I conquered my sugar addiction!

Over the past 7 months, I have lost 30 pounds by cutting out grains from my diet, decreasing my refined sugar intake and increasing my vegetable consumption. The diet goes by the name Paleo although I am not a hard-core Paleo advocate. My diet more closely follows The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson. I consume raw cream and a teaspoon of sugar in my coffee. I have a handful of chocolate chips sometimes. I eat cheese sometimes.

Anyway, last weekend we celebrated my oldest son’s 8th birthday and we bought cupcakes for the party. I didn’t have one. I was a little tempted because they did look and smell good. Honestly, I very rarely cheat because I love the foods that are allowed on this eating plan. And, by cheat, I mean eat pasta or bread or candy — okay, yes, chocolate chips come close to candy The next day there were 5 cupcakes left — one for each member of the family. I decided to have one as an experiment — I’m serious. I wanted to see how my taste buds and body reacted to a cupcake. I enjoyed the cupcake but it didn’t knock me off the wagon. I told my husband that if someone offered me a cupcake tomorrow that I could easily decline it. What a victory! I have come to the conclusion that I have conquered my sugar addiction. My taste buds do not crave lots of sugar anymore. I really do enjoy all of the tasty vegetables, herbs, eggs, grass-fed meat and spices that I eat everyday. I have displaced the nutritionally-inferior foods of my past (grains and sugar) with nutritionally-superior foods and I can’t imagine ever going back.

As I’ve stated in a previous post about why I love this diet, I failed to stay on the Atkins diet 10 years ago because I didn’t address a root problem of mine — my sweet tooth. On Atkins, I consumed a lot of artificially sweetened shakes, bars, and candy.

Have you conquered a sugar addiction? Have you had a weight loss success?

Please consider subscribing to my blog or following me on Twitter @thecrunchymama if you liked this post. Have a great day!

News Consumption Disorder: symptoms, diagnosis and cure

Reblogged from Rethinking Childhood:

• 
• 

What role does news coverage play in shaping the way we think about the risks children face? Is a diet of bad news really bad for us, and if so, what can we do about it? These questions were on my mind after Monday night’s engaging debate on modern childhood organised by my old employers the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) to launch its 50th anniversary celebrations.

Read more… 1,215 more words

Thanks to Rethinking Childhood blog for this post! Great points in there. I personally do not consume television programming anymore -- not the news, not TV shows. We cancelled our incoming TV signal and I have NEVER regretted it!

30 lbs lost since last October!

Greetings, my friends! I thought I’d post an update on my grain-free, low-sugar, high-vegetable, etc. diet (aka Paleo/Primal diet) journey. I am still loving this eating plan and, in my opinion, it is the most-nutrient dense diet.

Anyway, when I started back in October 2012, I had 110 pounds to lose. I’ve lost 30 pounds so far. I weigh myself only once a month. This past month I lost 4 pounds, which I was thrilled with because I have been terrible about exercising at the gym. But I have been outside a lot working on the homestead. I have been incorporating more and more wild edibles from my property into our meals including ostrich fern shoots and fiddleheads, garlic mustard, young raspberry leaves, and violet blooms. You can read more about that on http://crunchymamasurbanhomestead.wordpress.com/.

Hubby has lost about 35 lbs!

5 Dragon Slaying Strategies for a More Simple Life

Reblogged from Survival Sherpa:

by Todd Walker

Photo credit

We’re all chasing something: Success, sex, drugs, food, fame, God, happiness, coffee, contentment, justice, peace, war, survival, sugar, acceptance, health, fitness, our own tails, and . In our dizzily paced world of modern convenience and technology, it’s so easy to become addicted to chasing the dragon.

The phrase "chasing the dragon" refers to inhaling the vapor from heated…

Read more… 1,334 more words

Great post! Check out my comment at the end of the post.

In defense of my Primal “diet”

I commented on a blog post by Katie Kimball who questioned the need for high-powered blenders. See here.  I said: “Not me!  Hubby and I started paleo/Primal back in October (and LOVE it).  Our $30 blender does our kids’ smoothies just fine.  We don’t eat many seeds (some nuts, ZERO grains or legumes) nor do we do any baking with nut flours.”

GreatMrG replied to my comment: “No no no!!! Paleo/Primal is just one of the new “low carb” fad diets that may seriously endanger your health.   Mark Sisson’s ‘Primal Blueprint’ is just a calorie restriction program where people get starved of carbs and calories and get some atkins style results. He is another conman with a ‘caring smile’.
What you want is a high carb/low fat diet.  Please read “80 10 10″ by Douglas Graham, it could save your life.  You should be eating tons of fruit, some green veggies, and cutting out the animal protein altogether.
The REAL caveman diet was: – 95% of calories from fresh fruit, 5% from green leaves. – 80-90% of calories from carbohydrates. Protein & fat make up the rest.
No one should torment themselves trying to stick to any diet, but just try to eat a much fruit & veg as you can.”

