Two High-Sugar Days–and My Low-Sugar Lunch Today

Because of a glitch, my post of yesterday on all the different ways I get my ideas out there in the world did not actually go out yesterday, so I don’t want to overload you, dear readers, with another long post. So I’ll plan to get the keto diet post out on Monday. (And, to be fair, I don’t have it written yet. But I’ve been doing lots of research!)

Anyway, yesterday and the day before I ended up with a sugar consumption of way more than the 25 grams that guidelines suggest. Thought it might be constructive for me to list how that happened, just so you can see how easy it is to overstep the boundaries.

So, Wednesday I went out to lunch with a friend to The Corner Bakery and had the “cafe” version of their chopped salad. It was very good and just the right size. Then my friend said, “I’m going to get a cookie. Can I get you one, too?” What a nice offer! I didn’t want to say “no.” So I said “yes,” and she brought me a toffee cookie, a big sugar cookies with bits of melted toffee in it. Delicious! I enjoyed every bite. But boy was I sorry for the rest of the afternoon. I was getting the symptoms of a sugar rush, which feels very much like heartburn. I didn’t have any test strips and so don’t know what my sugar levels were, but when I’ve felt like this before it’s been as high as 200. Not my friend’s fault! It was my responsibility to turn the cookie down. Later on I went online and looked up the sugar content both of my salad and my cookie, and found that the salad weighed in at 10 grams (from the dressing, I’m sure) and the cookie at 26. So I had consumed almost 1 ½ times the daily limit in the course of about an hour. But wait! There’s more! I had already consumed my usual 12-15 grams of sugar in my morning coffee via the tablespoon or so of maple syrup I put in it. So I had consumed double the daily limit.

Then yesterday I made my son a farewell breakfast before he headed back to grad school. What does he love? Coffeecake. My recipe has sugar in the batter and more sugar in the topping. As far as I can figure, my portion of the cake amounted to 25 grams, and then of course I had my regular coffee. So we’ll say that my consumption at breakfast was about 40 grams. Not as bad as the day before but still not great. One step I could have taken was to leave the maple syrup out of my coffee. I don’t like it as well that way, but I do like it okay and have drunk it that way before. Then I’ve just have said, “Okay, no more sugar for the day.”

Here’s the interesting thing: the only reason I’m so aware of my sugar consumption is my looming Type 2 diabetes. Without that wakeup call I’d probably still be stirring that 6 ½ teaspoons of sugar into my morning coffee (26 grams right there, almost as much as a can of pop and my entire allowance for the day) and putting as much syrup as I wanted on my pancakes or jam on my muffins or whatever. And that was just for breakfast! I can remember feeling a bit fuzzy-headed after one such breakfast and thinking, ‘Hmmm. I wonder if I feel this way because of all the sugar I just had?’ In reality, the 25-grams-per-day limit is supposed to be for everyone, not just for those who’ve been told they’re at risk for diabetes. (Note my wording here: those who’ve been told they’re at risk. In reality, we’re all at some risk for at least pre-diabetes and/or the dreaded metabolic syndrome.) With my numbers I’d probably be better off with a more draconian limit, but, as I’ve said before, being too extreme just causes the rubber band to snap back.

I plan to buy another Walgreen’s home A1C test on my birthday, March 31. If I want a good result I’d better get cracking! (As my mother used to say.) So this morning Jim and I had scrambled eggs with cheese, bacon, and whole-wheat toast with butter. (A keto dieter’s dream! Minus the bread, of course. More to the point, though, no added sugar at all.) And the picture is what I had for lunch, based on a recipe over at Pinch of Yum. I didn’t do exactly what she said, but I had the olives, marinated peppers, tuna, and lentils on hand and a lemon-based dressing I’d made that’s similar to my house Italian dressing. (Watch for a new post on this website giving a master recipe with variations for homemade salad dressing, but for now I’ll just say that if you want a lemon-based dressing like the one in this post you should substitute lemon juice for part of all of the red-wine vinegar, some good old lemon pepper in place of the Italian seasoning, and only a teaspoon of sugar.) It was pretty good, and would be something you could make the night before to take to work for lunch the next day. I’m not so sure about the tuna, but I had one can in the pantry and decided to use it up. My portion of dressing had perhaps one gram of added sugar at most. Lots of healthy fats and complex carbs as well.

Well, I’ve managed to write quite a bit for what was supposed to be a short post. I’d encourage you to start keeping a (rough) total of your daily sugar consumption. You may be shocked and surprised.

And here’s a video from the great Dr. Robert Lustig, the introductory one of a series he made back in 2012 or so. I posted this on Facebook yesterday and will continue to post one a day until I’ve put up the whole seven or eight, but you don’t have to wait for me to do that. Just follow the links to the side of this video to get the rest of them. If he doesn’t scare you, no one will!