Friday 24 August 2012

don't get fructosed


Over the last 10 years I lost 30kg healthily, and maintained it. But more recently, it seemed that no matter what I did, the scales just kept tipping in the wrong direction. Until now. 

Up to now I have stepped up exercise, half starved myself, eaten lo carb, and nearly fainted from lack of food. I am only interested in healthy weightloss, but nothing I’ve tried lately seems to be working like it has in the past. The scales just keep tipping up and up in the wrong direction. Until now.



I’ve heard about the evils of sugar in the diet.  Specifically a TYPE of sugar – fructose.  Fructose makes up 50% of table sugar.  Consider these claims:


  1. 50 years ago Aussies ate about 1kg of sugar a year each. Now we eat that much every week.
  2. Fructose overrides the switch in your brain that tells your stomach when you’re full.  
  3. Fructose is a type of sugar that is not used by the body for energy so gets converted to fat and stored in the fat cells.
  4. Fructose is in just about everything, including fruit, dried fruit, fruit juice, table sugar, maple syrup and honey.

So I decided to just focus on cutting fructose at breakfast time and try cooking with glucose when required.  I made my own muesli of nuts, seeds, coconut and oats (no dried fruit).  I also bought a jar of glucose syrup to cook with (replacing ordinary sugar) and also used a bit of Splenda (fake sugar) in cooking.

Within a day I realised my belly was flatter – and I never realised how bloated I was all the time. Within a few days, unexpectedly, my hips stopped aching like I was an old woman. The black rings under my eyes disappeared.  However, I did spend a few days feeling woolly-headed, which is what happens to me when my body starts to change gear. 

I also eat pretty clean anyway, so it’s been not a huge change for me. I also exercise regularly and have done for years. I still have a small, sweet snack every day – made with non-fructose sugar.  I also notice that my energy levels have increased and I even fancy that my moods are also more buoyant. 

And the weight?  At first I thought it must be a coincidence.  Then I got cautiously optimistic. Now I am excited. Yes.  I’ve dropped 2.5 kilos.  In about a month.  I have never lost weight that fast before.  

Yesterday someone offered me a beautiful, delicious-looking cupcake.  Which I declined, opting to enjoy a bit of food-porn instead. And today I knocked back cake. This was not hard to do, because I am not hungry and my appetite is not out of control. I have my own sweet snack anyway, which I enjoy. But mostly, I am loving the results I’m getting and don’t want to mess it up.

Mr Google can tell you anything you want to know about fructose. But I started with looking at this website:  Sweet Poison.  
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This blog has sparked interested on Facebook and several people have commented they are going to do their own research. My suggestion is that we share our information below here in comments, and that we only share the results of what we ourselves have tried and tested. Is that a plan? We can learn about this together, and from each other.  
Cardinal Cyn.

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2 comments:

  1. does this mean figs are out?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Anonymous. According to Mr Google, dried figs are high in fructose, while fresh figs are among the lower-fructose fruits. Your call on what you eat, though.

    ReplyDelete