2010

Changes are coming...

Heidi, my kids may hate you after they find out you recommended this book to me! :)
This book is fascinating. I think I will have to buy it. Hopefully I can get my family to buy into it because starting soon we are going to be going off sugar. I have heard of people doing this before and always thought they were a little wacko, but this book has many compelling reasons why sugar (even though it is "natural") is NOT good for your body. Obviously we don't eat a lot of it anyway, but when you start to look around at nutrition labels, you realize that you are taking in way more than you thought you were. I'm not sure I totally agree with everything she says, but for the most part I am willing to give it a try!

I am going to wait a few weeks before really launching into the NO SUGAR revolution mainly because I have a pantry full of food that I am not going to waste. She also recommends taking two weeks to make small changes in your diet first before changing everything. For as healthy as we eat, you wouldn't think I would have to change that much, but you would be surprised. My Greek yogurt I have been getting has 13 gram of sugar in it's little tiny container. I'll have to find another brand or an unsweetened kind. My Vitatops have 11 grams. According to the author you should aim for under 5 grams. The apple juice that I buy for the kids--the kind with no added sugar--has 22 grams!! It's going to be hard, but I want to try!!

Another thing I'm going to try...you might want to sit down for this. I am going to attempt to give up Diet Coke. I have been reading about how it can actually increase your weight for years but chose to ignore it. Lately I have just been thinking that I don't want to be putting a bunch of random chemicals into my body. Hopefully I can do it. Sometimes it is the ONLY thing that saves my sanity.

Heidi also recommended this movie which I started watching today during my workout. Fascinating and disturbing. I will be changing the way I do a lot of things around here. Watch out, Ryan. If you thought the food budget was high before...

3 comments:

Rochelle said...

How do you completely eliminate sugar from your diet? Fruits and vegetables have sugars, milk has sugars, 100% juice has sugars. And those are all things that are healthy choices. That's WAY too big of a stretch for me, but let me know how it goes! (If you're thinking about a ketogenic diet, I know someone who can help you :))

Unknown said...

I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners anyway so I don't drink Diet soda but I think aspartame is bad juju, just like HFCS. Honestly, you must think I am some kind of crazy food-nutrition-nazi-hippie with all the stuff I think is bad. :D

Even if you can drink less of it, you'd be doing a good thing for your body! last year sometime there was an article in the Ensign about the WoW and super-caffeinated drinks. I remember there was a little sidebar that said some of the terrible things that drinking too much soda does to your body, such as making your bones weaker and tricking your brain into wanting more sweets. Can't remember specifics, but it was kinda scary.

Unknown said...

Also about yogurt--I have looked at a ton of different kinds of yogurt and it all has a lot of sugar in it. The lowest we've found is in plain yogurt or plain greek yogurt, and even then it's still much higher than Jackie would allow. I've actually considered making my own yogurt but I don't know how many grams of sugar it would have since I couldn't test it.