Goodbye Sugar
 

I haven't been on here in awhile on a consistent basis and have decided to come back and play. Like many on here my weight has been all over the map for most of my adult life and as I'm getting closer to the big 50 I have decided that really enough is enough. I've done many diets over the years and have lost hundreds of pounds and gained hundreds of pounds. The last diet I did was Keto and IF, I lost a lot of weight starting at 250 and getting so close to non Clyde at 201, this was just last year. Well I just couldn't keep it up, I was dying on the bike with anything over an hour of hard riding and I was really not liking all the restrictions. So a few weeks before Xmas I went and seen my doctor to ask for some honest input and he said the most basic thing you can do to loose weight is cut out sugar, not fruit but sugar. Ok I say what are we talking about. So basically no foods that are heavily processed, no juice, no sugar "obviously", no honey, maple syrup, and any other sweetener. Also no white rice, pasta or bread or booze. You can have bread but has to be whole grain and of coarse no sugar in ingredients. He also advised to use and calorie tracker app. I'm using MyFitnessPal. So on January 1st my new lifestyle begun, first day was nothing, second day, easy. Third day, whoa what a minute what's wrong with me felt light headed and in a fog kinda like I was lost in my own body! Fourth day I got a headache and I won't lie it lasted for four days! I have had some craving and actually just last night dreamt I was at an all you can eat dessert buffet...lol. So to be honest I'm actually not struggling at all now since the headache has gone other than I would like a Rum and Coke. Here is what I can say so far on any weight loss. I have lost 19.2 pounds from 248 to 228.8 but more importantly is I feel amazing, like better than I have in years actually I don't remember every feeling this good. Not just healthy and energy but in my head good. He advised me to do 30 day cycles as in 30 days no sugar then do 2 days where have whatever you want just don't go crazy. Next Friday we are have a dinner party with dinner being an old fashioned fish fry which in my parts includes batter and beer along with home fries and sourdough bread.I'm almost not looking forward to it. I have also signed up for a few races this year on my gravel bike and I don't like coming last and a Time Trial bike is being considered. I wil be on this post at least once a week to update and will visit forum daily. It's such a great place for us Clydes to help each other out.

No sane person will argue that all the artificial sugar is good. So cutting that out will be good with any sort of diet you like.

One thing to look out for are all the hidden sugars. Sure, soda, candy etc. have sugar and everyone knows that. But look at all the salad dressings, meat sauces - they all contain tons of sugar,... especially if you eat out you will get a lot of sugar with meat or whatever you actually order. As a general rule the more processed the more sugar they add. Low-fat food is even worse since the fat (that had the taste) was removed and the food would taste like cardboard, so they added sugar.

Congratulations on your progress and keep up the good work! I agree with your (and your doctor's) suggestions that sweets, potatoes, pasta, white rice, white bread give you a carbo high and then when the crash comes soon after, you are hungrier than if you didn't east those things. I also agree that it's not necessary too be *too* strict in general, and it can be counterproductive if you feel bored or deprived with a perfectly rigid diet. Just try to be sure that the "sin foods" are the exception and not the rule. I am down 12lb in 3 weeks. I keep a food diary and during the week try to limit things to an average of 1,300 calories, and on Saturday and Sunday allow myself to get up around 1,600 calories.

I'm lucky as I learned to prep and cook food at a young age and worked in food industry from farm to table, therefore I do all the cooking and make most of my own dressings, mayo etc. It's my sweet tooth, chip tooth and booze tooth that got me where I am. I was at a high of 315 in 2006 and have creped over 250 a few times since but I honestly think I have finally got my addictions under control.

Just to add some more info or details to my post. I'm 47 closing in on 48, June 17, I work in a factory working fourteen twelve hour shifts on a 2 and 3 continental shift starting at 5:30. I have two sons, both who ride but prefer to fish one actually raced at a pretty high level and competed on a few junior teams and did Tour de Rimouski. My partner and I have many hobbies and we both ride and have a tandem which she loves on the days she's not feeling good, we also hike, paddle everything and generally love the outdoors. We both struggle with weight but are very strong riders logging thousands of km every year. I do some racing but all on gravel or MTB as well as time trials which I average between 37-39kph for the 16k. My goal outside of weight loss is to do a sub 22 minute TT and to get over 10000km this year. My ultimate goal is to get to 180lbs and maintain it till my 50th BD at which point I will order a new road bike. Cheers and good luck to everyone who has goals set and congrats to those who have meet them.

Fantastic !!! keep it up.

I make sure I tell my server that I don't want sugar on my steak or whole fish.

I dunno. "Mom & Pop" places seem just as likely to use processed/food service products. (E.g., bottled dressings and sauces.) Hard to imagine Beulah making her own vinaigrette for the iceberg lettuce salad. :D

I'll only eat a chain when I am desperate, (e.g., When I am travelling and have no alternatives.), which rarely happens. One reason why I cut down on eating at middling places is because I got tired of paying that prices I was paying for something that I could make better at home. When I dine out now it's almost always at a very good place. Otherwise, I am more than content with whipping up something like a swordfish steak and sautéed spinach and garlic for dinner. (Yes. Those are cabrs on that plate, and I am still alive.)

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b6cf0dfafd.jpg

I did the same thing in October and stuck with it long enough for it to become what they would call a "lifestyle change". Luckily for me, I didn't have a big sweet tooth. What I did have was a flavored creamer - coke - and Blue Bell ice cream tooth. A 2L of soda in the fridge was a dangerous thing - it would be gone in a couple days. Going out to eat included 2-3 Cokes at a minimum.

