Is Sugar The Real Poison In Our Diets

Sugar and Why I Quit

4 years ago when I was weighing about 49 kilograms and looking like death warmed up I was finally diagnosed (based on symptoms) with severe Candidiasis.  By this stage I had already established intolerances to wheat and dairy and had eliminated many things from my diet.  I could eat meat, vegetables and fruit and was having the odd serve of rice or corn.

So while I thought that nothing more could be eliminated from my diet I discovered that I needed to give up 1 more thing!

Is sugar the real poison in our diets!

Sugar – I don’t eat sugar!

Partly this was true.  I had not eaten processed sugar (white, raw, brown) in a long time.  So what was this 1 ingredient I needed to give up?

Fruit + my 2 teaspoons of honey that I had somewhere during the day either in my tea or drizzled over rice porridge.

I was not happy!  I love fruit! I was born in North Queensland and raised in mid-coastal Queensland.  I grew up on Mangoes, pineapples, bananas, melons, persimmons and every other conceivable fruit out there.

Fruit is good for you – right?  Yes and No!

The problem is we eat too much of everything including fruit. Many diets promote fruit as a food that can be consumed in great quantities. We eat it for breakfast, for lunch, as snacks, after dinner, in pastries and breads and in baking. In general fruit, like all foods should be eaten in moderation. Less is more. Even good things if eaten in huge quantities will cause our bodies to become unbalanced.

When I was told I could eat 1 green apple a day as part of my recovery plan from Candidiasis I was devastated but I did it and I got used to it for an entire 12 months.

What was funny though was at the end of the 12 month(Phase 1) period I couldn’t wait to reintroduce that 1 thing – fruit – more than 1 green apple per day.

I tried to keep to the (Phase 2) guidelines.  Introducing just kiwi fruit, berries and the occasional ruby grapefruit but really I couldn’t help myself.  Summer was here and I wanted to eat melons, and bananas and pineapples and mangoes.

The side effects weren’t good.  Immediately my symptoms returned.  Although nowhere near as bad as what I had experienced, it was enough to scare the pants off me as I did not want to go back to another candida infection.

So I cut back on the fruit and found an amount that my body could process and manage without too many side effects.

So is sugar the real poison in our diets. I had heard many things about sugar. A friend’s mother told me once that 1 teaspoon of sugar would kill off over 300 cells. I then heard about “Sweet Poison” written by David Gillespie.  But it wasn’t until recently when I read Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar that I fully became convicted that sugar both sucrose and fructose, really is not worth having in my diet. So convicted that I’m struggling to even bake sweet things for others that I love as I know it’s not helping their diets either. More on that later.

In the last few months as I have carved away at the excess weight that I had put on during the recovery period I had stopped all sugar and cut down on my fruit intake dramatically.  Combining that principle with a healthy diet of meat, dairy, vegetables, nuts and good fats and oils I am losing weight at an easy consistent pace.  My metabolic rate has increased and I’m able to burn fat like I used to.

If you are looking for an informative but easy read on the facts about sugar, I highly recommend Sarah’s book “I Quit Sugar”.

Sarah has a light hearted approach to the whole process of removing sugar from our diets. It’s written with the laymen in mind and if you buy the bundle you’ll get a whole heap of great recipes and tips on stocking up your pantry.

My only precaution would be that if you are suffering with what you know or think is Candidiasis then you will need to take out all sugar including the small amount of fruit as well as the rice malt syrup mentioned in a few of the recipes.  Remember sugar of any kind will feed candida.

Stevia is in my opinion still the safest option for candida sufferers to use as a sweetener as it contains no fructose, sucrose, maltose etc.  Basically it doesn’t convert to a sugar in your body and will help to regulate blood sugar as you give up the nasty sugars from your diet.

Coconut oil cannot go without a mention here.  Sarah highly recommends coconut oil as the top oil to cook with.  I highly recommend that you take a therapeutic dose (3 tablespoons per day) in order to cleanse, feed and rebalance your system.

I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson