Thanks, Annette – and thanks Simcoeluv for the links. Great booster shot of info on sugar. I know it’s bad, but I need to remember how bad. Annette, does Dr. L advocate cutting down, not cutting out? I really don’t want to become an ascetic. But I do want to control the cravings and enjoy myself.

Congrats AND I’m sorry you’re losing your little black dress. You’ll have to check out the charity shop for a replacement in a smaller size 🙂 But go you, the incredible shrinking woman.

Made it through a FD here, with a chicken stew full of veggies, just a tiny bit of rice to accompany. Do NOT tell me I can’t have rice, there will be a revolt. Anyway, it was good and I haven’t seen any wandering kraken, so something worked. Now if I just knew what…I’d be a millionaire. xx jade

I shall let you know when the book arrives.I have no desire to live in a sugar free world, but I do want to consume less and get rid of the kraken and lizard brain. I suspect that less sugar will help with that, but will write the book review when I have read it.
There is a little black dress(another charity shop but) that is unwearable too. It is far to big across my shoulders and slips off all the time and is just too big all over. Never mind, true re-cycling in action.
I had beef stew and rice for my FD lunch which was lovely and did fill me up. The problem was that I struggled in the evening. I will go back to a tin on leek and potato soup next week at 200 cals as i am on half term.
Just bought my first medium bar of chocolate in months because I fancied it. It is an experiment to see how I get on. Will keep you posted on whether kraken and lizard win…or I do.

Annette, it will take more than one lizard to defeat you. I appreciate hearing how your struggles go, win or lose. Same with everyone, and thank you again Queen for your advice.

You both describe my feelings exactly – I don’t want to live in a sugar free world, I do want to figure out how to avoid lizards and kraken. I’m hoping that one day I can buy the bar of chocolate or bag of doughnuts and not have to eat it all. Sugar does that to me now, I guess. But there is hope we can kick that reaction/habit. xx

Wow you really have made some progress, Annette 🙂 Not everyone can say they have 2-stone shoes (or red patent MJs for that matter). So many ups and downs involved in living, aren’t there…. Your strength is an inspiration.

On the smaller end of the inspiration scale, *I* managed to walk INTO the doughnut-selling grocery store after work and didn’t buy any. A lizard dropped by to say “they’re right over there,” but I really wasn’t that hungry so I popped him in the snout. I would feel good about that, but I really WASN’T hungry, so there was no sense of controlling anything. Hmmmmm…must ponder things like this. xxx

Hi everyone! Well it took a few days, but I’ve caught up with all the posts I’ve missed. You’ve all done so well.

Annette, I love the idea of 2 stone shoes! Well done for your brilliant progress.

I was going to fast yesterday, but on Monday evening I ate too late, not a proper meal obviously, but extra bread and peanut butter and biscuits (I enjoyed every mouthful!) so I’m fasting today instead.

Mint tea for breakfast, delicious!

This week I have started “May Cause Miracles”, a 6 week programme by Gabby Bernstein. The first three days have been about what fears you experience throughout the day, and she gives you affirmations and meditations to slowly change your mindset towards them. Hopefully I will deal with some fears about food and changing my attitude towards it and face the dreaded fear that things might change for the better!
We’ll see how it goes.

Fruit tea for lunch, yummy!

Anyone else fasting today?

Trip anorexia could be called Christmas anorexia, or wedding anorexia, or party anorexia, or being a bridesmaid anorexia, or insert-name-of-event anorexia, no? Your new 5:2 mind has been powerful Jade, keep going!

I’ve been quite hungry today too, I had a pear at 3:30, then my tea at 5, and I even have enough calories left for a snack when I watch ‘The Apprentice’ later.

I like fruit tea, I tend to buy loads of varieties, but now I’ve decided to limit the choice to two or three. I only have probably three coffee a year though, and they are sugar laden ones from Starbucks or Costa. Can you get edible cups? You’d have to drink the coffee fast!

Get this book.
It is by Dr Robert Lustig and called Fat chance the hidden truth about sugar, obesity and disease. It is by an american paediatric endocrinologist and is very readable. The Kraken and lizard feature too. I have just scan read it and will read it thoroughly but it explains what and why we binge and also what we can do to help ourselves to get better.
Opening page’this book is for those of you who eat food. The rest of you are off the hook.’ Says it all really.

Jade-throw out the crystal light immediately.

Good Morning all (well it is here at least). I have the lard baton firmly in hand and had a successful FD Monday although Tuesday was a total wash which I will blame on finishing the ‘binge over brain’ book and snacking like a crazy thing while finishing it and immediately deciding that I had to rebel against the notion of restraint (particularly of the ‘just do it’ kind) and eat for Australia… The brain (MY brain) is indeed a powerful and often crazy thing.

