I recently joined a facebook group called “Quit Sugar”. A few weeks/couple months ago when I realized how well I’ve done with weight loss, I started to eat crappy foods a little bit again. But now I’m back on the bandwagon. I have been ever since we got to Corpus Christi on Monday. I joined this group, but I have not posted or commented. I’m just reading.
There was a post about the sugar found in fruit and the carbs in whole grains. Basically, the post claimed that it’s harder/not as possible as you may think to give up sugar because it’s in fruit and even whole grains will “become sugar” once they enter your blood.
A woman commented ready to throw hands. She insisted that this post was wrong. More people commented, and an all out debate ensued. It was basically 50/50. Half of the people claimed that the sugar found in sweets and soda was the poison and that fruit and whole wheat was fine. Half of them believed the original post.
I was always raised to believe that it didn’t matter what you did, everything was unhealthy. So you might as well eat as much crap as you want. My dad was diabetic, and I was still taught this. My dad lived to 77 years old, and it wasn’t even diabetes that took him out- he had shingles in the eyes that became meningitis, and that is what killed him. But it wasn’t just my parents and extended family that had these attitudes about food, I learned them in school as well. It’s also the case that as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had to massively deconstruct many things I was raised to believe- not just about religion, but about education, jobs and career, self perception, relationships, food, politics, and the larger world around me. I believe that people hyped the idea that fruit/whole grains are just as bad as the sugar found in cookies and candy because they either want to sabotage the health of the people they are teaching or because they don’t know how to stop self sabotaging. Or both.
I believe that the lady in the comments ready to throw hands was right. Those things are healthy and not “the same” as candy once they hit your blood. I remember talking about the smoothies I make at home with someone who is very overweight. I make the smoothies with frozen or fresh bananas, wild blueberries, Greek yogurt, almond butter, and the milk I use is either skim milk from cow or some non dairy milk like almond or oat milk. Sometimes I have frozen raspberries and other things in there too. The person said that there was so much sugar in what I was putting in there that I might as well get a pint of blue bell. They were wrong. I’ve been enjoying these smoothies for over a year in lieu of ice cream, and have lost some 30 pounds. This just goes to show that that attitude is very pervasive out there.
In this facebook group, they’re trying to calm the debate by saying everyone’s quitting sugar journey is their own. And if someone wants to make cookies by using maple syrup instead of sugar in order to avoid sugar, then that’s their journey. People were encouraged to test their own glucose levels with a monitor. I was thinking of doing the same. I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes two years ago, when my A1C was about 6 point something. Last time I had bloodwork, it came down to 5.8, which is the lowest decimal point to be considered prediabetes. So I lowered it, but still pre diabetic, “Technically”. I have never pricked my own finger to test my glucose levels, but I might start. The first step would be, after I’ve quit sugar successfully for a while, to pay the pharmacy to check my A1C again. The only problem with that is the level of anxiety right before the prick. It’s the only way to see “what’s true for me” as opposed to just believing people when they say my smoothies are the same as a pint of bluebell.
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