Tag: sugar

It’s Easy to Get Duped by Food Labels

If you’re trying to cut out sugar or curtail your consumption of it to shed weight, manage your hypoglycemia or type 2 diabetes, or reduce your risk of heart disease, you need to read food labels if and when you buy packaged foods.
That’s because many foods may contain sugar, even if you don’t think they do.
And if you rush while shopping at the supermarket, you’ll never know about the hidden sugars.
After 15 years of being mostly sugar-free, you’d think I would have known better to catch sweetened foods.
But darn, I forgot to t follow my own advice last night, because I was really hungry and hurriedly snapped up a few items so I could hurry home to cook my dinner.
Sure enough, I got duped by tasty-looking crumbled goat cheese, which I’d been eagerly looking forward to adding to my salad..
It wasn’t until I got home and was close to opening the package when I realized my oversight.
My crumbled goat cheese contained sugar. In fact, it had 4 grams or 1 teaspoon, enough to cause havoc in my sugar-sensitive body.
Of course, if I’d taken a moment to read the label while still at the grocery store, I would have quickly caught the sugar and been able to buy unsweetened goat cheese instead.
No wonder people get so confused when buying packaged foods.
No wonder people eat lots of added sugars without even realizing it.
Tell us about your food label challenges. When did a food label deceive you?

Crave Something Sweet? Try Naked Sweet Potatoes

Do you often crave something sweet but don’t know what to have that’s s both healthy and not loaded with bad-for-you sugar or other sweeteners?
When you yearn for something sweet, I recommend that you eat part of a yummy, nutritionally powerful sweet potato or yam.
But, when you indulge, make sure these starchy vegetables are totally naked.
Naked means don’t add any sugar on top.
Don’t ruin your healthy sweet potato by adding any sweet stuff on top like brown sugar or marshmallows.
SweetPotatoesBut feel free to add such spices as cinnamon (my favorite to use), cloves, allspice, nutmeg or cardamom.
You also don’t want to destroy your perfectly healthy dish by adding any allegedly “healthy sweeteners” either. In other words, skip unhealthy agave. (That’s right. Pass up on the agave. Although you may have heard otherwise, agave is not healthy. It’s a big health-food hoax. as I’ve shared here before.)
Some of My Favorite Sweet Potato Dishes
Right now, my three favorite dishes are:
Cacao-Chia, Comfort Mousse. This is a yummy comfort food, which allows you to feel like you’re splurging when you’re not. You don’t need to imbibe in a sugar-packed chocolate mousse, which is so cool! Stay tuned for my recipe.
Sweet Comfort Potato Fries. Also scrumptious, especially when you hanker for some greasy, fried, high-glycemic French fries. Recipe of this coming up, too.
Thick Cacao-Chia-Flax Shake. This is something I often have in the morning or as a snack. I always add sugar-free protein powder to it to give it more of a nutritional boost. Just cook a couple of yams or sweet potatoes in advance, refrigerate them and then add small, cold pieces as needed to your healthy shake.
Yummy and Nutritionally Dense
Here are some reasons why sweet potatoes are an excellent. For instance, sweet potatoes are:
High in fiber (half of which is soluble).
High in heart-healthy potassium.
Rich in powerful antioxidants, especially beta-carotene (vitamin A).
High in manganese, a trace mineral that helps metabolize carbohydrates and supports healthy blood sugar levels.
Rich in vitamins C and E, potent antioxidant vitamins that play an important role in disease prevention and longevity.
Low in calories. (A bare, medium-sized sweet potato has only 103 calories).
Special thanks to Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., author of The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth, and NaturalNews and Danna Norek of AuraSensory.com for great information about the juicy nutritional content of sweet potatoes.
Now comes an important request. Share your Naked Sweet Potato Recipes. The person with the most creative recipe wins a copy of my book, Beyond Sugar Shock, which helps you to release your sugar habit.

