My New Eating Style

That's what I'm gonna call it. I don't like the word "diet" as it makes me have a bad attitude about it. Basically, I have discovered through a bout with gestational diabetes that drastically reducing my sugar intake, my body shrinks. I know big duh right? Well, I had no idea before just how much sugar I was eating. Just to be clear, I don't cut out all sugars. I just change how I get my "sweet". Also, if you don't know me, you should know that "sweet" food is very important to me. I am a huge fan of comfort foods. Therefore, my new eating style had to keep my strong need for "sweet" and "comfort" foods on the table. No, I'm not some magical will-power fairy with inhuman amounts of will power. If I hadn't had to do this for my baby, I may never have discovered the trick or the marvelous results. Now that I do this just for me, I admit, the urge to "cheat" is powerful. Fall season/ Holiday season is particularly hard as it comes with heavy doses of sweet foods and comfort foods. Anyway, here's what I did and what happened to me. If it's of any use to you, great. If not, sorry, I'm no nutritionist and I don't claim to be an expert on anything but myself.

I started out completely cutting out nearly all sugar (on the packages of foods it had to have less than 5 grams of sugar or I wouldn't eat it) and practically all starches (no white rice, white potatoes, white breads, etc.). I basically lived on fruits and veggies, cheese, lean meats and high fiber breads (twice what regular whole grain breads have). I had no juice or sodas, only milk or water. Within the first week of this, I noticed my arms and face seemed less puffy. I started to loose my double chin. Wow, that's a great side effect, right?

After a while, the strictness of this diet and the blandness started to get to me. I began looking for ways to add a little excitement to the mix. I began experimenting with different foods. I used my blood glucose monitor to help me figure out what foods caused a spike and what foods my body tolerated well. I noticed starches weren't really a problem for me. Not in small quantities anyway. Hello rice and potatoes! I also noticed I could have a higher sugar content in my food choices so long as the content of fiber balanced it out. So, if it had 9 sugar grams, it had to have at least 9 fiber grams or I wouldn't eat it. This new discovery allowed for much more variety, especially in the breakfast cereal department. . . yea! I look at everything on the cereal and cracker isle labeled high fiber. If it has equal fiber and sugars or even better higher fiber than sugars, I can have it. I still consider nuts, fruits and veggies a main staple. By that I mean, I can have unrestricted amounts of these. I can literally pig out on fruit nuts and veggies and with creativity in the dip/sauce department (never ignoring sugar content of the condiments) I can make them quite exciting. What else did I do? I developed an addiction to diet root beer. Yep, root beer, not pepsi. Diet pepsi is great, I love the stuff. Unfortunately, it has caffeine and I didn't want to trade a sugar addiction for a caffeine addiction. Diet root beer has a strong enough flavor to mask the aspartame and it satisfies my craving for sweet fizzies. It's also great over sugar free ice cream. A guilt free treat that can be enjoyed almost daily without consequence. I became an expert at spotting sugar free products. I know what my favorites are. I love the sugar free turtles (yummy carmel, pecan, chocolates). My Wal-Mart sells sugar free banana nut bread that's super yummy. My Safeway sells sugar free chocolate chip cookies. In the ice cream isle, I found a delicious very low sugar fruit bar. They're made from real fruit and have an excellent flavor with no sugar added. In the same area are chocolate/ almond covered low sugar ice cream pops. . . yum yum! Also, the low sugar ice creams now come in a variety of flavors. Splenda is a fabulous sugar substitute. Many products are made with splenda and offer a great flavor with no sugars. All of these "cheat-treats" give me the satisfaction of treating myself without the consequences of raising my blood sugar or upping my dress size. Practically any kind of craving can be satisfied in a healthy, low consequence way. The trick is never giving in to the hard core junk sugars.

After I had my son, the gestational diabetes went away. I allowed myself to have a little Halloween candy. I noticed it went right to my head like a brain freeze reaction to ice cream. I got a sugar headache or sugar rush in my head fairly easily. I felt ill. I realized after this that I had truly broken my body's addiction to hard core sugar. I've had an undeniable experience that taught me exactly what my body does on sugar. It gets sick and fat. I can live quite nicely on a low sugar, high fiber eating style with a big variety of fruits and veggies, cheese, nuts and lean meats. It feels good. Who doesn't want to feel good? The occasional dinner party or holiday will always be a challenge. With self control, occasional indulgence in these special occasion foods in moderation won't ruin a good eating style.

The physical consequences of my new eating style are obvious. Everyone who sees me comments on how good I look. I take the complement but wonder about how bad I must have looked before. Everything about my body seems leaner. I haven't done any exercise. In fact my lifestyle is next on my list of things to improve on. I'm quite sedentary. Simply cutting out sugar, etc is all I've done. After delivery my weight has just fallen off. My clothes are all baggy. My jeans want to fall off. Old clothes that were too tight and uncomfortable before, now fit well and look good.

One thing adding to the weight loss is possibly the fact that I'm lactating. My milk seems extra creamy. Benjamin is getting plump like a butter ball. He's so cute! This is the first time I've ever lost weight while lactating. I'm constantly hungry. The volume of food I seem to need should be increasing my weight but it's not. The numbers on my scale continue to fall. This is what motivates me to stick to my new eating style. Even in high volumes, the foods described above seem to do the trick for me. Imagine what'll happen when I start exercising?!?