Sugar - A wolf in sheep's clothing

After blogging on here 8 days straight for the fruit/veg fast I guess I needed a break from blogging! My diet has gone back to the way it was, which was pretty healthy, but I really haven't done the sugar thing with Ethan. Seriously it is dead hard trying to eat 30g (or less) of sugar a day! And that's me, a fairly healthy person saying that. I do not know how Ethan is doing it! He is pretty much dying to have a soda and he totally deserves one at this point for doing so well, BUT he is determined to go 100 days without and I am so proud of him. Being sugar conscious has been really eye opening. You would not believe how many foods are hiding sugar in them and in high amounts. The hardest part so far for Ethan is not being able to drink anything except water and water flavored with these all natural stevia drink mixers I buy for him. Most drinks have a ton of sugar in them, even fruit juice has almost as much as soda. As I was about to go grocery shopping one day, Ethan asked if I would get some milk for him to drink, even if it had to be skim milk (which both of us assumed would have less sugar than 1% or 2% milk). I have a bunch of coconut and almond milk, but he says he can't drink it. Cow's milk isn't the greatest thing to drink in my opinion (whole other post there), but for him it was a much needed change from water. So I get to the store and sure enough even skim milk has 11g of sugar in 1 cup! Not to be discouraged, I had a look at the other milks which were in their own little section (for the minority of health weirdos I'm sure) and I found a low carb one that had only 3g of sugar per cup. Yes, that means my husband is actually drinking a step down from fat-free milk....fat-free low-sugar milk! This says a lot about goal setting and how focusing on that goal will affect the decisions you make on a daily basis. I wouldn't have bothered even looking for an alternative if it weren't for that one little ingredient we are trying to be more aware of.

As we have been more sugar conscious I have also been taking a deeper look into how sugar affects the body. In a previous post I mentioned sugar is the enemy when trying to lose weight, but the more I research the more I learn about even worse side effects. I found a really good LINK I wanted to share about this subject. There is a super long video all about sugar but then below the video is a written article about different types of sugar and the chemistry of how sugar effects the body. I really used to think all this stuff was just tree hugging leaf eating extremist kind of health information, but it is quite the opposite, it is fact based on science and biology! It is really interesting to see the connections between sugar and diseases. I totally understand that you have to die someday from something, be it a disease, cancer, heart attack, accident, whatever. To me it is about improving my quality of life while I have it and taking control of my health by recognizing how cells react to food, reproduce and die. If you read this blog you do not have to take my word for anything or believe anything I know, but I challenge you to research for yourself the effects of sugar!