I’m A Food Moron.

It’s true. I don’t know how to cook. Cooking is something I can do, if only I had a clue. What I can do well is bake some delicious cookies. Now that sugar is out I have to learn to make some delicious foods.

Whole Foods offers free cooking classes, but what I need are simple ideas that are quick, easy, and healthy. I’m a product of the product generation. I can heat TV dinners, frozen plates, and even fry something in a pan. I can stir a wok, toast some bread, and maybe even mix up some dressing. But it’s got to be quick.

I’ve never been one to make time to cook a meal because usually it’s just me alone so preparing something complicated is overwhelming and time consuming. I eat little bits throughout the day and like super simple healthy snacks.

Build You Up or Break You Down?

Whenever you are tempted to eat sweets, ask yourself if you are building yourself up or breaking yourself down by the food that you are taking into your body to become you.

Which do you want your muscles to be like?

This:

Or this:

I Eat Cheerios

I’m not sugar free. I eat Cheerios with rice milk. Rice milk converts to sugar during digestion and Cheerios flat out contain sugar. I still eat fruit. I eat pasta and bread. I still eat natural peanut butter and fruit spread (sweetened with fruit juice) sandwiches. I have been eating all of this stuff since I quit sweets on November 3rd. So yes, I still consume sugar.

The more I write about this the more I want to stop eating Cheerios out of principal, but they don’t make me want to binge. I don’t sit down and finish off a whole box of Cheerios in one sitting, although I can eat several bowls. Thing is, I don’t know how NOT to eat sugar but I do know how to stop eating sweets.

The first step in my year long process was to cut out my trigger foods. Chocolate is my strongest trigger food. Chocolate makes me feel good, it makes me want more, and next thing I know it’s my whole diet. The rest of my trigger foods are listed in the first post of this blog.

So during the first few weeks of going off the heavily processed sweets, I opt for the complex carbohydrates and that includes Cheerios. I don’t know any other way besides moving to a desert island. (I really want to be on dessert island!)

Why am I telling you this? So that you don’t think I’m a miracle on the other side of your computer somehow surviving on water and air. This is a process. This is my process.

Sugar By Any Other Name…

...is still Sugar.

Sugar, AKA:

amazake
barley malt
blackstrap molasses
brown sugar
caramelized sugar
carob powder
corn syrup
date sugar
dextrose
disaccharides
distilled or concentrated fruit sugars
evaporated cane juice
fructose
glucose
glucose polymers
golden syrup
high fructose corn syrup
honey
invert sugar
lactose
molasses
malt extract
maltodextrins
maltose
maple sugar
monosaccharides
sorbitol
sucrose
turbinado
raw sugar

There Are Alternatives

Stop at a Chinese fast food place in China and they still make the food to order by hand. KFC and McDonalds are popular western style restaurants but food is prepared from frozen and prepackaged products just like in the USA.

Fruit and vegetable stands line nearly every city street and shop owners carve pineapples in the summer or heat sticky rice and corn during the winter. You can find coffee at a western style bakery but you can’t find breakfast cereal unless you go to a western food store! Most Chinese people don’t know about pancakes. They’ve most likely never eaten French toast. Most Chinese kitchens don’t have an oven.

When Nabisco started selling Chocolate Chip Cookies in China they conducted taste tests (told to me by a former employee) and found their recipe to be too sweet. Chinese McDonalds ice cream is not as sweet (unofficial opinion of many) as back home. Yes, there are candies to be found at convenience stores but the snacks that sell most are fresh, hand-made foods.

In China, people exercise together without exchanging money. Every morning, small groups to literally thousands of people gather informally in parks for morning activities which include (but are not limited to) Tai Chi, Qi Gong, badminton, dancing, and stretching—all before they go to work.

There are alternatives to what we know to be normal.