Just to let you know, I hate feeling forced to keep a journal like it’s a homework assignment. I only like to write when I feel like it. So here I am at step 1 of Dr. DesMaisons’ 7-step plan for dealing with sugar sensitivity and I’m already trying to get out of doing the work. What a slacker.
When you consciously write down what you eat, a few things begin to happen. First, you start thinking twice about pulling the cookies out of the bag because you know you’ll have to write it down or you’ll feel dishonest if you eat them and don’t write it in the journal. And blogging about the whole thing makes you feel like there’s someone to answer to (even if only three people ever read this), which means you feel like you have to do a good job on your “homework.” Second, you start off suddenly eating healthier, reasonable portions and avoiding rich sweets. You remember each meal and fill in the time and details fully. But as the days go by, you start neglecting your journal, forgetting what you’ve eaten, skipping entries, considering the twizzlers you consumed at work “negligible,” and plowing through an entire bag of cookies in one sitting. You get sick of tirelessly tracking all your food and it makes you frustrated and irritated when you don’t do a good job. You just want to say fuck you to step one and move on. Except the real kicker is that you are supposed to keep up with the food journal throughout the entire process. This makes you want to quit the whole fucking program before you’ve really even started.
I feel like I’m fighting against myself where there can be no winner because I will lose even if I win. I’m so tired of suffering, but part of me thinks that this is just going to be another failed attempt at bettering my life. Why go through all the work when I’m probably not going to get anything out of it? Why set myself up for another disappointment?
I want nothing more than to give the proverbial finger to the entire American food system and way of eating, but the more I obsess over and analyze it, the more it makes me crazy and I go back to comforting myself with food. The most satisfying foods are not really cookies or junk food or convenience foods. It’s a simple nutritious meal eaten when you are actually hungry and haven’t been grazing all day. You feel satisfied, not bloated, gassy, or over-stuffed. The waistband of your pants isn’t digging into your stomach and when you are offered dessert, you turn it away with ease. The meal carries you all the way to the next. One of my main problems is that when I reach this very point, I am pleased with myself for making good choices and not snacking in between, but still don’t feel “full.” It’s not that I’m still hungry; I’m just not satiated. I want more, need more, feel empty inside. Part of me, conscious or not, is trying to fill up all the negative emotion, the pain, anger, alienation, sadness and boredom. The problem is that food will never do it. Food will never make everything go away, even if it gives my mood a slight boost, it’s only temporary. Food will make everything worse, feeling less than good about myself, increasing my lack of self-control, damaging behaviors, and feelings of lacking will power.
My diet has gone through many radical changes throughout the years: eliminating soda (soda-free for 9 years!), eating away at college, studying abroad (and not eating much meat), eliminating fast food, drinking more water, cooking my own meals in an apartment, eating a more vegetarian diet, eating mostly whole grains, eating at home again, having no appetite due to medication, becoming a vegan, eating a mostly junk food vegan diet, going back to a vegetarian diet (because I couldn’t give up cheese), trying the vegan thing again, gradually eating a much healthier diet, adding tofu into my diet, eating mostly fresh organic produce, eliminating sugary fruit juice, etc. My diet has changed a lot since those days of just eating whatever mom put in front of me at the kitchen table.
But all this thinking about diet and sugar sensitivity has lead me towards something else that might very well be the culprit to 25 years of the wrong diet for my body. I came across a condition called fructose malabsorption, a digestive disorder of the small intestine. When foods containing fructose are consumed, the fructose concentration in the intestine increases because certain enzymes are not working properly. A healthy person will absorb 25-50 g of fructose per sitting, but someone with frucmal may absorb less than 25 g per sitting. Gases like hydrogen, carbon dioxide and methane are produced by the bacteria in the intestine, which lead to bloating, gas and discomfort. Many people have fructose malabsorption along with lactose intolerance.
I’m a huge fruit eater and that is probably one of the only things that has stayed the same throughout all of the aforementioned diet changes. From babyhood to adulthood, I’ve always eaten excessive amounts of fruit, particularly in the fresh, dried and juice forms. When I was younger, raisins used to make me sick. I remember having to avoid them as a kid. When I went off to college, I started eating them again (mostly because I had gone so long without them I wondered if they would still make me sick or not), and they didn’t seem to cause any noticeable problems, so they came back into my diet). Now I eat them all the time, with other fruit, in trail mix, on salads, or in a stir-fry. ***Second only to dates, raisins have the highest fructose content of all fruits. Was my body trying to tell me something all those years ago?
