Why paleo and why now?
I have been reading a few books about going sugar free and going paleo for the last few months. There are a few areas where the books agree and a few areas of divergence. I still haven't totally nutted out exactly what tack I will take, so I have been practising a few different things over the last few weeks and tweeking a few aspects of our diet.
I chose the first week in February to start the new eating regime because after the 3rd of February all of our family celebrations; Christmas, New Year, Australia Day and four family birthdays are past. That then gives me a window of time to trial sugarfree/paleo before Easter. Easter is in April and is the next big sugar fest in our culture. It also coincides with the final 2 family birthdays. That then gives me more than two months to trial the new eating plan and then I can make a choice of either ditching the diet altogether as a failed experiment or having a two week break while we celebrate Easter and birthdays before getting back on the wagon.
I have tried sugar free before.
Around four to five years ago when David Gillespie released his books Sweet Poison and Sweet Poison Quit Plan I decided to embark on the challenge of ridding my diet of sugar, more specifically fructose. At the time I was on antidepressant medication and it was seriously messing with my satiety. I was getting no full signal and found myself eating to the point of nearly regurgitating. I always seemed to be up for something to eat and in particular craved carbs. As a result I had put on a lot of weight in a very short time. The idea that sugar (fructose) was addictive and messed with the body's satiety sensors resonated with me. After all I could very poignantly feel those very effects occurring in body at that time.
It was more poignant for me as before being on the medication that was messing with my appetite control, I had suffered through a devastating gut bug, that did the complete opposite with my sensors. As I was so ill and food made me more ill I was literally just eating enough to survive. I never felt like snacking, I rarely got hungry for meals. When I did, I was suddenly ravenous. I would start eating and as soon as my body had had enough I would literally at mid-bite have to stop eating or I would feel sick. There was no enjoyment to be had in eating. I was eating so little and tolerating so little, I just didn't know what to eat. The wonders of healing the gut bug (through intensive antibiotic treatment) was that I started to enjoy food and all its wonderful flavours again. It felt great to eat and enjoy. Then I added antidepressants to the mix and I was not only eating to enjoy, but I was overeating to the point of no longer enjoying it. I wanted to find a happy medium. I hoped that going sugar free would do the trick.
I stuck with the sugar free experiment for months. I definitely reduced my sweet tooth, but I did compensate with eating a lot of crackers. The sum total was that for all the restriction and difficulty in avoiding sugar ( it is a very pervasive little beast) I lost only 1kg after 2-3 months. What a disappointment after reading all these amazing stories about how people had effortlessly dropped 10's of kilos. In the end I gave up. I remained mindful of sugar and definitely reduced how much I was consuming, but strict adherence went out the window.
After eventually kicking the need for antidepressants I was given the medical all clear to reduce my dose and gradually wean myself off the medication. Immediately it became obvious that as the medication reduced, so my sense of happiness ( just the simple joy in living) returned as did my sense of fullness. It was a very interesting experiment to experience the differences in my satiety controls between the three states of health. The almost immediate sense of fullness when I was sick with the gut bug, the no sense of fullness with the antidepressant medication and the more normal, moderate sense of satiety with my return of good health. Needless to say, once off the medication I lost weight and returned to a more normal size.
It became clear to me that the hormones that regulate your appetite as well as your sense of fullness are critical to whether you tend to gain or lose weight. Just a slight variation in either direction can have profound effects on your long term weight. I also wonder whether the oft touted rule of thumb that it takes 20 minutes for your body to register full is an absolutely true value for everyone. It is more likely to be an average, so within the spectrum you would have people whose fullness signal would kick in almost straight away to those who have such a weak signalling system that they can barely perceive it at all. This goes far beyond mere will power to control eating. We have a complex set of hormones working in concert with each other to regulate how much we eat. And it seems they also regulate what we eat. Was it a coincidence that when on a medication that effectively shut down my satiety control mechanism I was also specifically craving carbs?
Fast forward to now. I am currently breastfeeding a 12 month old. Breastfeeding requires a fair degree of calories. These have to be obtained from the diet, obviously. Not only does my body need to produce milk it also wants to store extra fat just in case we go through a period of famine. After all providing ample sustenance to baby is of utmost importance. My 12 month old is still having something like 80-90% of her calorie intake provided by me through my breast milk. She has been walking for more than two months and is very active. I estimate that I am needing around 800 extra calories just to supply her needs. My body through its appetite control and satiety systems probably wants me to eat double that amount as a safe guard and back up against possible future famine. I don't have to worry about famine, I live in a country that is rich in food. My primitive body systems don't know that, however. So what am I craving most? That's right carbs. And I have done since the birth. I have felt that I have really needed to eat carbs to feel satisfied. So cakes and biscuits have been pretty high on the list of things I have been craving. Fruit and vegetables just couldn't satisfy me as they don't have the energy density my body was needing.
That is all well and good until the weight starts to mount up over the course of a full year. As baby starts to take more calories from food her need for my milk will gradually wane. So the excess weight needs to start to shift at the same time as I need to reduce my overall calorie need. The difficulty here is curbing the cravings and controlling the appetite. I am hoping that I can manage the transition by shifting my calorie focus from carbs to protein.
