If It's Good, It's Bad

I have been continuing on with my refresher course in the Crazy, Sexy Diet and am picking up so much more then the first time. This makes total sense considering I read it at a time when I was in excruciating pain, desperate for help from anyone, and completely out of other options. I speed read through the entire book within a matter of a 12 hour period. I wanted to get to the solution as quickly as possible so that I could begin…begin something. I had felt so helpless up until that point and I never really understood the devastation of feeling ‘helpless’ before. It was a living nightmare with no escape and no sunshine. Now that I am re-reading, I am enjoying the information in a new way and absorbing more of it. The best part is that it serves well as a motivator at a time when I could really use some motivation (who couldn’t?). Of course, Kris instructs that all that crappy, junk food we are use to, that tastes so damn good, is not so good after all. But, the real clinchers, at the top of the terrible list, are sugar and too many carbs…sort of the same thing to our bodies.

 Excess sugar does a number of things to our bodies that aren’t ideal in general, let alone for someone who is trying to stage a miraculous recovery from Tarlov Cyst Disease! Sugar robs our bodies of mineral, promotes inflammation, and feeds bad cells (think cancer...possibly cysts? It doesn’t say specifically, most things don’t! Darn it.) and so much more, it’s disturbing really.. Evidently the cancer cells have a lot more receptors on them then healthy cells and so they get more then their share at feeding time and love a quick source of energy via sugar. Plus, they don’t need oxygen to work, which is why they hate an oxygen rich environment created by oxygen rich foods (read: plants). She used a great example to prove her point about these hungry degenerate cells that I wish to pass along to you. When given a PET scan, cancer patients are injected with a small amount of radioactive glucose (sugar). The test then measures which areas absorbed most of the glucose. These areas are known as cancer; or the cell sucker invading your body and thriving on sugar and carbs. That is a pretty strong stance against sugar and it leaves very little to question about the authenticity of her facts, in my opinion.

The real trick here is avoiding sugar. I have a sugar addiction that is up there with the freaking Cookie Monster. I dream of sugar often and find myself even daydreaming about it. I don’t feel there is anyway under the sun that I could accomplish a sugar revolt. So, I offer up a compromise by way of extreme moderation. I have already weaned myself off of adding sugar to anything and use agave nectar regularly. I don’t eat a lot of sweets anymore unless you count pop tarts…I am almost positive pop tarts count, damn it! This gives me a great advantage, so now I can just take the renewed knowledge of the dangers of sugar and make even better selections. I had forgotten the severity of participating in cupcake parties. I can indisputably tell a difference in the amount of cyst discomfort I expereince if I have eaten anything sugary. We are acquiring quite a list of Tarlov do and don’t here. That makes it so much easier for me to stay the course. I hope it does the same for you.