Understanding Blood Sugar, Hunger & Mood

Came across this three part video series that does a really good job in explaining the effects of sugar in the blood stream and how it affects insulin, mood and hunger.

 Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Packed up my starches and going full on with eggkins

I guess today is the day!

I packed up what starches I had left (that I was keeping just in case – of what exactly?) and out of the house they are going.

As I had posted in another entry, I was weaning out one way of eating and incorporating another, the eggkins way. A low carb, moderate protein and now I have decided (after visiting Peter Attia’s site War On Insulin ) a higher saturated fat eating lifestyle with eggs in place of all land animal protein and some fish protein.

If you look at this page you’ll see what foods can be eaten on a high fat, moderate protein low carb eating lifestyle.

Fat does a body good.

 

 

To carb, or not to carb

That is the question isn’t it?

When did “carb” get to be a four letter word dreaded and reviled so much so that there is a multi-billion dollar industry based on the premise that all carbs are bad.

Is a cup of broccoli with melted butter as bad as a warm slice of sugar pie with ice cream?

Or a chunk of cheese as bad as a slice of cake?

I know which one I’d like to have, but then what? The rest of the cake would find its way on my plate. The ice cream would slowly disappear (coincidentally) every time I go into the kitchen.  Well, you know what I’m taking about. All of the mentioned food items above have carbs. How many carbs isn’t the real question. The question is what are those carbs made up of and how do they affect the body once ingested. And for those wanting to lose weight, how processed carbs keep us from loosing fat.

The human body was created to run as efficiently as possible. To absorb as much energy as it can and expel as little energy as it can while storing the rest for times of famine.

Let’s look at the broccoli with butter; broccoli is unprocessed, contains fiber and small amounts of natural sugars. Add butter and it becomes a satiating food that takes hours to digest, not to mention how the fat in the butter satisfies your pallet. You can eat a bowl of broccoli and that’s that. Your tummy stops growling and it is happy. You don’t crave more broccoli. Your blood sugar doesn’t sky rocket and your body doesn’t dump a lot of insulin to regulate the invading sugar. Your body has to work to get the natural sugars out of the fiber and fat mixture, it stays happily busy for the next few hours.

Let’s look at the warm sugar pie with ice cream. The pie alone is highly processed; white flour crust made with lard, cream, sugar and fillers make up the creamy filling. The ice cream is sugar, milk/cream, coloring, preservatives and has a chemical compound (much like anti-freeze) added to it so it doesn’t freeze solid. So you eat it, and it tastes so good.  There isn’t any fiber to slow down the absorption of the sugar into your bloodstream. The processed sugar goes straight to the brain and gives you an instant “feel good” feeling. Insulin is manufactured and dumped into the blood stream to try and get the invading offender out as quickly as possible. Your body stores what it can’t get rid of as fat and your hips get bigger, your stomach stretches a bit more and although you’ve just eaten sugar pie with ice cream, your brain tells you “have some more”, so you do. You crave more and the cycle  repeats until you are so uncomfortably bulging that the physical sensation stops you before the “full” trigger is activated.

I’ve done this more times than I care to admit.

So, are all carbs created equal?