I credit my MIL for making me think about it. She is addicted to sweet tea - at least 2 LG Mcdonald's sweet teas per day. I started keeping an eye on my portion sizes and when talking about it she said "I drink all my calories." I thought about it and I did both. Honestly I didn't realize how much sugar I was taking in on a daily basis.

Started at 248 with a low sugar and 2500/cal day diet and was 230 and feeling good enough to get back on the bike by Christmas. That was with no exercise at all.

Weighed in a 217 this morning and have been feeling better than ever on the bike. Did a 40 miler on Sunday and felt great - the most I've ever done was a metric century that I suffered through at 210lbs a few years back.

I now enjoy my coffee with a splash of milk, drink sparkling water with meals and have 1 Halo Top per week if I get the craving.

It took about a month for the cravings and feelings of death to subside and they haven't returned. The cool thing is that your calories go so much further without all the sugar. Eating until I pop on one of those days is still under 2500/cal and a normal day is sub 2K according to the LoseIt app that I use.

I saw the topic - sugar and had to open this 'though not a clyde. (I heard a small voice say when I was a freshman long ago that I should never weigh more than 160 pounds; that my body and bones simply could not handle it. I've touched 165 maybe a half dozen times since.)

In my 20s, my biggest season as a bike racer, I read the book Food for Fitness published by Rodale Press (Bicycling). It stressed sucrose aka white sugar as the enemy. I eliminated it completely while still eating fruit and honey. About a month away from sucrose, I ate some (forget the form) and rode. Wow! Blood sugar skyrocketed. I hardly needed any device to tell me that. Rode like I had rocket fuel, then crashed to below where I started. And the immediate thought - this is a drug; at least for me. (I used it as a drug that summer, for one purpose - if I bonked 50 miles from home, one sugared cup of coffee would get me home. And yes,I'd pay the price.) I realized all my previous life I'd been keeping my tolerance nice and high by consuming real amounts of that drug every day so I was never noticing where it was keeping me.

I'm not a saint. But I have never come anywhere near my old consumption in the 40+ years since. I eat fruit and honey, but I noted then and still do that my blood sugar rises from them but does not spike and it gradually goes back to normal unless I am riding when it falls gradually to wherever I take it. Yes, quality carbs can be a godsend on long and hard rides. Now there are synthetic sugars that hadn't been invented when that book was written, They are probably worse than sucrose. I apply the same philosophy to the them as I do to sucrose. (I have a theory that since mankind couldn't get sucrose in meaningful amounts until we started processing foods, the body never "learned" to use sucrose as a healthy food source. Fructose occurs naturally in foods we can and I do eat lots of (but only in the fruit or honey). I suspect kids were eating themselves sick on berries off the bush a million years ago. I certainly did every time I got a chance, which in New England, was rarely

I go buy 10 lb bags of regular white sugar but all of it goes to the hummers in my back yard or down the drain as I refill their feeders with fresh. My 2 year round birds and two summer birds consume the whole bag in just over a year. Not bad for a half ounce of animal. Roughly 150 times their body weight. And I believe they go to other restaurants also. (Hummingbirds have been going to the source for large amounts of straight sucrose for a very long time - that tiny drop of nectar in every flower. For that 3 gm bird, that is a very large ice cream cone. As a kid I used to love to pluck honeysuckle flowers and suck the bases dry. But I would have had to denude an entire plant to get a teaspoon of sugar.)

Ben

How do you know your "blood sugar rises"? Do you measure it or evaluate in some way?

That, alone, will do it. Congrats on your renewed journey!

I'm a clyde-emeritus --back in The Day I was 240 at my heaviest. Now I drift towards 190 during winter, usually settling back to lower 180s as the weather permits more riding. For me, it was also being very aware of sugar, and my mantra has been "nothing white" for years now. Breads, pasta (though I love pasta, I just have to keep it to one portion instead of three), white rice, mayo, etc. I also cut cheese out a few years ago.

Sadly, beer still happens, and more so in the last year as I weaned off of a solid bourbon streak. I just have to be aware of the intake and adjust other carbs accordingly.

Again, congrats and yes, biking is SO much more enjoyable as the weight comes off!


A note on riding during IF -- don't go hard. Riding while IF is a good fat burner and trains your body, but you can't go hard. A 2hr z2/lower z3 ride while IF a couple times a week rocks for weight loss and training fat burning. If you get into upper z3/z4, you're effectively running on fumes, that's a no-no. As you add carbs back into days when you ride longer/harder, those IF days pay off.

Good for you. Home made mayo is awesome. It's not hard to make, and you can flavor it so many ways.

Wow this is inspirational and very close to my heart! Well done OP on the weight loss. I too am overweight. My last HBA1C was borderline diabetic and I need to do something now. I'm 150kgs about 330lbs.

i tried a few diets in the past but could never stick to them. Most recently I did the Keto diet and for 2 weeks it was a breeze. IIwas super motivated and positive and then I don't know what happened. My head and body went somewhere I never want to go again. Like it was crazy scary. I was sick and so down for 3 days. Keto flu maybe but I've had the flu before, even had the norovirus and they were a breeze compared to this!

So OP you have motivated me to try this. Instead of getting rid of all carbs, I will try the sugary processed variety. I don't trust a diet that disallows strawberries anyway:)