It’s not all bad though as I did gain something from my $6.99 investment and that was to recognise that I have to do this my way as otherwise my inner 14-year-old b*tch’s tendency to Oppositional Defiant Disorder will ensure that I do exactly the opposite. It’s certainly true that I have to use my smart brain to deal with my eating but unfortunately the smart bit is generally useless in mounting a direct attack on the reptile and I have to use a stealth-bomber approach 😉

Jade you’re a marvel and I’m with you on not wanting to be an aesthete. What exactly is crystal light though? I’m assuming it’s not a light version of crystal meth, otherwise it’s likely you’d have no appetite at all 🙂 My whole long life has been about pre-something dieting and I’ve invariably failed at the first hurdle. 5:2 is the only thing that’s worked consistently so I’m going to stick with it and short-term goals be damned (she tells herself and means it).

Annette you just go from strength to strength – I love to read of your escapades. I dream of a little black dress although without surgery there won’t be a sleeveless version, a-la Audrey Hepburn, anytime soon.

I’ve also tried a ‘binge on something so I never want it again’ approach Queen but that has only ever backfired. Simple reptile-brain stuff I know but I’m a very slow learner.

Toffee-coloured nails?? 🙂 Maybe food-grade toffee-flavoured nail polish could be a big seller Helen, a bit like those flavoured lip glosses from my misspent youth.

Okay well I have to get back to work and not procrastinate here with all of you lovely ladies. Strength and success to all fasting today, Spring xx

Not habit according to Robert Lustig. He lays the blame at the food industry for packing foods with hidden sugar that makes us fat and unwell by disrupting the endocrine system which then doesn’t work as it should.We are not fat because we are lazy or hopeless, but because the endocrine system has been messed up by fructose.

I have only read a small piece of the book(work has got in the way) but it seems to make sense so far.

Foods to eat are brown ones(not chocolate) but wholemeal bread,pasta and rice.Fruit juice is a complete no no along with anything fizzy. Eat whole fruit and vegetables.

It could be that less sugar is causing less disruption and thus fewer binges….

Hi,
Yes, I have read elsewhere that rats would choose sugar over cocaine, which is both shocking and yet makes total sense.

He states that biochemistry drives gluttony and sloth which are not the cause but the result.It all seems to be down to insulin and that adults to day release double the amount of insulin for the same amount of glucose that they did 30 years ago.

It is a bit like cracking a mystery this. Thank goodness for Robert Lustig.

Afternoon Fast Clubbers!

My life has gone a little of the rails.
I have a new office manager and she is very micro-managing. Something I don’t need after 23 yrs in the business. My emotions have been all over the map. The results have been crazy eating and a total disconnect from everything.

It’s a comfort to know y’all are out there when I get it together.

Here’s hoping you all have great success.

It’s lovely to see you Michell, especially so when you need a bit of support so please don’t wait till you get it together – if we all did that there’d only be simcoeluv (and possibly Annette) left on the thread 😉 Micro-managing is a real pain (currently happening in my work place but I’ve escaped so far by re-gigging my contract). Why do managers think it will work when ALL the evidence is contrary?? Hang in there and don’t let her/him micro-manage your diet success in the wrong direction.

Lizards come in all shapes and sizes Jade!! On the back of my recent weight gain (sad but true and hopefully in hand as we speak) I decided to go back to see my psychologist and it occurred to me when we were speaking that the lizard-brain is not only active around food; that’s just the lizard that’s most obvious to my smart brain because it currently matters. So I’ve decided to watch out for other examples of the lizard brain getting all uppity and see if by working on calming that particular dude down that it will have a flow on effect?? Two lizards I noticed straight away were 1. getting ridiculously cross at dumb drivers and 2. feeling hot or cold and always responding, i.e. jumper on or off etc. It’s a classic Buddhist approach really but I think it fits with my instinct that stealth will work better on the food-lizard part of my (arguably insane) brain.

It’s interesting stuff around the sugar and there is always going to be another swing of the pendulum in the ‘what you should/shouldn’t eat’ saga. I’ve seen a few of those in my lengthy life. I have to say that for me the sugar message has always been consistent (maybe it’s a down under thing?) and I’ve never thought/been told it was okay to eat a lot of processed carbs or sugar-based foods. Growing up, potatoes and white bread and biscuits etc. were always suspect and that has largely persisted with dozens of other processed items being added to the ‘don’t eat them’ list in health practice and literature. The saturated verses unsaturated fats has come and gone and come again and now of course it’s ‘good’ fats – always a lot of morality in the messages I think. I guess for me the take home lesson is to eat stuff your grandmother would recognise with the caveat being, as long as your grandmother didn’t grow up eating highly sugared stuff out of jars/tins/bottles and packets. I’m sure you’ll defeat the sugar monkey/demon Annette.