I haven't settled entirely on the eating plan that I will adopt in two weeks time. As I wrote before, the paleo/sugar free crew agree on some areas and diverge on some other points. I am trying to pick my way through the various pieces of information to come up with a strategy that I can implement without feeling overly deprived or worrying about it creating undesirable health outcomes.
Saturated Fat
The biggest mind shift in this regard is the low fat versus saturated fat argument. As a teenager of the 80's I grew up with the low fat message firmly planted into my consciousness. It's almost second nature to me to consider food in regards to its relative fat percentage. Also the current Australian food recommendations still firmly support the low fat, high carb mantra. I am countering this somewhat by reading as many sources as I can that describe the advantages of consuming saturated fat. But I still have a mental prejudice to get over.
Vegetables
There is no denying that vegetables are very good for your health. It is probably the one area where most experts agree that more is better. They are an essential alkalinising part of the diet to offset the acidity of meat, dairy, seeds, nuts and grains. Most diets comprise large amounts of fresh vegies. I like the idea of eating lots of healthy vegetables with their antioxidants and positive phytonutrients. But. Certain vegetables are not okay. Potatoes, are too starchy, corn is technically a grain, the nightshade family, aka tomatoes, capsicum and eggplant may present problems, and beans and peas are technically legumes. That pretty much leaves root vegetables, squashes, brassicas and salad greens. It severely narrows the range. The problem with a lot of the left over vegetables, in particular the brassicas and the leafy greens, is that they are very high in vitamin K. For someone like me who is trying to avoid blood clots, eating a diet rich in vegetables containing high levels of the vitamin that aids blood clotting is risky.
While pregnant and at increased risk of developing a potentially fatal DVT, I deliberately avoided as much as possible the vegetable sources of vitamin K and upped my fruit and vegetables that were high in salicylates. Salicylates are related to aspirin and have a slight blood thinning effect. This is a good thing for me. I believe that I can manage much of my blood clotting risk factors purely by leaning heavily toward salicylate based foods and avoiding foods high in vitamin K. So by reducing brassicas and leafy greens, my salads are starting to look a bit sparse. I don't mind the odd salad, particularly in the middle of a hot summer. But it's definitely not my choice of dish in winter and I worry that it would be extremely unwise of me to consume a diet that includes salad at every meal. Often the salad is the central star of the paleo diet with numerous cups of spinach and lettuce consumed at breakfast lunch and dinner, and supplemented with a serving of protein.
Fruit
Fruit is generally higher in salicylates than most vegetables. In fact people on low salicylate diets have a very meagre choice of fruit to pick from. Typically both their fruit and vegetable choices are quite bland. If however I want to have a diet relatively high in salicylates, fruit is a good friend to have. Most fruit sits in the moderate to very high range. But fruit is sweet, which is not so good on a sugar free diet. It's the fructose in the sugar that causes the problems with appetite control and satiety. And guess what sugar predominates in fruit? Fructose, naturally.
Wheat
Avoid wheat. The author of Wheat belly contends that wheat with it's relatively high GI raises our blood sugar level more than sucrose does and it adds to the acid load in our bodies. Along with those two major strikes against it, it is also responsible for a number of common health problems caused by excessive inflammation in our bodies. Wheat is everywhere and very hard to eliminate without being totally obsessive about it. Wheat more than sugar is going to be the most difficult dietary staple to do without. Without an imperative like an specific health problem that pertains directly to wheat, it is going to be psychologically hard to keep convincing oneself that it must not be a part of the diet.
Dairy
I'm up and down about dairy. It would be dead easy to eliminate from our diet as we don't eat dairy as a rule. Certain family members are allergic to it, so we have lived without it for a very long time. We do supplement our diet with soymilk and goat or sheep cheese. Unfortunately, I have also read that high fat dairy in the form of cheese is actually a good thing to eat to offset sugar cravings. Replacing sugar with fat seems to be the strategy of choice for recovering sugar-a-holics.
Legumes
As I already mentioned we drink soymilk, and soy is a legume. So are the green beans and peas that we eat as vegetables at dinnertime. Also peanuts, a good high protein snack is also a legume. I often get fed up with eating too much meat and find I almost crave a good vegetarian meal based on kidney beans or lentils. Again these are legumes and are not allowed in the paleo diet, though are acceptable in the sugar free diet.
Kids
I not only have to look after my own nutritional needs, but I have a husband and 4 children. Three of the children are old enough, 17,16 and 12, to exert very strong preference for what they do and don't want to eat. Getting them relatively sugar free will be a mighty large feat, taking away wheat, potatoes, corn, legumes and fruit as well will be extremely challenging. I really don't know how I will manage it. Removing snack food is going to be met with stiff resistance. None of them are over weight or unhealthy and appealing to their concerns for long term health is unlikely to move them. This is one issue I will have to grapple with as I go along.
The solutions to some of these dilemmas, my goals and guidelines I intend to work out in the next two weeks before I get started on the diet or new lifestyle or whatever you call it. But come February 4 or 5, the official pre diet weigh in will occur and I will have worked out my line of attack.
Wish me luck.
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