Your Last Diet!: The Sugar Addict's Weight-Loss Plan - Couverture rigide

The Problem of Sugar Sensitivity and Weight You are fat, and diets haven’t worked for you. You want to lose weight and not gain it back. You have been motivated to lose weight your entire life. You have tried every diet on earth, from the cottage cheese and grapefruit diet to the cabbage diet. It is all you think about. How can you try so hard and still not have the results you deserve? You know people who decide to diet, lose weight, and that is the end of it. Why is it so different for you?

You may be sugar sensitive. This physical and chemical condition changes everything. Take this test for sugar sensitivity. If you answer yes to three or more questions, you are reading the right book. If none of these apply to you, stop here. This is not the solution for you.

You have tried every diet in the world but cannot sustain your commitment.

You try again and again to cut down or control your use of sweet foods.

You feel everything will be okay once you are thin.

You are easily hurt.

You are overly sensitive to criticism.

You need a regular dose of sugar or you get irritable and cranky.

You love office supply stores.

You know what a “sugar hangover” is.

You start things and do not finish them.

You sometimes go blocks out of your way to get something sweet.

You have twenty projects going on simultaneously.

You have several sets of clothes—one fat set and one hopeful set.

You hate how you look.

You pretend that big is beautiful, but you know this is hooey.

You are impulsive.

You like to skip breakfast because it gives you a “starvation high,” but you’re famished by eleven o’clock and exhausted after lunch.

Your mother bought your clothes in husky sizes.

You get overwhelmed easily.

You wait for new magazines to find one more diet that will work.

You have taken medication for weight loss.

You have taken antidepressants.

Your friends tell you that you look fine, but you feel fat and ugly.

If you have answered yes to three or more of these questions, you are in the right place. You will get answers that will help you understand why you are fat, why you feel the way you do, and what you can do about it. (If you are wondering about the office supply store question, that question comes from a serendipitous discovery made in our online community at www.radiantrecovery.com. We got into an exchange about office supply stores and discovered that we all loved them. It was a little creepy at first, since we had all felt this was a personal idiosyncrasy and not a shared characteristic. But over time, we have come to love this little indicator as a secret code.)

Characteristics of Sugar Sensitives

I have spent the past ten years developing and writing about the theory of sugar sensitivity—that some people are born with a different biochemistry that makes them more vulnerable to the addictive properties of sugar and alcohol. Sugar-sensitive people have lower levels of the brain chemicals that create the simple state of feeling good. They are likely to be impulsive, have a hard time saying no, struggle with mood swings, are more vulnerable to depression, and struggle with sugar addiction. Their self-esteem fluctuates with what they eat. Sugar-sensitive people also tend to be smart, intuitive, creative, funny, compassionate, and tenacious.

The contradiction between the difficult and wonderful parts of being sugar sensitive creates a significant dilemma. You may ask yourself, “How can I be such a nice person and do such dumb things?” Even more relevant to this discussion, you may ask yourself, “How can I know so much and still be fat?”

The pain of the dissonance between all that you know and what you are actually able to do in your life is horrible. You feel guilty, hopeless, and overwhelmed. So the struggle for control over your weight and your life gets bigger, and you feel more out of control as time goes on. Food—particularly sweet food, high-fat food, and white things (refined flour products)—seems to be the only thing that comforts you and quiets the emotional pain you are in. Intellectually, you may know that the thing that seems to comfort you is actually killing you.

But you can’t find a way out of compulsive eating. And you feel a profound shame about your weight that you rarely talk about. The shame is always there, sort of like an aftertaste, right under the surface. It doesn’t matter what you say on the outside. It doesn’t matter how much work you have done to accept yourself just the way you are. How much you weigh isn’t the issue so much as this shame, this pain of your inability to control it. It follows you everywhere. You can be walking down the sidewalk and see a reflection of yourself in a plate-glass window, and all your molecules cringe. You look away in pain, then glance back again at your reflected image. “How can I look this way?” comes the voice inside. All your pain floods through you. The anguish of feeling fat, ugly, and out of control washes over you.

I have been in that place. When I decided to write a weight loss book, I knew I would be writing from my heart and my healing as well as my clinical experience. I know this shame and hopelessness from a deeply personal level. Before I did this program I weighed close to 265, but in my first book I said I weighed 240. Lying about your weight is part of the shame. I no longer feel it. I want you to have the healing that I have created. I want you not only to understand the science that will free you from blame but to have the joy and gratitude that come from healing your sugar-sensitive body.

