debrafrederick's Journal, 18 July 2023

All of you, thank you for the comments! I just got home from work and am rushing to cook dinner and eat before my 7 PM fasting time. Great input from all of you! Ill get back with you soon! 

Totally agree. Cut out all processed sugars at the beginning of March. Cut out the cream and artifical sweeteners from my tea/coffee in April. Still left with the sweetener in my protein powder though. Now nothing tastes sweeter and juicier than a cold apple with some hazelnut or almond butter. That palate certainly changes and quite quickly. 

ok, so dinner complete dogs pilled and fed, I can now relax and digest! LOL Like I said in my post, I looked at all of the videos and studies and charts 8 years ago and my brain determined that I only used tiny amounts of sweetener, how can it possibly hurt me or make me do anything. Stevia is a natural non caloric sweetener, BUT it is still sweeter than sugar by a good margin. When you are a sugar addict, sugar activates the dopamine in the pleasure center of your brain, your brain calls for more, more, more because the flood of dopamine feels good. All kinds of chemical and hormonal reactions occur at the same time you are feeding your pleasure center. Your insulin is released in preparation for the glucose to hit your blood and it gets to work fueling your cells, when they are full and they can't stuff anything else in there, then they store them as fat. When you taste the super sweetness of the sugar substitute, again dopamine is flooded into your brain, again the chemical and hormonal reactions occur....oh, but wait, there is something missing, the glucose is not hitting the blood stream, all the hormones (insulin) have nothing to do, no where to go!! Your brain kicks out a screaming craving for sweets any sweets, candy cookies, cake. You actually get a mental picture of what your brain is demanding for your body in order to complete the mission that was begun when it sensed sweetness on the tongue. This is automatic, this happens every time you ingest artifical sweetener. That need to complete the cycle of fueling the cells and storing the excess is communicated to you by intense cravings. If you don't trigger the dopamine and release the hormones, there are no cravings. When you eat whole fruit, it starts again....but you have small amounts of glucose hitting your blood stream, the insulin released is made smaller by the protective fiber you ingested with the sweet. The insulin picks up the glucose and fills the cells with energy. Since its a smaller amount because the fiber made you feel full and you stopped, there is no excess energy to store because now the fiber must be digested and that requires energy. Job done, insulin drops. Mission complete. There is no need for your brain to scream for glucose because the glucose was there.  

WHAT?! How do you KNOW all this information? Thank you for that graphic, easy to picture explanation  

I wanted some chocolate the other night, a chocolate glazed donut, one bite and in the trash it went! It was awful!! 

I do fruit only, whatever is in season. I gave up all artificial sweeteners when I switched diets to WFPB. Heads up: yogurt and protein powder, bars, and shakes are all loaded with Sweeteners. It’s just sweet protein— eat a chicken leg or a piece of fish instead to get your protein and avoid feeding the sugar addiction, everyone!💚 

Nice explanation, Deb, but fruit is a total trigger for me. I tried to have a cup of watermelon for dinner. That 1 cup led to 3 cups. Now, I'm in full-blown code red over here.  

maybe I should have stressed low-glycemic fruits, Zen 😁 with lots of fiber. Watermelon is mostly sugar and water. It should be called a juice 

🥴 

I've got a headache from down under. Calling it a night. Read ya in the morning! 

It's loaded with vitamins and minerals, but it's 92% water and it's sugar content is high. I swell up like a balloon from the water retention after eating just two cups....I did the same thing the other day Zen, my planned one cup became two, that's why eating stopped and it became my dinner LOL! Sorry about the code red!!  

But what I don't get, even after eating watermelon, is the burning need to climb into the refrigerator and eat everything inside.  

The correct way to eat watermelon is weigh your portions and eat it until your stomach stretches, signaling satiety. I logged 26 oz and gained like 3 lb water overnight. No cravings. I was done. It is worth the temporary gain. I live in a northern state and eat it twice a year. 234 kcal is very small. 

Maybe the cravings come from the sweetness and insulin rise, but the calories are so low your body is signaling for more. 

My gain was almost three pounds LadyD! only took one day on the fast for it to come back out, that was the night I got like 5 hours of sleep due to the fountain of fluid. I should have logged all those P breaks as exercise 🤣🤣🤣🤣 

The comment on the cravings is exactly what I was attempting to explain in my usual long winded manner, you make the point much more succinctly LadyD 

If I had been watching my husband eat that eclair 3 months ago, my mind would be busy planning how to knock him in the head with something and take it. It's just a daydream because I would not do it, but last night I did not even fantasize about it. It did not tempt me at all. For me, moving forward, that's a big deal! 

@Deb... well, mine didn't stop...lol. I added a 6oz beef patty w/chs, a pickled egg, and finally a chocolate fat bomb to help fight the monster. I ravished the house looking for something sweet. I am so thankful that there wasn't anything here, that was the last of the watermelon, and the store is 12 miles away. My reptilian brain was in total control. If there had been sugar here, my cortex brain would not have had a chance to take back control at all. Up 1.4 lbs this morning. Many say "that's just water weight". I say it's inflammation weight. Look how I lost 32 lbs in 6 weeks, (look how puffy I was in my before pic) there is no way that is not mostly a "water weight" loss. 32 lbs of water?! That's a lot of inflammation there, buddies! @Lady I don't think it had anything to do with calories, as I had just had a full satiety dinner. 

@Deb... I get what you mean about wanting to knock the hubby in the head before! 🤣 Been there too! 

You are so correct. Once your tastes adapt both the sugar and salt in most processed foods and many recipes is just tooooo muvh. We won’t even mention restaurants.