To which I replied: “Northern primitive people ate almost exclusively meat because there are not many fruits and veggies in the far North.  They would die of starvation trying to follow your recommendations.  They did just fine and without pharmaceuticals on their ultra-low-carb diet.
I’m all for each person finding out what foods are right for their own bodies and their own health.  You will not change my mind by your comments.  I eat amazing real food — grassfed meat, LOTS of veggies and some fruit AND, here’s the best part, I don’t have to convince YOU or anyone else that my eating choices are the right ones for me.  I listen to my body — grains and beans did not do my body good — and I feel a zillion times better now that I do not consume them.
Furthermore, I won’t eat TONS of fruit (although I do eat some) because 1. I don’t want my insulin to spike all the time and 2. any vitamins, mineral and nutrition that you tell me is in a particular fruit I can tell you a vegetable or combo of vegetables that will give me those nutrients WITHOUT the insulin spike.
And your last sentence leaves me scratching my head.  I LOVE the foods that I eat on my “diet” and do not feel deprived at all.  Good food, good health and good relationships are what I call a happy life — and, thank You, Lord, I have all of those in abundance.
Feel free to debate me on this but again you won’t change MY mind,  just as I don’t expect to change your mind.”

Then I added: “Okay, one more comment in defense of my particular paleo/Primal/no-grain “diet” (because everyone’s choice of foods is different). The foods that I consume every day (the flesh of pastured animals, the flesh of plants but not the seeds, and pastured eggs from my backyard hens) are nutrient-dense. I would not hestitate for a moment to compare the nutrient value of my foods to the foods of someone who eats a lot of grains and legumes (which are inferior to flesh foods). Why are they inferior? Anti-nutrients: lectins, gluten and phytates. It is true that most people can sustain themselves on grains and legumes, but my argument is that those foods are inferior and not nearly as nutritious as flesh foods (incl. the flesh of plants). I do not believe that grains and legumes can give me the health and vitality that flesh foods can, thus I buy and eat with great enjoyment the more nutritious flesh foods that give me amazing health.”

Why Paleo/Primal was an easy choice for me when I decided to tackle losing 110 lbs.

My background with low carb diets:

The first time I had heard about the Atkins diet was when my mom lost 50 lbs. on it back in the mid-90s.  I went on it so that I could lose enough weight to join the Army (where I met my wonderful hubby).  It was only a short-term fix for my life-long slightly overweight problem [which I blame on the "eat everything on your plate" mentality of my father's family.  Not hating on them but the fact that that was drilled into our heads when we ate definitely impacted my brain and my fat cells.]  In the years after 2000, I put the weight back on (and more).  I decided to go on Atkins again in January 2003.  By August, I was looking great   But as I moved into the years of having babies starting at the age of 30, the weight crept back up.

Up until a few months ago, I didn’t have much motivation to attempt to lose the 110 lbs. that would get me to the top of my weight range for my height.  I had even given up going to the gym this past year because the exercise never seemed to produce any visible results.  I despise keeping track of calories or points or anything really.  While I’ve heard many people rave about Weight Watchers, I’ve just never felt drawn to that program.  The only diet that I believed would work for me was Atkins but I really didn’t want to “do Atkins” again for a few reasons.  First, since I became a whole foods foodie in 2006, I have shunned artificial sweeteners as well as soy.  When I did Atkins in 2003, I was addicted to the Atkins (candy) bars and soy shakes; both the bars and the shakes are made with soy and Splenda.  I can remember the feeling of lusting after those (candy) bars that were technically legal.  So, when I would think about Atkins to lose weight again, there was just a block there.  It was too fake for me and too obsessed with keeping carb counts super low.

A year or so ago, I had borrowed from the library The No Grain Diet by Joseph Mercola.  It didn’t move me enough to follow it.  But it was a seed planted, I believe.   But for the meantime, I just ignored my weight problem (which was easy to do since I was actually very healthy otherwise — good blood pressure, no diabetes or even pre-diabetes, etc. — because we eat no processed foods and only whole foods made from scratch (even bread) and usually organic).

About the same time as I moved toward being a whole foods foodie, my political/philosophical journey to libertarianism began.  By 2012, I was a full-blown libertarian and getting Lew Rockwell’s daily email (with articles from various contributors on a variety of topics).  There would be at least one health topic in each day’s list.  Sometimes by Joseph Mercola and by some guy named Mark Sisson.  Occasionally I would read them since I am big into natural health.  Every once in a while there would be an article on “going Paleo” or “going Primal” but I wasn’t really interested until I saw this post: The Anarchist’s Diet by William Green.  What?!  I just had to read it with a title like that.  He mentioned Mark Sisson’s book The Primal Blueprint in his post but I still had no desire to look into it more or even go on the paleo diet.  But it was another seed planted.