I suffered with severe bloating, constipation, gas and stomach pain my entire childhood through young adulthood, just soldiering on as if all people had to deal with it too. In truth, I just didn’t know any better or that other people weren't living this way.
But great news! There is a very simple test for any food related intolerance (glucose, gluten, lactose, fructose, etc) and I could actually get a definitive diagnosis. Imagine that? So, I suspect all these food related issues because of both physical and mental symptoms. Physical (bloating, constipation, gas, stomach pain, headaches, etc) and mental (depression, mood swings). The mental health field has always been a little abstract and qualitative rather than quantitative when it comes to diagnosis. There is no test for depression or PTSD or bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder, etc. So if a simple, non-invasive test (hydrogen breath test) can be done to see if I have a dietary issue, that could explain and resolve my mental health related symptoms in addition to the physical ones, why the hell would I not want to do it!? Well, it doesn't help when you have no primary doctor, no health insurance and no money. The soonest appointment I could get with a gastroenterologist is in June. That's a long time to wait. Maybe the detox will reveal the intolerances, just as my going vegan "accidentally" revealed my lactose intolerance.
Many studies have shown that a third to almost half of people may have some kind of fructose malabsorption. If it’s that prevalent, why has no one ever heard of it? Is the high fructose corn syrup campaign too ominous and intimidating? I hate those commercials by the way. They are using people’s ignorance of the topic to make a generalization that HFCS is ok because nobody can seem to think of a single reason off the top of their head for why it is bad. Then they throw in, “if eaten in moderation” to somehow make up for calling us out on not knowing our facts about HFCS and making fun of us. They don’t educate us, just make us feel stupid. I think the big industries and lobbyists for those industries (sugar, dairy, meat) are what has screwed up our diets. Nobody is tune with what their actual body actually needs or even what it does not like, they just continue to glide along on the myths of conventional wisdom. Eat less carbs, more protein, HFCS is ok in moderation, eat more dairy, milk does a body good, etc. We have been deceived, but I’m going to do something about it. By starting to eat a radically different diet, I am starting to change the cycle.
So I am still going to do Dr. DesMaisons’ plan, but I am going to go about the last step differently. I think I should do a full fructose and sugar detox (eliminate fruits with high fructose to glucose ratios), and I’ll probably find better results than just eliminating sugar (table sugar, simple carbohydrates, syrups, etc). I have compiled a list of all of the sugar alias’ I could find and a list of all the recommended fruits/vegetables and those to avoid. I’m feeling a bit antsy about getting to the actual detox, but that could be a bad sign. Who looks forward to a complete moratorium on sugar? Or the horrible withdrawal symptoms that are similar to a drug detox? Ok, it is going to be hell, I don’t doubt that, but if I prepare well, I might just enjoy the potential results. So I’m going to move on to steps 2-5 (in addition to keeping up the dreaded food journal):
2. Eating three meals a day at regular intervals
3. Taking vitamins as recommended
4. Eating the recommended amount of protein at each meal
5. Adjusting your carbohydrate intake to include more complex foods
And here is why I’m going to smash all these steps together (despite DesMaisons advising us not to). What the hell, call me a rebel. Like I said before, this isn’t my first major dietary change and a lot of her steps I either already do or have done. I usually eat three full meals day, except every once in a while I skip breakfast, but eat later at work. I am going to try and find a B12 vitamin that doesn’t contain sugar (since mine currently does), and possibly start taking vitamins recommended for those doing a sugar detox (B vitamins, chromium, zinc, vitamin C). As for protein, I will try harder by including more beans, legumes, vegetables, tofu, rice, nuts, whole wheat foods into my diet. And for step 5, I’ve already done a complete overhaul on the simple carbohydrates (white flour products which our bodies use in the same way as sugar)—they are pretty much absent from my diet. And just to clarify, I'm not eliminating sugar from my diet forever. That would be silly.
So, I’ll start tweaking my diet for the next week or so, buying vegan sugar-free snacks and naturally sweet foods to curb cravings and lowering my sugar intake. When I’m finally ready to start the sugar/fructose detox, I don’t think anybody is going to want to be around me for a while.
Not even me.
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