Skip to main content

I Eat Sugar, They Eat Sugar, Why Can't You?

The polite brush-off answer: because I'm not you or them.

Answers that require more thought:

Metabolism doesn't improve with age. I could eat crap, or have nothing but a bun or soda for lunch, when I was nineteen and it didn't bother me. Much. Most people that age can say the same. Now that I'm 44, I usually can't fast and more than a little carb makes me tired and hungry and gives me a stomach ache. A high-nutrient, low-carb diet and three meals/snacks a day is my way of dealing with it.

Genes. I'm from a family full of diabetes and hypoglycemia and used to have most of the symptoms of hypoglycemia listed in Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution. Expecting someone like me to do well on a "balanced diet" (i.e., lots of starch, little meat) of three meals a day is like putting gasoline in a diesel truck and wondering what's wrong.

Natural and Artificial Selection. Richard Dawkins has written about animal species undergoing natural selection within a few generations of living in new conditions. Why would humans be different? In isolated places where a high-carb diet is all that's available, people who can't tolerate such a diet from a young age are winnowed out.

Culture. If you're hunting antelope or digging up and carrying thirty pounds of roots all day, every day, like the Hadza (see Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham), you can probably get away with more starch and sugar in your diet than a suburban desk jockey. If you have to walk half a mile to the train station, pay dearly for food, and pack groceries and everything else up three flights of stairs to an expensive little apartment, you can probably get away with more Big Gulps than a New Jersey housewife, and might not be eating as much food.

Some people care more than others. Yes, I know diabetics who eat "normally" and enjoy crap in "moderation." They don't have any tricks--they're covering the carbs with medication, burning some excess blood sugar off with exercise, or having high blood sugar. Some of us know people who get drunk every night but go to work every morning. But just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Labels:

Comments

tess said…
ALL very good responses (depending upon the recipient)! One more that occurs to me more and more as time goes by: i just don't LIKE it anymore! Other people's treats are usually not TREATS to those of us who use butter and cream and good-quality chocolate.
June 24, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Sad to say, I'd be face down in the chocolate cake if I could get away with it. But I never even think about Coke anymore (quit twice in 2007) and never liked most pastries that much. A lot of what passes for candy is just gross.
June 25, 2013
Anonymous said…
I've learned over the years to never discuss diet with anyone! A response that will shut most people up is 'it gives me gas'.
Which is actually true anyway.
(TMI?)
June 25, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Ha! At least you're warning them.

Too much carb gives my dog enough gas to wake me up.
June 25, 2013
Lowcarb team member said…
I find now that if I do eat more carbs than normal the result can be a bad head and feeling grotty, I can do without it.

All the best Jan
June 25, 2013
Lori Miller said…
And yet some people call carbage "fun food." Too much of it is about as much fun as an endoscopy in my book.
June 25, 2013
Galina L. said…
Conveniently for explanations purposes, I have migraines as an excuse for my sometimes socially awkward diet. I indeed feel wrong in my head after eating sugar or even "safe starches".
June 27, 2013
Lori Miller said…
Suffering with a migraine is a high price to pay for following the crowd.
June 27, 2013
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Friday Deals for Good Health

Here are some great Black Friday deals--all ONLINE--that can benefit your health. I've used most of these products and vendors and recommend them. I'm not an affiliate.  Vitamins iHerb.com is having a 25% off Black Friday and Cyber Monday site-wide sale. Vitacost.com is offering $10 off $50, stackable with a variety of other deals. Tried and True Supplements I use: Doctor's Best magnesium ( peach powder , unflavored powder , and tablets ) Country Life kelp tablets Solgar zinc, 22 mg NOW vitamin D, 5,000 IU NOW astaxanthin, 4 mg Jarrow hyaluronic acid, 120 mg Solaray vitamin C tablets, 485 mg Collagen Powder, Dips, Dressings, Mayo and Sauces Primal Kitchen products--all made without added sugar or Frankenfoods--are on sale. If you remember Mark Sisson from the Mark's Daily Apple blog, Primal Kitchen is his company. PrimalKitchen.com  (25% off this week only) iHerb.com  (25% off) Vitacost.com (20% off) I love their vanilla, peanut butter and chocolate-mint collagen pow...
Post a Comment
Read more

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...
15 comments
Read more

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...
21 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more

Decongestant Ineffective; Vibration Plate Works

A common ingredient in many cold medicines has been shown so ineffective that the FDA recently proposed taking it off the market. The ingredient, phenylephrine, "failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion," say researchers from the University of Florida. "The same researchers also challenged the drug's effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research," according to CNBC .  Mostly placebos. Photo from Pixabay . I can attest that phenylephrine doesn't work. Before I stopped eating wheat, I constantly had nasal and sinus congestion. I helped keep Sudafed in business when the active ingredient was pseudoephedrine, but I noticed the PE (phenylephrine) variety didn't work at all. The only other decongestants I've found helpful are guaifenesin (Mucinex) and spicy food. Mucinex is expensive because it works! (The cheaper store brands work just as well, though.) Su...
Post a Comment
Read more