My FD yesterday was just a little over 500 (I had to have the emergency almonds) but weight is going in the right direction. Here’s to soldiering on with the sisterhood to defeat the lizards. Spring xx

Night All!

I ended the day better than expected. No eating with”unhinged” jaws and I drove past the ice cream place – 1st time in a few days.

Spring & Jade – Thanks for the support. I know I should not let her get to me, but…..

Keep up the good work – you guys are an inspiration!

Great work, Michelle, give that ice-cream lizard a fat lip. Or give him a world-class tongue lashing – HAHA Spring is telling that reptile who’s boss.

Off on a trip today, but no trip anorexia this time – glad to be done with that. In fact Hubs took me out for beer and bbq last night! One small victory – NO ketchup on my fries. And I am (no, was) a ketchup fiend. The ingredients in that really are kind of scary.

Happy 5:2ing this weekend Islanders – and TGIF everyone with workplace demons. xx

But what if is it is the food that we are consuming that is making us crave and binge?

Back to Dr Robert Lustig, I really do urge you to read it. If I understand this correctly then it is the sugar in all it’s guises in our food that is messing up our endocrine system that the not only makes us fat and keeps us that way, but also keeps us craving and binging. Our environment also has a huge impact.

He argues that we need to eat food that has all its fibre, that fat is fine, but the baddy is the sugar that is hidden in so much of our food. In a nutshell, if it is in a packet with a label on, then don’t eat it. I picked up a couple of tins of leek and potato soup and at 200 calories would fill me up on a FD, but when I looked at the sugar content it was a real shock and so the soup went back on the shelf. I made loads of soup from actual vegetables that I cooked which is in the freezer, so that is what I will be eating next week.

Just been out shopping and filled the freezer with frozen vegetables, bought tins of various beans that I don’t quite know what to do with, but will be putting in all sorts of things along with lentils. Biggest change is both brown rice and pasta. We eat wholemeal bread anyway but i do have a weakness for a white loaf toasted at the weekend followed by a pain chocolat…not this weekend.

Back to Dr Lustig….he talks about stress and comfort food. Stress releases Cortisol into the blood stream which makes you eat and as a result there is an increase in insulin which then makes fat. So it is not the stress itself that makes us over eat, but our response to that stress. I can certainly relate to that. He recommends
exercise as the way to deal with the cortisol.

Maybe rather than feeling helpless and hopeless about the binging, we just need to take control of the quality of the food that we eat? I love white bread toasted and have started buying it at the weekend as a treat and a Pain chocolat each. I did walk past the bread aisle twice with the mantra that it was in everyone’s best interest not to buy it…so I didn’t.

Oh Queen, I read your comment about the ‘shopping with heart’ and immediately saw myself in the supermarket, all happy and dreamy about my healthy lifestyle and buying all the right stuff and a few things that are perfect in a diet with moderation, only to come home and a few hours/days later… opps, all gone in the “if lizard brain arises, nom nom, they don’t last the week”. Yes, so true!! At the moment I have to see that as a kind of self-sabotage that I can’t handle and so not buy anything I would care to binge on. I have a very tenuous hold on 5:2 atm so I have to assume the worst when shopping now although the temptation is always there. Also, I don’t formally count calories (after 45 years I have an in-built calorie counter) but atm I’m closely watching my intake on non-FD’s and the weekends are always much, much harder. I don’t have young children any more but, surprisingly, adult children (an oxymoron I know) present an enormous number of wonderful opportunities for cheese plates and too much wine as the sun goes down. Cheese and wine is probably my #1 downfall of ALL time.

Annette, I’m glad you’re finding so much benefit from the information on sugar and with such determination I’m sure you’ll reach your 2 goals. I can vouch for your oven chips as it’s the only way I do them – although I am currently avoiding them 😉 – I just give them a very light (< 3 second) dousing with an olive oil spray and they’re perfect. I make my own tomato sauce too which is low in sugar compared to store bought varieties.

Jade I hope the trip is going well (is it a holiday?) and you’re not encountering too many lurking lizards en route – hopefully they speak a different language and can be more easily ignored??

