Damned if you do

[torquill]

Over the past week, I've been working to cut refined sugar out of my diet. I realized that my thinking was muddy, my energy was low, and I generally felt like crap... and I was aware of the fact that I really wasn't eating well. Lots of sugar, lots of HFCS, lots of refined carbs. Generally, if I go back to a meat-and-veggies existence, I think more clearly and I have more energy.

I haven't been completely successful yet -- the cravings have been hideous this time around (it baffles me that people don't believe me when I say I get withdrawal symptoms from sugar). I've been eating huge amounts of vegetables and other okay things, just eating almost all the time, because the cravings are so fierce and I'm not giving in to them. I'm still trying to kill the urge to go out and buy a tin of cake frosting and eat it straight.

The cravings usually go away within about ten days. In the meantime, I've been feeling much better, like I can actually think and get stuff done rather than lie around the house. This is good.

At least, until this morning, when I realized that my eyes were stinging because caustic skin oil from my face had made its way into them -- I'm in the middle of a detox cycle. I'm listless and fatigued, and too paranoid to leave the house. This is bad.

Summary: cutting sugar out of my diet has shifted my metabolism back to the point that I no longer feel like crap, but it's also shifted my metabolism enough that I've started to lose weight again, and the toxins stored in the fat are making me feel like crap. My usual way of slowing down weight loss is... to eat more HFCS.

Great. Now what?

Comments

[foogod.livejournal.com]

My suggestion would be to eat more fatty/oily stuff instead. It'll increase your calorie intake without the blood-sugar spike of HFCS, and having the fatty acids floating around your bloodstream should prevent your body from trying to extract any more from your stores.

It won't have quite the immediate energy boost that sugars do, but it would still be better than nothing, I would think..

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

The scale doesn't seem to think I'm losing weight at the moment, but my weight varies so much from day to day that it's hard to tell. I've compromised by eating a small amount of sugar again, enough to kill the cravings (I can handle detox, I can handle cravings, I can't handle detox and cravings). Otherwise I'm just trying to ride it out.

I had thought about increasing fat instead, but there are a couple of issues with that. One is that I don't normally follow what could be even remotely described as a "low fat diet" to start with, so I have to go out of my way to find more sources... beyond making salads with sesame oil dressing again, and eating more bacon, I'm kind of at a loss. Cheese seems like a good option, except that I get tired of sucking down lactaid pills with it (and they aren't always sufficient). I get plenty of butter, I have significant amounts of whipped cream once or twice a week, and I can't eat pork rinds. :)

The other catch is that, as weird as it seems, my metabolism appears to respond a great deal more to "what" than to "how much". I can eat cheese, bacon, and butter in large amounts (and have at various times, to help handle toxins), yet not gain weight anywhere near as fast as if I have half the same number of calories from simple carbs. It's difficult for me to slow a drop by eating more fat, which is why I hit the corn syrup instead... if I really, really try, it can be done, but it's slower and harder to maintain.

I should be eating more organic fats to support the detox, though, since the undigested ones serve as a vehicle to carry the hydrophobic breakdown products out of my system. I'll look around for things I can add in.