Sometimes, working, I forget to eat. My friends don’t believe that you can forget to eat. They think if you don’t eat you get jittery and weak and blank in your brain – how can one work through that?
Then I remember that I used to be like that, too. To this day my family makes fun about the time I wanted to fast for a day, and broke the fast after three hours because I couldn’t go on – it felt as if I was falling apart.
The difference between being hungry and being in the grip of hypoglycemia lies in how healthy your metabolism is. When you are diabetic or prediabetic (and most Americans fall in either category), you are always looking for food. You cannot go without for any prolonged time. Most Americans, for that reason, do not only eat, but they snack in between. And, listen – I don’t blame them. Because if your metabolism is lousy (because of the Standard American Diet – or SAD) you NEED to eat frequent meals. Otherwise you fall apart. You feel you are hungry. In reality you are voracious because your cells are on a sugar rollercoaster.
This is how your metabolism – the sum of all the chemical and biochemical events in your body at any given time – functions if you eat SAD: You eat a load of sugar (white starches are chains of sugar molecules that are being digested within seconds of entering your mouth, filling you up with sugars, and more sugars). Your brain gets a nice sugar high. Insulin kicks in because high sugars are dangerous for your body (leading to blindness, impotence, heart disease, stroke, dementia, amputations, polyneuropathy, and so on). Since high sugars are so dangerous, your body shoots out much to much insulin. Next thing you know, your blood sugar is really low, and you feel lousy: weak, confused, shaky. What do you do? Well, you reach for another meal or a snack that starts the high-sugar/low-sugar cycle again. On the way, you gain weight because weight gain is the number one side-effect of insulin. And you go see-sawing through high and low blood sugars, never feeling top-fit and at your best potential.
What is the difference when your metabolism is healthy? You eat your three meals, and then you forget about it. You have energy to pursue what you love to do in life. And yes, sometimes you forget to eat because making music, or cleaning the yard, or making a scrapbook is so much fun.
What to eat to reach your perfect metabolism I have described in my diabetes book. But the main points are: Stop sugars and white starches (and don’t replace them with artificial sweeteners). Eat proteins and good fats in every single meal. Within a day or two, your body will experience the difference between hunger and hypoglycemia. When somebody around you says: “I am hungry,” I bet that in ninety percent they are talking the low-sugar jitters. Real hunger is different. Our ancient bodies are made to survive the normal periods of hunger and plenty of food. Our ancient bodies are not made to survive the overfeeding with sugars.
By the way, I didn’t say that you can just suppress that feeling of being “hungry” and ignore it. That is exactly the point: Hypoglycemia is a real condition, and really dangerous. Don’t try to starve when you come off a sugar high. Eat reasonably first. Then you can even put in a fasting day – as I can do now without difficulty. Or you can, once in a while, forget to eat altogether because you are so happily ensconced in a project that warms your heart. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
The French Paradox
May 20, 2011
We arrived in Paris on Sebastian Kneipp’s birthday – on the 17th of May and celebrated with a glass of wine. And a lunch consisting of three courses: Onion soup (minus the cheese and the bread), escargots (snails) in garlic, crème brulée. Not terribly healthy – but delicious.
Writing from Paris, of course, I want to talk about the French Paradox.
French people eat more fat (think triple brie and foie gras!), drink more wine (think a smooth Bordeaux!) and smoke more than their US counterparts (think Gauloises!), yet they die less of cardiovascular disease. American scientists dubbed this puzzle the French Paradox – and they have come up with some tentative explanations:
• The French surely are underreporting their cardiac deaths
• The French have their main meal at midday and take more time for it
• The French prefer wine over beer; wine contains healthy resveratrol
• The French don’t snack
• The French eat less trans-fats (frying)
• The French eat less hydrogenated fats (margarine, processed food)
• Perhaps saturated fats are not as bad as we thought
• The French eat less sugar, less HFCS, less white starches
• The French cigarette tobacco is not as adulterated American tobacco
• The whole study might be wrong
American scientists looked for the fat contents, the carbohydrates, the proteins to come up with an answer, missing the big, simple picture: fresh foods. Fresh food contains life-giving molecules beside the three biggies (fats, carbs, proteins). Those molecules are miniscule in weight, but hugely important in how they support health. We are from Nature, and throughout Evolution, we ate whole foods. Only modern “food” production has done away with Nature’s wisdom.
The three biggies were important when people were starving – if you don’t get fat and the other two, all the best polyphenols and anti-oxidants and other small plant molecules will not keep you alive. But now that we have plenty of food (which is a first in history – but don’t forget it is not yet true for every single person in the world), we need to turn to quality of food. Which needs we need to return to real food – the food Nature intends us to eat. And not to make it too difficult: It is mostly vegetables we need to bring back on our tables.
The French are eating real food; Americans are eating plastics masquerading as food. Don’t get me wrong – junk food is inching its way also into the French society. But overall, the French still go to the open market to buy fresh produce and freshly slaughtered chickens and fish. Except for the last item on the list, all the factors may play a role. But the main thing is the freshness of the food. The quality lies in fresh things, grown things – not concocted in the lab and manufactured in bulk.
And by the way, their cigarettes might be a tad healthier – but please don’t start your French new life with Gauloises! Read More
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