If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you know that I’m a huge fan of Gretchen Rubin. I’ve read her three books on happiness and habits numerous times, and I hear my voice in my head as I do so. One of her key insights, especially relevant when it comes to healthy eating habits, is the divide between what she calls “moderators” and “abstainers.” (She and her sister have started doing a weekly podcast called “Happier with Gretchen Rubin,” and I was tickled that today’s episode includes a segment about whether or not to keep ice cream in the freezer which centers around this very divide.) I am mostly an abstainer, just like the listener who called in with the ice cream question, which means that I do better at controlling bad habits when I just abstain entirely, or almost entirely, from them. I do find it possible to eat just one chocolate truffle. And my little “eat only one dessert a week” mantra also works pretty well. BUT . . . if I overstep those bounds very much at all then I plunge into trouble. I can’t break the rules just a little bit; I break them a lot.
sugar
Who’s Your Sugar?
Fed Up, a documentary produced by Laurie David (who also produced An Inconvenient Truth), directed by Stephanie Soechtig, and narrated by Katie Couric. Available through Amazon, YouTube, and Netflix. All of these links are to paid services. You can watch a trailer here on YouTube.
I owe my viewing of this documentary to the fact that I got bored watching an episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and started browsing. Since Netflix knows all, the documentaries I was presented with mostly had to do with food, and this one sounded interesting. I started watching and was completely captivated; about a week later I re-watched it, this time with Jim and Gideon.
Some good news, but . . .
. . . no free pass.
I wrote early in January about my higher-than-expected blood sugar levels and my intention to be very strict about sugar intake during the month and then get the further testing the doctor recommended. The second test was done on Feb. 3 and I got the results later in the week. Fasting blood glucose was 99, which is just one point below the 100-125 range that is considered pre-diabetes, so I’ve apparently moved back down out of the danger zone. But not by much. My insulin level was 2.6, which is apparently quite good. If you have high fasting insulin levels, especially above 5.0, you almost certainly have insulin resistance; that is, your cells don’t take up glucose easily and so your pancreas has to pump out more and more insulin to get blood sugar down. But of course you have to have enough insulin. I’ve been finding it difficult to get a good take on how low is too low. There was no indication in the report that anything was amiss with this number, though, so I guess I’ll take it as okay.
The Truth About Sugar
Sweet Poison: Why Sugar Makes Us Fat by David Gillespie, Penguin Books, 2008. Link is to the book’s page on the author’s website. Some parts of this website are subscription only.
You’ll find quite a few books about food and nutrition as this book blog continues. (I’m reading a book titled The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat & Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet; it should show up soon.) David Gillespie is the most accessible writer I’ve found on the subject of the evils of sugar. Robert Lustig’s Fat Chance and Gary Taubes’ Why We Get Fat: and What to Do About It are both good resources but very dense. You have to be pretty interested in the subject already in order to be motivated to plow through them. Gillespie, on the other hand, is funny, smart, and brief, and he plentifully illustrates his ideas from his own experience. I have to admit that I did a little skipping in the chapter “Biochemistry 101,” but he does an admirable job of explaining the actual processes by which our bodies transform food into energy.