Sugar is NOT My Friend!

I won't say I gave up refined carbs for Lent, since I am not Catholic.  I will, however, say that I gave them up for approximately the 6 weeks before Easter in an effort to become more of what I believe God created me to be.

I'm a firm believer that God calls me to be a good steward of this body He has entrusted me with.  The truth is that I hadn't been doing a good enough job of that in the eating department. I didn't particularly like the idea of giving up refined carbs (white flour, sugar, white rice, etc.), but I really did feel that to do so would do nothing but good things for my health, so I relented and committed.

I found myself surprised by a bunch of things in the process, and have arrived at a conclusion as a result. (You will probably guess the conclusion, but I'll save it for the end of this blog, anyhow.)

Surprise #1- Giving up refined carbs was not as hard as I thought it would be. I was anticipating/dreading horrible cravings and withdrawal-type symptoms. Really, these were minimal. This was a relief.

Surprise #2- I lost NO weight in the process. I thought by giving up such non-nutritive food I might have a weight loss to report, and I do not. I am EXACTLY the same weight that I was at the beginning of the 6-week period. Turns out, you can get ample calories without processed carbs. Imagine that!

Surprise #3- My joints didn't hurt as much. I have arthritis in a knee, and some aches and pains in my upper right side due to past injuries. (These have nothing to do with weight lifting, by the way. I always hurt myself by doing normal stuff like walking down the street or talking on the phone.) Anyhow, I started noticing about a week into my "no refined carbs" period that I wasn't aching as bad. It never went away entirely, since the arthritis and injuries will always be there, but dang! Did it get a LOT better! I started doing some research and turns out that arthritis is a inflammatory condition. As a matter of fact, most prior injuries are aggravated by inflammation. Refined carbs are inflammatory foods. So it makes perfect sense that my condition improved.

Surprise #4- There is sugar in all sorts of stuff I normally eat and consider healthy. Case in point: I was munching away on the organic whole-grain bread I always buy. Suddenly it occurred to me that it takes some kind of sugar, whether white or molasses, to feed yeast so that it can rise. I took a look at the bag and, sure enough, "Organic Cane Sugar" was listed in the ingredients. Dang. This meant that bread also exited my diet.

Surprise #5- Sugar-free "treats" (i.e. candy) give me gas. Not worth it. 'Nuff said.

Surprise #6- Fried foods don't necessarily contain refined carbs. I had pretty much given up fried foods prior to my "no refined carbs" implementation, but suddenly I found myself gleefully filling in the carb gap with french fries. Thankfully I was able to identify this as problematic and knock it off in fairly short order, but I can see where that could have caused me to emerge from this whole thing with diminished health and a higher body fat percentage.

If you are paying attention, you have noted that in addition to the refined carbs, I also wound up giving up bread, sugar-free "treats" (which really left me nowhere to go at the movies but water, since I also don't drink soda), and fried foods. My very satisfying consolation was that I knew none of these "sacrifices" were bad for me. 

Surprise #7- My sleep improved. A LOT. I have often had issues with waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to get back to sleep for an hour or more. The only bonus to this is that I got a lot of recreational reading done. A few days into giving up refined carbs I was sleeping like a baby every night, not needing naps during the day (I used to nap like I was 85), and loving it! You know how much more you can get done when you aren't staggering through the day and have an entire extra hour in the afternoon to accomplish things? I didn't associate this with sugar until last night, which I will explain in the next paragraph.......

So, on Easter I allowed myself to eat refined carbs again. It actually kinda started the day before, because I was baking for Easter dinner and took a few licks and tastes. I could feel I was starting to mentally "let go", knowing that the next day I could eat whatever I wanted. That night I wasn't sleeping as soundly as usual and woke up several times aching where those old injuries are. I didn't make the connection until last night. I'd eaten plenty of goodies over Easter Sunday. My upper body was aching so bad that I went to bed thinking maybe I should have taken a Tylenol PM. I slept fitfully and finally woke up for real at 1:30am KNOWING I should have taken a Tylenol PM. The pain was easily twice what it had been the night before, and I was simply NOT sleepy. I read for at least an hour before I was able to go back to sleep.

And, turns out that when you haven't had refined carbs for a while they cause gas, too. I am certain that didn't help my sleep state, either.

And now I sit here, aching as I type, occasionally stopping to rub out or rotate my shoulder. I was hurting so bad when I woke up this morning that I foam rolled first thing. I almost lost my cookies when I lifted weights this morning, and all I had to eat for breakfast was the smallest bowl of oatmeal imaginable. I'm pretty sure that this is my digestive system continuing it's rebellion.

Conclusion? I'm going back to my "no refined carbs" rule. I've always been able to reason myself out of things like drug use and bulimia (neither of which I have ever done) because I could see nothing truly good that would come of it other than momentarily pleasure or relief. The negatives far outweighed the benefits. And now I see the same applies to refined carbs. Now, I'm not going to go checking Organic whole grain bread labels.  But when it comes to things like desserts and white bread, it will do nothing but benefit me to cut them out of my diet almost completely. If something is new, or it's a holiday and I know I won't see this food for another year, I'll try taking just a bite or two and leaving it. Honestly, I could have done that yesterday and been just as happy and a lot less miserable.

My point is not that everyone should give up refined carbs. We each have our own fitness path to walk. But maybe my experience can give someone else an "aha" moment and help them to not hurt, too.

Stability Ball Crunch Pointers

When doing ab curls on a stability ball (the big ones full of air), make sure you extend back over the curve of the ball, and only come up to where your head is just barely above parallel with the ground.

I see so many people start with their torso parallel with to ground (or higher!) and wind up almost sitting up on the ball at the top of the movement This pretty much negates the advantage of having a ball. You'd get a more intense ab contraction if you did regular ab curls on the ground.

Also, keep in mind that the closer together the legs are, the harder the move is. So legs together from heel all the way to upper inner thigh is the most advanced method of doing stability ball crunches.

Additionally, as with any ab exercise, keep the abs tight and engaged throughout the movement. When you don't let momentum take over and instead actively use muscle all the way through, the exercise becomes both more challenging and more effective.