Sugar It Ain't Working Out or, There's Something About Dairy

For the past few years I have been using MyFitnessPal first as an app and then on my PC.  It's a great way to keep track of your food and exercise.  Yes, it takes time to enter what you are eating in, but if you are like me and you feel like poo all the time and you need to find out why it can be a great tool.

I have come to find out that something about dairy does not agree with my body.  Lactaid does not seem to help, neither does eating dairy items that do not contain lactose such as certain cheeses.  Even the small amount of ranch dressing I ate last night triggered intestinal...issues.  It may be a combination of things.  All I know is that no more creemees, no more cheese, no more yogurt.  Those have been staples throughout my life and so I have to develop an entirely new way of thinking about food.

My non-gastro symptoms over the past 6 months have been:

itchy flaky scalp
oily yet dry hair and skin
hair thinning
red bumps that form on my upper arms
dry feet
bloated stomach
bad mood swings, troubled thinking
flare ups of cystic acne anywhere on me
insomnia

Because I have a history of clinical depression I cannot pretend that it might not be from a history of eating poorly.   I have been taking liquid Vitamin D several times a month in 5,000 IU doses and that does seem to be helping with both the itching on my scalp (it has lessened but not disappeared) and with my depressive thinking.  I live in Vermont and its winter 80% of the year it seems!

I turned 35 on Wednesday of this week and that is a more important day to me than New Year's day so I have resolved that I will try eliminating things from my diet to see if that truly makes a difference.  And I'm not just saying that.  I have actually taken steps to do this.  Sometimes I talk about doing something but never get around to it.  Not this time.

So starting Thursday I eliminated dairy (except for a tiny bit of ranch which did cause intestinal distress!) and tried to halve my sugar intake.  I was doing great until I went to dinner with my friend Kim.  The food I ate was mostly sugar free, but then I automatically ordered a Coke.  I can't drink Diet Coke because it gives me UT issues (not infections, just pain) so I cut that out many months ago and haven't had a problem since.  But unfortunately Fountain Coke has 40g of sugar in a 12oz serving and that is what I had.  My sugar at the end of the day totaled 109 grams. Damn.

This is how I'm helping to supplement no dairy.  They taste a bit like butt after you have swallowed them.

Today I said, "Ok, I am not going to let that happen again."  I have eaten nothing but natural, healthy, mostly raw foods today.  However, my sugar total is up to 80 grams and I haven't had dinner yet.  My caloric intake is low, I need to eat more actually, but the sugar is off the charts.  I think I will just measure added sugar and not natural sugar because at this time I am not a diabetic.

My goal is 50 grams a day (still too much but way better) but I had almost reached half of that with my breakfast.  I had:
1 small hard boiled egg
1 piece of light toast with 1 tbsp of honey and 1 tsp cinnamon
1 clementine
1 cup energizing black tea
caltrate and adult gummy vitamins

these are quite tasty

Apparently the honey, while raw and full of goodness, is too much sugar.  But I don't want to give it up because honey and cinnamon has helped me coast through the sicknesses that have come and gone in my house with me only catching 1 head cold for 1 day!  That is unheard of for me.  Dairy substitutes I am using are Unsweetened Almond Milk and Earth Balance buttery spread.

I am eating snacks about 2 hours apart to keep from getting too hungry while my body deals with this diet change.  I'm not going to pretend I don't want to lose the 5 lb that have crept on since this time in 2012, so yes I am also eating lighter.  However, this is because most of the high calorie foods I was ingesting were dairy or sugar heavy.  I'm also switching my daily 2-3 "cups" (more like barrels) of coffee for 4oz cups of different kinds of tea.  Caffeinated in the morning, herbal in the afternoon and evening.  I can stand it straight but it isn't as delicious as french vanilla coffee with Almond Joy creamer in it.  Sigh.  I am not giving up my Friday morning coffee with my friend Becca though.  That will be my "binge" day.

Here is a chart I produced from MFP's site on my sugar intake.  Its over the last 90 days, and I wish I had entered more in the past couple of months or could go back even farther to see how high it was earlier in the year.

I mean really.  How am I not diabetic if that one back in November was my norm?

I'm slowly creeping down (the shortest bar is today, which is only half done) to my goal of 50.  I also wanted to try showing myself how much sugar I was taking in by dumping that many grams on a scale (I did a bit over 100g in this pic)

This is about 100 grams, which also equals 1/3 of a cup.  Yuck.

This is not an Aztec step pyramid.  This is 21 sugar cubes, which also equals 100 grams.

100 grams also equals 25 teaspoons.  

Seeing those equivalencies did do the trick for my brain to get a grasp of how much sugar I was pouring into my body.  My plan is to stick with how I'm eating for 7 days.  I'm a 3's kind of girl.  That means I give up usually after the third day, third week, or third month.  Today as I am writing this is Day 3 of my diet change.  

I did notice last night that I had way more energy, way less stomach pain, and fell asleep more easily than usual.  I will try to get up the nerve to take a before body pic so that I can see if any changes in shape take place.

Reflections.