Posts Tagged ‘optimal health’
Craving Again
It has been about two months since I watched the movie, “Fed Up,” and decided to do something about the amount of sugar I was ingesting every day. I decided to work on reducing the sugar I was consuming by focusing on nutrition labels and paying attention to serving size and the amount of sugar in each serving. By simply doing that for a little over a week, I noticed a physical reaction and experienced some surprisingly intense withdrawal symptoms.
I think the dramatic physical response helped to bolster my motivation to stay vigilant about seeing this through to a point of achieving a lasting break in the pattern of consuming an unhealthy amount of sugar.
It isn’t easy.
Just when I was beginning to feel as though I was satisfied with the new routine I have established, I discovered a significant resurgence of cravings.
It’s not the first time I’ve been through this. Several times in the past, I have made attempts at not eating sweets. One thing that always happened was a robust urge to eat breads. Even though I recognized that I was exchanging sugar for more complex carbohydrates, I didn’t tend to restrict that urge. I figured the struggle to avoid sugar was hard enough. I didn’t want to take on two things at once.
Well, it wasn’t two things, really. It’s all part of the same issue I’m facing. My blood tests repeatedly revealed my glucose levels to be pre-diabetic. This time, I am working on a more thorough, and a more informed, change in diet. After only a few weeks, I began to notice a reduction in body fat.
I suppose it didn’t hurt that I went on a bicycling trip for a week, and then sweated through the process of putting up over 250 bales of hay.
I also noticed an increasing level of satisfaction from my reduced portion sizes. By regularly making healthy, low-sugar choices, I was discovering a new appreciation for not-so-sweet alternatives. It was refreshing and felt very rewarding. It gave me hope for the possibility of my satisfaction being met by a healthy, balanced menu.
But it wasn’t a cut and dried sure thing. There is a bit of a gray area. There are high and low tides. My diet isn’t rock solid, by any means, and the sweetness I am getting swings above and below the optimum. More than once I have caught myself feeling precariously hypoglycemic.
Then there are the days when the cravings rise up. They can be insidious and particularly tenacious. If I ignore them, they don’t generally go away. I need to work the program. I allow myself some modest treats. There is a slippery slope there, though, and I am cognizant of past experiences where I have succumbed and chose to give up altogether.
I feel like the difference for me this time is that I am better informed. Between my new understanding and the experience I’ve gained in the past, I believe I have the tools and inspiration to endure my cravings and thrive on a healthy diet for much longer than ever before. I hope it’s for the rest of my life.
I need to keep thinking big picture. What I ultimately crave, after all, is optimal health!
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The Twentysixth
On this day, many, many years ago, I was born. I wonder if I subconsciously knew what I was getting into at the time. In so many ways, I am still the little boy who was trying to figure out which way to go.
I haven’t ever noticed any maturation of my inner consciousness. In my mind, I have always been the same age, or ageless. I have a recollection of one day realizing that I was able to reach the Dixie Cup dispenser in the kitchen of my childhood, on my own, but that was strictly physical growth. It was a memorable milestone for me.
It meant I could drink milk whenever I wanted, because we also had a milk-can refrigerated cooler/dispenser with a heavy knob lever that pinched a rubber hose to control the flow of milk. Lifting that lever brought very cold milk that flowed so quickly it would create a froth on top.
Eventually I would be holding bowls of cereal under that hose and getting ice-cold milk on my Cocoa Crispies, or Sugar Puffs, or Cap’n Crunch. My sugar habit started way back then, back before the introduction of corn syrup. In the 1970s, things began to change in the food industry and my addiction was off to the races.
I consider myself lucky to have let my sweet tooth run free for so many years and not suffered outrageous weight gain. I have no idea whether it would be accurate to blame my prolonged high-sugar diet for my depression, asthma, arthritis, and belly fat, but more than one source I have read seems to implicate it as a potential cause for those afflictions, and more.
It makes sense to me that we are dealing with something we don’t completely understand, given the relative short span of our entire human history in which we’ve been consuming such dramatic amounts of sugar annually. Sugar was a rare luxury for most of the world until the 1800s when granulated sugar was invented.
I don’t believe our bodies have evolved enough in the last few generations to effectively deal with the onslaught of glucose that is altering the balance of enzymes and minerals which regulate bodily functions and deliver nutrition to our cells.
In many ways we are healthier than ever before, yet at the same time, we may be undermining the best of our health by the over-sweetening of the majority of packaged and prepared meals and snacks which we consume today.
I’m now closer to 60 than I am to 50 years old. This year I am working to undo the years of accumulated sugar consumption in hopes of reversing a trend toward diabetes and possibly clearing up a few other nagging ailments. It’s a little like being born all over again. It’s not the first time I have made a conscious decision to change course and start down a new path toward better health.
As always, I seek optimal health. It’s one of the best birthday gifts that I can give myself. Happy June 26th!
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Relative Something 