Enter: Peanut Brittle

How did I do on my 10 day No Sugar Challenge? Truth? Well, about five days into it, I found the peanut brittle. I had bought it over the holidays as a treat. But this Christmas, unlike most others, I was very disciplined about watching what I was eating. The good news about that? I didn't gain any weight over Christmas. The bad thing was I kept the unopened box of peanut brittle and one day I just happened to find it in the cupboard. Perhaps I should have tossed it then. Or never bought it in the first place. But it served a good lesson. I didn't toss it, I opened it. I ate four or five (ten?) pieces before I even came up for air and then I came to my senses. I stopped. About an hour later, I felt bad. Really bad. I don't think I got any rush from eating it, but I certainly crashed an hour later. Beside that one incident and (oh by the way) wine a couple of times like I already confessed, I did well. No sugar. It wasn't easy. But overall, I'd give myself a B- for the ten day challenge. Maybe I'm too easy on my grading system? Perhaps. But I'm not stopping at 10 days. I am going another 10. And this time my goal isn't to be perfect, but as close as I can be. After a lifetime of failed dieting, I'm going to try a new approach. At 63, there may be a lot of things about aging that are a pain, literally. But here's one that is very refreshing and almost comforting. It isn't about wearing a size 6 anymore. Its about health! So, my new approach is not that I'll lose weight to get healthy, but rather that I'll get healthy, and then, perhaps my body will return me to a healthier weight. And a new path, charted by doctors like Dr. Robert Lustig of UCSF Medical Center, who have fingered sugar as the poison and, as he points out, a whole host of players at the table of blame:

1.The Health Insurance Industry, who will hound you to lose weight, but not pay for the process, because they point the finger at the individual.
2.The Obesity Profiteers (like Weight Watchers), who make $117B a year off of fat people. They do want some of us to be successful to hold our pictures up to the rest of us pathetic souls. But they really don't want to solve the problem for good.
3. The Commercial Food Industry, who took all the fat out of our food and pumped it full of salt and sugar to make up for it. Now HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) is in almost everything because it's a cheap way to get processed food to taste good. And sodium is pumped up in soda (and then more sugar added to mask the salt) to make you thirsty so you have to supersize your drink.
4. The Government, who told the food industry to take the fat out to begin with and continue to blame the individual...oh, and subsidize the corn growers so they can continue to pump more sugar into the food supply.
5. The Medical Community, who keeps telling us to eat broccoli, beans and wild salmon, and exercise until we drop (but in the dark, please, or we might get skin cancer). Red wine is good for you....oh, no, bad....oh, no good, really. But all things in moderation. Reminds me of the French who believe all things in moderation, especially moderation!
6. And us, the individuals, who either give up all together and become fat activists "Big is Beautiful" or just keep beating our heads against the wall, feeling worse about ourselves because we are such failures. Oh, and there's one other outcome for the individual, the saddest of all: those that go to Biggest Loser type boot camps where screaming meanies will publicly humiliate them while networks rack up the big bucks.

This is insanity. The problem according to Dr. Lustig is not the obesity. Twenty percent of obese people are perfectly healthy. On the other hand, an estimated 40% of normal weighted people are sick. The illness is called Metabolic Syndrome. Metabolic Syndrome is caused by our diet (which also happens to make many of us fat). And for that, there is a path to health. According to Dr. Lustig, the path is cutting the sugar and exercising, not because exercising will help us burn calories but because it will help balance our hormones. I already exercise. I will keep it up. And I will continue to cut the sugar as I continue to research this huge national (and personal) problem and try a new approach to turning it around.

Challenge; Day Three

How's the sugar challenge, you ask? We had friends over for dinner last night. The menu included steak, potatoes, grilled broccoli with mushrooms and salad. I skipped the potatoes, since I am already trying to cut down on carbohydrates in general. And since I love to cook and can control the menu, steak, broccoli, mushrooms and salad were all wonderful and very satisfying. I even put a little butter on my broccoli which I haven't done in twenty years, at least. My husband, however, stopped at Marie Callender's and bought a cherry pie (my favorite) and vanilla ice cream (my other favorite). Honestly, it wasn't that bad saying "no" to the dessert. But I'm only three days into it and so still very motivated.

In the last post, I recommended two books. Dr. Lustig is also featured in a UCSF TV series called: The Skinny on Obesity.  This is a seven part series, but the episodes are generally under 15 minutes each. Really, you can find a few minutes here and there to watch this. This is not just important if you are overweight. This is not an epidemic, but a pandemic, affecting all of the developed world and mostly our most precious asset, our children. I know I sound like I'm on a soapbox....well, maybe I am. And if you are not overweight, consider TOFI: Thin on the Outside; Fat on the Inside. According to the medical experts that are in the forefront of the fight on obesity, 40% of all normal weight people are getting fat on the inside. Forty percent and on the increase!!!