I’m with you 100% on the stickiness of the habit part of the bingeing equation being so important. I’ve been thinking of this a lot lately and the trick of course is that we have to eat, usually everyday, and so an understanding of the psychology of changing a ‘habit’ is very muddied when it comes to food. Even more so when it comes to ‘addiction’ and the Psychologists I know say there’s just not the hard evidence yet about these issues in relation to humans, as the majority of the studies being cited are based on animal physiology where there are fewer variables. The popular media doesn’t necessarily discriminate between the two in terms of this and is awash with definitive statements based on these studies – “sugar is more addictive than cocaine” for example, based on rats who were food deprived, preferring sugar over cocaine… It’s great for getting our attention but generalisation to humans misses some important steps. Not that I have to wait for the science to know only I can stop the progression of the food from the fridge/pantry/plate into MY mouth 🙂

Sending strength if you’re fasting today (I am, with lard baton firmly in hand). Spring xx

Anyone remember the old Hammer film ‘The Reptile’, where people were turned into lizards because of a snake cult?
We’re clearly all in the grip of a sugar cult, so here’s me reaching for a packet of biscuits:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NJs_fWIUCyU/T4H7JyNuICI/AAAAAAAAAb4/YevOgHqGcR0/s1600/ggggg.jpg

x

Well I’m back everyone, and there was . . . cake. Sugar cake with sugar icing. Just use Helen’s link and paste a big piece of cake in front of it and there I am! And yikes, Helen!! Talk about putting a face with a name, that is one wicked lizard. Good mental image.

Congrats Michel on kicking another Monday’s ass with a FD. I didn’t get one done, but at least wasn’t hoovering up the leftover pretzels on the plane. Breakfast on the trip was, believe it or not, more “cake” and I did finally give it a pass.

Spring, you’re never alone on Misfit Island! Interesting stats on the sugar, but how in the HELL is Germany the skinniest, they have sugar and beer and make houses out of gingerbread for heaven’s sake. Hmmmm. I wonder if they snack as much as we do in the states – probably no one in the world does that. It has become such an industry here to convince people to consume more of everything – food, electronics, clothes, ugh such a crock. And on top of all the “bad” health advice we’ve been fed over the years.

So OK Annette, I’m ready to agree with you. The vicious cycle of eating sugar, wanting more, NEEDING more, and etc. Fasting and exercise have helped me to a point, but it’s still a damn struggle so I will fight chemistry with more chemistry. To start, NO MORE LABELS. I will train myself to need less sugar.

Queen, I know, there are just TIMES when it doesn’t matter what it is, it just has to be in quantity. Lizard fest. And for me it’s usually the bad stuff in quantity. I may actually just start fibbing and say my blood sugar is high (heaven knows it is!) or whatever is code for “don’t feed me sugar I’ll become a full-blown diabetic lizard.”

OK time to get my lizard head out of my *** and get to work on some other stuff. Good luck all you lovely fasters!!! xxx

Switzerland, Germany and Colorado don’t have the same levels of obesity purely because they are cold…I can’t remember why that is important.

Thanks Spring! It’s good to be back among fellow misfits. Congrats on your FD!

It’s funny Annette, I was reading your latest post with my coffee trying to wake up, and basically I saw “sugar sugar Lustig lentils CHRISTMAS CAKE BAR.” Only my lizard brain is awake so far 🙂 Please keep ringing the no-sugar bell for me. It has to be the answer. And it’s refined carbs (like pasta) too, right? I do not like whole-grain pasta, grrr.

OK then! Thanks to this wonderfully flexible 5:2 thing, it’s FD take 2. Last night I was flat, as Queen puts it. Tired, apathetic – but did manage to eat things like peanut butter (not heavily sweetened), grapes, whole-grain bread. And now head extracted, I’m reporting for lizard duty. Happy Tuesday Islanders, let’s fight the Sugar Liz together – we are stronger. xx

Morning Fast Clubbers!

Successful FD yesterday, Yea!

Feeling in control again today. I wish I knew what the difference is. Sometimes it is so easy to just say “no” and others food is all I can think about. Crazy brain stuff.

Annette – Thanks for sharing about the sugar book. I need to be reminded just how bad sugar is for me.

Spring – Congrats on a successful FD!

Jade – Welcome back and good luck today. Watch out for Lizard Brain & Kraken.

Queen – Sometimes I think just being awake is a trigger.

Going for TTDE today. Lizard Brain be damned!

Afternoon Kraken Slayers!

So, I had the chef salad for lunch. I skipped the dressing and only had half the meat, cheese & croutons. I even saved my cookie for later.

I was doing really good until I realized there are extra cookies from the extra lunches. The “Gollum” in me keeps thinking mine, mine, mine. I want them all!

So is it greed, habit, sugar addiction our survival instinct that is driving my obsession? Hhmmmmm…

Cr##! I just got the email, we are celebrating a BDay.