I’ve been on Your Last Diet! for five and a half months, and I have so much to thank you for. On one level, you have taught me how to listen to my body, how to do what’s good for it in a way that I can do comfortably. I have hope. I started from a hopeless, helpless, and scared place. Now I feel effective. Either I know what to do or I know how to find out what to do, and I realize that my progress happens in slow, steady, doable steps.

I trust my body now. This is so big for me. I had lost trust in my body. Now I know how to listen to it and take care of it, and through that connection I have built trust.

My negative, desperate thinking regarding food has changed. I have positive and hopeful thoughts now. I no longer have irresistible urges to eat things that are not good for me. In fact, I don’t even really care about them.

And most important to me, I have moved out of fear into a place of compassion and confidence as my skills continue to grow in your program. I feel like I finally have the rest of the tools to take good care of myself—mind, body, and spirit.

Stephanie

If this is the first time you have heard about sugar sensitivity and you want to heal this condition and lose weight, Your Last Diet! is for you. The solution in Your Last Diet! changed my life and the lives of more than four thousand people who are connected through our community at www.radiantrecovery.com. It has helped people who are fat or just in need of trimming.

My first book, Potatoes Not Prozac, gives an in-depth discussion of the theory of sugar sensitivity and was the first to lay out the seven steps. It connects food and mood in a unique way. My second book, The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program, explains the relationship of sugar sensitivity to sugar addiction and provides a detailed road map for healing your body on a day-to-day basis.

Your Last Diet! takes the information one step fur- ther into weight loss. While some sugar sensitives have lost weight doing the food plans of my first two books, some did not. Your Last Diet! will help this latter group. Some others may have lost weight and then reached a plateau and are not losing any more. Your Last Diet! will also help them.

Key Issues for You

Being sugar sensitive and overweight brings a history with many variables. It is too shortsighted to say that you simply need to lose weight and be done with it. I am interested in healing your body and then helping you get to your ideal weight. Let’s take a look at what may be going on for you.

· You are overweight or fat and cannot lose weight.

· You are fat and cannot maintain your weight loss.

· You have a long history of dieting.

· You love sugar, carbohydrates, and fats.

· You are sugar sensitive.

· You are insulin resistant.

· You have a body with unique biochemical responses.

Before we look at the biochemistry of why you are overweight, let’s talk some about sugar sensitivity and examine what it is and how it affects your moods and your behavior. “Sugar sensitivity” is a term I coined to describe a three-part syndrome that I believe is inherited and includes these three components:

· Volatile blood sugar

· Low levels of the brain chemical serotonin

· Low levels of the brain chemical beta-endorphin

Let’s take a look at each component separately.

Volatile Blood Sugar

When you eat carbohydrates (sugars and starches), the glucose (a type of sugar) in your blood increases. Typically, as it rises, your body releases the hormone insulin, which then signals the cells to open up and accept the glucose to be burned as fuel. At best, the system works within a specific range. You eat, your blood sugar rises, insulin is released, the sugar in your blood drops, you get hungry, and you eat again.

Some people are carbohydrate sensitive.1,2 Their blood sugar goes up more rapidly, they release extra insulin, and consequently their blood sugar drops more quickly. The blood sugar system doesn’t work for them. The slope of their blood sugar action is steeper than a normal person’s. I believe that carbohydrate sensitivity is one of the hallmarks of sugar sensitivity.

This blood sugar pattern of sugar or carbohydrate sensitivity is not the same as hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia refers to low blood sugar that occurs when the level of glucose drops below normal and the person experiences fatigue, shakiness, and mental fog. This may be a function of too much insulin or too little food. A sugar sensitive’s blood sugar may or may not drop to an abnormally low level. You can be carbohydrate sensitive without being hypoglycemic. What is important for you is the slope of the blood sugar curve—a faster rise and fall. The blood sugar volatility affects your moods in a big way. When blood sugar rises, you feel great; when it falls, you get really cranky. Blood sugar volatility is the first part of sugar sensitivity.

Serotonin

The second part of sugar sensitivity is a low level of the brain chemical called serotonin or 5HT. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter responsible for mood. Too little of it is associated with depression and impulsivity.3 Too little and you may have a hard time getting out of bed, getting organized, feeling like you can face the day, creating and fulfilling goals, or feeling that life is worth living.

Serotonin also acts as the brakes in your brain. Think of serotonin as the “just say no” chemical. If you have too little, you may have all the good intentions in the world, but chocolate chip cookies will hop into your mouth before you know it. You may feel you have no self-discipline or no willpower. This is not a character flaw; it is biochemical and comes from low serotonin.