So was I completely successful? Well, that's debatable. I did have a couple of glasses of wine. So I looked this up. During fermentation, the sugar in wine is broken down into alcohol and yeast. The residual sugar in a glass of dry red wine is about 1 gram. Spirits is much less. So I guess martinis are in order......do I go too far? FYI, beer has no sucrose in it at all. The sugar in beer is maltose, which, apparently we metabolize just fine. Understanding how we metabolize sugars was also an eye opener, and helps explain why sugar really is addictive. According to some doctors, more addictive than cocaine or heroine. More on how we metabolize sugar in my next post.

And as for the wine? Well, I'm taking it one day at a time. I never claimed to be perfect!!

The Challenge

What a difference three months can make. In October of 2014 there was a lot of hoopla surrounding an initiative on the November ballot concerning a tax on sugared beverages in Berkeley. I, for one, thought this a ridiculous idea. But perhaps not for the reason one might think. It's not that I don't think sugared drinks are harmful, but rather, because I thought why stop at drinks? Why stop at sugared and not include those sweetened with artificial sweeteners? And, to be honest, there is always a part of me that gets a bit concerned when we try to legislate healthy behavior. But more on that later.

In September, I read a very fascinating book entitled The Big Fat Surprise. Written by Nina Teicholz, a journalist, I found it fascinating and it simply rang true for me. She pointed to a lot of research that suggests that it was actually the government's push for a low-fat diet that was actually the catalyst for the obesity epidemic we face today. Her point was that as the food companies reduced the fat from our foods, they added sugar to make the processed food palatable. Because Ms. Teicholz is not a doctor or trained nutritionist, she came under some degree of criticism. So I kept digging.

Enter Dr. Robert Lustig, Chief Endocrinologist at UCSF Medical Center. Dr. Lustig, in his book Fat Chance, echos much of what Teicholz claims. Sugar is the real culprit. In his book, as well as several YouTube videos, and even a full length documentary entitled, Fed Up, Dr. Lustig explains the science behind the claim and why sugar is really poison to our bodies and is making Americans not only obese, but very sick.

Fed UP

Google his name. Follow the links. There are several really good summaries in video form if you don't want to read the books. But in my opinion, these two books by Lustig and Teicholz should be mandatory reading for every parent, school administrator, doctor and every person that has ever struggled to diet and exercise with minimal to mediocre results. You will now understand, scientifically, what you have known in your heart for a long time. You do not eat more than your thin friends. You are not a gluttonous sloth whose terrible habits have made you fat. You have been filling yourself with poison that has made you fat.

I am all for being responsible for myself and the outcomes in my own life. Sometimes, you need to be educated to make that possible. And the education that the government and the USDA and FDA have been feeding us has been ALL WRONG!! Now, finally, I think there is a path forward.

I am taking the no-sugar challenge and cutting out all sugar for 10 days....hopefully more, but let's start with 10 and go from there. In the meantime, check out the links in this post. I urge you.

BTW, twenty years ago the public went on a campaign to get the government to regulate tobacco. Many of us, myself included (and yes, I was a smoker), were incensed that the government was going to try to regulate what was good for us.  Guess what? I finally caved and quit smoking along with hundreds of thousands of others world-wide. I am totally grateful and I am a hell of a lot healthier because of it.

Now let's tackle obesity.

The Secret of Stone Cottage

The new Mick Malone Mystery is now available for Kindle and in Paperback on Amazon.com.  The Secret of Stone Cottage takes Mick back to Scotland for his latest adventure. 

I had a lot of fun writing this one, including doing research on Tarot Cards (anyone want a reading?) and many of the mystical stone circles in Scotland. The more I read about these incredible man-made monuments, the more intrigued I got about what they were actually used for.  It has been over thirty years since I first visited Stone Henge near Salisbury, England. And there was an even more primitive stone circle in Avebury, England, a village only ten miles west of where I lived. Next to the stone circle, Avebury is a charming village with many activities that display what life was like in rural England many hundreds of years ago. Well worth a visit if you are ever in that neck of the woods.

In the middle of the circle, is a pub, the Red Lion. The locals, here, will tell you that the stones are identical to a ring of stones on Mars, lending fuel to the theory that these monuments were built by ancient aliens.  Well, honestly, there is a lot of evidence that makes this theory viable.