Sugar at “Safe” Levels Can be Deadly

Inevitably, the damning research about sugar keeps pouring in.
Indeed, another study reveals sugar’s deadly dangers — even when consumed in “safe” amounts.
Talk about scary.
The mice died more often, as shared by
Science Daily. Not only that, but they had fewer babies.
For the study, University of Utah researchers gave mice a diet of 25 percent extra sugar and ran a sensitive toxicity test. (When you give a mouse 25 percent extra sugar, it’s the equivalent of a healthy human diet, plus three cans of soda daily.)
Although the mice didn’t become obese, the females on the sugar-added diet died at twice the rate of the control group. In addition, the males on the sugar-added diet produced 25 percent fewer offspring than the control group and acquired fewer territories, according to a University of Utah news release.
“These findings represent the lowest level of sugar consumption shown to adversely affect mammalian health,” states the study abstract, published today in the journal Nature Communications.
Does this finding scare you enough to make you want to quit sugar?
If so, I invite you to get help in my latest book, Beyond Sugar Shock: The 6-Week Plan to Break Free of Your Sugar Addiction & Get Slimmer, Sexier & Sweeter. I’m honored that this book, from Hay House, has been praised by a Who’s Who of health and empowerment experts, including Dr. Wayne Dyer, Dr. Christiane Northrup, and Dr. Daniel Amen.
If you get Beyond Sugar Shock, let me know what you liked most about it.

4 Tips to Sleep Better & Lose Weight: Guest Post from Dr. Sam Sugar

Today, it’s my pleasure to present a guest post with 4 sleep tips from Sam Sugar, M.D., F.A.C.P., director of Sleep Services at the Pritikin Longevity Center and Spa. If you, too, would like to contribute a blog post, see guidelines below.
1. Change your mindset about sleep.
Many of us think of sleep as something that we need to cram in between living, like a skinny piece of bologna slapped between two big chunks of bread. That is so wrong. We need to change our mindset and think of sleep as a gift. We need to think of poor-quality sleep, or insufficient sleep, as a curse. Because of poor-quality or poor-quantity sleep, we are often hit with problems like daytime fatigue or sleepiness, morning headaches, anxiety or depression, addiction to sleeping pills, increased risk of diabetes and other cardiovascular-related disease, and even trouble losing excess weight. With good-quality sleep,
and plenty of it (7 to 8 hours nightly), we enjoy the exact opposite: better health, better lives, happier lives. And we even significantly boost our success in shedding excess weight. That’s because good sleep results in lower levels of hormones in our body that trigger appetite.”
2. Improve your sleep hygiene.
Don’t crawl into bed at night with the TV blaring and the lights on, as well as newspapers and other reading material spread out on your bed. When you get rid of the noise and lights, and keep your room temperature nice and cool, it’s much easier to fall into soothing, deep, restful sleep.”
3. Skip Alcohol, Caffeine & Exercise After 7 p.m.
After 7 p.m., don’t partake of such sleep robbers such as alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine. And, while a commitment to exercise is admirable, don’t take off for the gym in the evening hours. That nighttime workout may wake you up, which is the last you need when you’re trying to fall off to sleep later in the evening.”
4. Say No to Sugary Foods & Lose Weight.
After 7 p.m., you also want to avoid fatty, heavy, high-sugar, and/or spicy foods. Sleep loss induces weight gain for several reasons. For instance, two hormones – leptin and ghrelin are affected by lack of sleep.
If you’re not getting enough sleep, your leptin levels go down, which is a problem because leptin suppresses appetite.
Ghrelin does just the opposite – it stimulates appetite. Sure enough, this hormone increases when you sleep less.When you don’t sleep, your body tells you to eat, which is why so many reach for the refrigerator late in the night.
4. Talk to your doctor and don’t minimize your symptoms.
Poor sleep could be the result of a very serious condition called obstructive sleep apnea. Having sleep apnea can greatly increase your risk of life-threatening problems like heart attacks and strokes, so it’s important to pay attention to symptoms such as daytime sleepiness, snoring, needing to urinate repeatedly during both day and night, and waking up with a dry mouth. All could be symptoms of sleep apnea. Your doctor can likely recognize these symptoms, and others and prescribe treatments that can be very effective. The benefits of treating sleep apnea are lowering the risk of heart disease, right
heart failure and sudden death. Talking to your doctor and getting treatment for sleep apnea, if needed, can improve your life tremendously. The benefits of treating sleep apnea include better blood pressure, more daytime energy, far less snoring at night, and a much lower risk of heart disease, right heart failure, and sudden death. You’ll also shed weight more easily. Your body is no longer fighting pound-producing hormonal disturbances caused by sleep loss. In fact, losing just 10 to 15 percent of excess body weight may improve sleep apnea so much that it disappears.”
Would you like to write for this Sugar Shock Blog? To have your blog post considered, please see the guidelines on this Sugar Shock Blog.