Low serotonin is also associated with obsessive and compulsive behaviors.4 Your brain can “lock” on a task or idea. The brakes get stuck. You munch on a problem over and over, or you get lost in a task and “wake up” five hours later. It is as if your “pay attention” switch is either on or off; there is not a whole lot of flow from one to the other.

Beta-Endorphin

The third part of sugar sensitivity comes from having low levels of the brain chemical called beta-endorphin. Beta-endorphin is a painkiller. It is a survival chemical. It protects you from the pain of running away when a tiger is chasing you. It helps you avoid passing out from the pain when you smash your finger in the car door. Beta-endorphin creates a kind of euphoria. What we call a runner’s high is actually a flood of beta-endorphin.

If you have low levels of beta-endorphin, you will have a low tolerance for pain. You won’t like going to the dentist. If you fall and skin your knee, it will hurt more. Because beta-endorphin also affects emotional pain, if you are low in this chemical you feel more deeply and are often thought of as being sensitive.

Low levels of beta-endorphin are associated with feeling isolated, inadequate, and helpless.5 Low levels of beta-endorphin create changes in your brain that make you respond more intensely to the drugs and chemicals that evoke beta-endorphin. You get a bigger high from alcohol.6 And you respond to sugar as though it were a drug. Sugar evokes beta-endorphin.7 Your brain likes the effect and is drawn to wanting more. When you use sugar, you feel confident, soothed, and able to cope. You feel attractive and hopeful—until it wears off. And then you need more. Over time the druglike effect diminishes, your tolerance for sugar increases, and you need more and more to achieve the same soothing or energetic effect. Your addiction to sugar is physiologically real, and like any addiction, it causes physical and psychological havoc in your life.

I often use the image of a three-legged stool to explain the concept of sugar sensitivity. Each of the biochemical parts forms one of the legs and supports the concept of sugar sensitivity itself, which is the seat of the stool. Each leg as described in the preceding section is well documented in the scientific literature, but the top that connects them all is a new idea.8 The lived experience and testimony of thousands and thousands of people who now identify themselves as sugar sensitives suggest that I am on to something here.

Not every sugar addict has a problem with all three legs. You may have very low serotonin, reasonably stable blood sugar, and moderately low beta-endorphin. Or you may have extremely low beta-endorphin, moderately low serotonin, and close to normal blood sugar. Or you may have highly reactive blood sugar, low serotonin, and normal beta-endorphin. If all three are a problem, you are in big trouble. Take a look at the symptoms that come with low levels of each of the three and see if you can get a feel for which leg or legs are out of kilter in your sugar-sensitive stool.

LOW BLOOD SUGARLOW LEVEL OFLOW LEVEL OF SEROTONINBETA-ENDORPHIN

Tired all the timeDepressedHaving low pain tolerance

Tired for no reasonImpulsiveTearful

Restless and edgyShort attentionExperiencing low spanself-esteem

ConfusedScatteredFeeling sensitive to criticism

ForgetfulQuick to angerFeeling isolated and inadequate

InattentiveAggressiveSeeking crisis

Feeling easilyReactiveFeeling “done to” frustratedby others

CrankyCraving sweetsCraving sugar and fat

Short-fusedCravingFeeling carbohydratesoverwhelmed

Traditionally, the medical profession has treated two of the legs of the stool—low blood sugar and low serotonin—as separate problems. The solution for low blood sugar has been to eat regularly and to avoid foods such as sugars and refined carbohydrates. The solution for low serotonin has been to take antidepressants. These medications can work wonders, but they have side effects, take many weeks to start working, and may become less effective after a few months. Finding the right antidepressant for your body and mind may take a great deal of trial and error, which can be a depressing process in and of itself.

The medical profession has not offered...

From the bestselling author of Potatoes Not Prozac–this is the first diet plan specifically designed for people who are sugar sensitive.

If you’ve tried every diet under the sun only to watch your weight boomerang, take heart. You may have been born with a biochemistry that makes you more vulnerable to becoming addicted to sugar. The first weight-loss program of its kind, Your Last Diet! pinpoints what you can do to heal your sugar sensitivity once and for all–and lose weight permanently in the process.

Inside you’ll discover how to
• Increase seratonin and beta-endorphin levels for appetite and mood control
• Feel more confident, energetic, and clear-minded
• Lose weight steadily–without rebounding
• Adjust eating habits for maximum health

Filled with testimonials from people who have followed the plan, lost weight, and kept it off, Your Last Diet! is a powerful inspiration to all who have struggled with sugar addiction and weight issues. This will truly be your last diet!