But back to the book. Mick and Jock are unraveling not only a current murder but also the disappearances of young women over the past twenty years. Detective Sergeant Galen Cullen joins them on another adventure, this time, based in the Aberdeenshire countryside.

Available in paperback and kindle versions. If you do read it, please let me know what you think. I am always interested in reader's feedback. Or better yet, please review it on Amazon. I would really appreciate your help to increase the number of reviews I have.

Thanks again to all of you that continuously send me good wishes. I really appreciate the support!!!

Regensburg and Kelheim

After another night of cruising, and more locks, we arrived in Regensburg which is a very interesting medieval city.  Another walking tour....sore feet but good for us since they feed us so well....through the narrow cobblestone streets, to see the ancient buildings and life along the river.

 And of course, another beautiful church, this time St. Peter's.

 We are learning much about the history and how south of the river was "civilization" brought by the Romans; north of the river were the barbarians. The oldest bridge in Germany is the Old Stone Bridge built in the 12th century. Unfortunately, this bridge is under renovation, so we couldn't cross it, but it was very interesting, nonetheless.  All along the bridge there are signs of the high water of the floods of 2012, when all the residents spent months cleaning up mud after the flood.  Where you see the plaster was washed away on the gate house shows how high the water was.

Near the bridge is the oldest restauraunt in Germany as well, the sausage house which is still in operation today (the green building).

After a great tour of Regensburg and lunch, we took a bus about thirty minutes outside of town to a small village of Kelheim. This was a village of very rich merchants, rich in the salt trade and breweries.  After a visit to another beer garden, we took a small boat down the Danube narrows where the river cuts a deep gorge and is only 80 meters wide to Weltenburg Abbey, where six monks still live and brew beer.

Atop the hill as you sail into the narrows sits a magnificent building, Independence Hall.

Nuremberg

From Prague we were bussed to Nuremberg. I must say, we were not looking forward to four hours on a bus, but we were pleasantly surprised.  The bus was only about half full, allowing everyone to spread out. It was very new and comfortable and the countryside in Czech Republic and later, in Germany was beautiful.

In Nuremberg, we boarded the Viking Idun for our river cruise down the Danube. If you are thinking about doing a river cruise, don't think twice.  The long boats are great, rooms nice, and service and food outstanding.  After a nice dinner and good night's sleep, we headed out the next morning for our tour of Nuremberg.  I must say, I was a bit sobered by the ruins of the Nazi stadium and meeting halls. Our guide was very knowledgeable and told the story of how Hitler was able to influence so many young people due to the dire economic circumstances that Germany found itself in after WWI. The Nazi party and flags and symbols are all illegal in Germany today.

After a sobering start to the tour, we were taken to the old town, to see the castle and look out over this pretty city.

In the afternoon, we returned to the boat for lunch and to start cruising through the many locks in the Main-Danube Canal. It is eerie and interesting at the same time, to sail into a huge concrete lock and then have the back door close and the lock fill with water.....slowly, slowly rising to the next level.

Prague

From London, we flew to Prague for a three-day visit before our cruise. Prague was largely spared during WWII and so much of the city is hundreds of years old. My first lesson learned, and the advice I will give is get a good guide!! We had a long, long walking tour of Prague on the first morning. More than once, during the 4+ hour tour, I thought I couldn't keep walking. But I did and I will always be thankful for that.  Prague, was occupied by the Nazi's during WWII, then liberated by the Russians after the war, only to be occupied some twenty years later by the Communists, and then, again liberated in the late 1980s. Now the economy is predominately based on tourism, and Viking has a huge presence there. Some of the things to see in Prague include Old Town Square:

This includes a lovely cobblestone square with small streets and shops all around.  One of the most interesting things to me was the market, which has been there since 1232 A.D.

Other must see sights are the Charles Bridge and Lobkowitz Palace. The Lobkowitz's were exciled during both WWII and the Cold War. The current owner, who was born in excile in Boston, moved back to Prague in the 1990's and was able to reclaim his family home. He and his wife are working hard to restore this beautiful palace and have opened it to the public. We were honored to be able to have a private lunch of goulash which was delicious and a private concert at the Palace.

Also a must is a walk over the Charles Bridge which is lined with statues of saints. This was the first bridge in Prague over the river Vltava and takes you from the edge of Old Town to Lesser Town which is at the bottom of Castle hill. Lesser Town floods often and you can see high water marks above the doors often on these old buildings.  Here, in Lesser Town, you will find the Kafka Museum, a very sobering visit if you are interested in his life and writing.

Don't forget to include the local pilsner, very nice! and goulash, sausages or duck. Yum!