So, when my husband said to me in mid-October that he needs to “go low-carb” again so that he can lose some weight, I replied that I would do it with him.  But I wasn’t going to do Atkins, I was going to “go primal.”  I returned to Lew Rockwell’s site and did a search for the articles that I had seen: The Paleo-Libertarian Connection, The Disappearance of the Fat Libertarian, Libertarians Going Paleo (Primal) as well as The Anarchist’s Diet.  This led me to Mark Sisson’s website where I got the big picture of how to “go primal.”  I was so excited that I started the diet the next day and have not “cheated” since.

I LOVE this diet because I already loved eating lots of veggies (since I learned how to cook them in wonderful ways, starting with this guest post by Diana Bauman The Mediterranean Secret to Phenomenal Vegetables.  And we already purchase grass-fed beef, pork and lamb from an amazing local grass-based farm (even though you can use store-bought meat if you don’t have access to pastured meat).  And we have 10 backyard hens who give us AMAZING eggs with deep orange yolks (so good for my 3 boys’ developing brains).  We already take cod liver oil.  I already make every meal from scratch (and it helps that I really do love cooking).  So, for me to switch to this diet was easy — just cut out the grains and lower the sugar dramatically.  Eat more veggies to replace the grains (if need be).

The biggest hurdle for me was a mental one.  I really LIKE some sugary things.  Grains would be no problem for me to give up forever but giving up my 1 Tablespoon of sugar in my coffee would be really hard as would the occasional sweet treat (which I do NOT keep in the house because I would eat the whole batch of whatever).  I’m convinced that sugar is like a drug — that it can take over my brain when I start eating something sugary (more to say on this in another post).  Anyway, I gave up coffee for a few weeks.  After reading that Mark Sisson uses 1 teaspoon of sugar in his coffee, I thought I would try and see if I could enjoy my coffee with 1/3 of the sugar that I particularly enjoyed having in my coffee.  I was very surprised that after several weeks of no sugar that 1 teaspoon of sugar in my coffee was actually pleasant.  Woo-hoo!

I’ve lost over 10 lbs. since I started but I weighed myself for a few weeks now so I cannot tell you my up-to-date progress is as far as the scale.  Additionally, my husband measured my hips, waist and ribcage when I started and then a few weeks ago and there were several inches lost!!!  I took before pictures but I’m just not ready to post them for anyone to see yet.  Maybe when I’m a lot closer to my goal weight

This post is already long enough so I will plan to share other thoughts, successes, and tips in future posts.  Cheers!

How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm by Mei-Ling Hopgood

Since I began my journey into crunchy mothering (when I was pregnant with my second child in 2007), I often wonder how other cultures (especially more “primitive” cultures) raised their children.  Seriously, how DO Eskimos keep their babies warm?  I marveled at the thought of Sacagawea wearing her growing newborn on her back as she helped the Lewis and Clark team trek west in the wilderness.  I’d think about babies being born and raised in jungles and deserts and the tundra — YIKES.  Why was it so “hard” for me to raise my little one with all the modern conveniences?

I stumbled upon Mei-Ling Hopgood’s new book How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm: And Other Adventures in Parenting (from Argentina to Tanzania and everywhere in between).  For the most part, I loved this book.  Some of the chapters went a bit long but overall I am so glad that I stumbled upon and read this book.  As I’ve long believed, no one culture has the “perfect” way to raise babies.  And I had come to the decision that I would take the things from other cultures that resonated with me and blend it in with my family’s developing culture.  I also had to learn to accept that MY way was not the “perfect” way for others and that they too had to develop their own family culture.  So, basically, I had to learn to not judge others for not cloth diapering, for using a stroller instead of a baby-carrying sling, for not breastfeeding their babies until they were 3 years old, for letting their kids eat “fake” food, for not co-sleeping, for vaccinating their children, for not homeschooling, etc.

So, in her conclusion, Hopgood writes: “The experience of looking at parenthood through the eyes of parents in different cultures has opened my mind and challenged some of the beliefs and practices that I’d held pretty tightly.  Hearing and seeing what others do differently made me rethink what I thought was right. Sometimes it reinforced what I thought, and sometimes it changed me completely.  Regardless, I’ved collected some invaluable pieces of knowledge to compose the ideals and practices that work for us.”

And: “While no culture can claim to be the best at any one given aspect of parenting, each has its own gems of wisdom to add to the discussion…We may or may not adopt what another family in another culture or place does, but we can take comfort in knowing that there really is more than one good way to get a baby to sleep, transport her from place to place, and feed her…While there are some univeral standards of how a child should be treated, there are many ways to be a good parent in the world.”

What are some of the non-mainstream parenting practices that you have included in your family culture?