Snacks at the Office Can Derail You

Check out this really timely, important op piece, “The High Cost of Free Office Snacks,” by New York Times contributor Ezekiel J. Emanuel.
For years — basically, since 1998 when I quit sugar — I’ve been irked by this phenomenon of offering sugary “treats” galore at company offices and meetings.
What I’ve found discouraging is that sweet “treats” — candies, cookies, cake, and soda — also are often offered at conferences intended to make you a better blogger, speaker, and author. But when you eat all that junk food, you’ll have trouble thinking straight and may not be able to remember all those good tips! And, of course, mindlessly noshing can also lead to challenges with your waistline if you don’t already have them.
Kudos again to Ezekiel J. Emanuel for getting people’s attention to an important topic.

Photography: Are You a Photo Buff, Too? Join my Photo Corner

Most of the time I post items related to health, wellness and personal empowerment, and, of course, lately about my upcoming book, Beyond Sugar Shock.
But we all need a break sometime.
Although I have to work today, I decided to take time out to share with you about one of my big loves — photography.
In fact, I’m about to get a new camera. (Excited!)
These days, taking my camera and shooting cool shots gives me a much bigger high than sugar ever did.
So here’s a photo I took on a fun day of cavorting around California with a friend. (My feet are on the left!)
DSC00182
How does this photo make you feel?
What do you think of when you see it?
Share this with your friends, and post your thoughts on my Facebook fan page.

Sugar Shock Defined

Often, just about whenever journalists, radio hosts or TV reporters interview me, they ask me what I mean by the phrase “Sugar Shock.”
As you can guess, I’ve thought about this a log, given that I wrote a book called Sugar Shock!
Here’s how I define Sugar Shock.
Bear in mind that this Sugar Shock is a condition that afflicts millions of people
worldwide, including possibly as high as 80 percent to 90 percent of the U.S. population.
SUGAR SHOCK™ – A mood-damaging, personality-bending, health-destroying, confusion-creating constellation of symptoms affecting millions of people worldwide, who often turn to processed sweets and much-like-sugar carbs, which send their blood sugar levels wildly soaring and plummeting.
These people are suffering from what they may call sugar addiction or carb addiction.
The term Sugar Shock is intended to encompass the often-misdiagnosed and maligned
condition of reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), as well as other blood sugar disorders,
from insulin resistance to diabetes.
Considerable research reveals that repeatedly overconsuming sweeteners, dessert foods,
and culprit, quickie carbs (such as white rice, French bread, chips, etc.) wreaks havoc on
your blood sugar levels, overstimulates insulin release, triggers inflammation, and
could contribute to more than 150 health problems, including obesity, diabetes, heart
disease, cancer, polycystic ovary syndrome, severe PMS, failing memory, depression,
mental confusion or “brain fog,” mood swings, Candida, sexual dysfunction, infertility,
wrinkles, acne, and early aging.
Victims of Sugar Shock also may experience such baffling symptoms as excessive fatigue,
headaches, dizziness, cold sweats, anxiety, irritability, tremors, crying spells, drowsiness or
the opposite (sleeplessness), forgetfulness, heart palpitations, nightmares, blurred vision,
muscle pains, temper outbursts, suicidal thoughts, and more.
Ultimately, this insidious Sugar Shock roller-coaster effect brought on by eating
too many inferior carbs hampers sufferers’ ability to function at full throttle–or even
half throttle.
Learn more about the dangers of Sugar Shock in my book Sugar Shock!
Get tips to break free of your sugar addiction by joining my End-of-Summer Tele-Party on Tues., Aug. 31. Sign up here. http://bit.ly/bx8Bkf

Is Sugar Addictive?

Check out this enlightening news story. By the way, in my book, Sugar Shock, I delve into the concept of sugar addiction. […]