Sugar: Your Frienemy

image via CBS News

Sugar is like those mean girls in junior high and high school; they're sweet and seemingly harmless, then one day you learn how hurtful they can be.  You think sugar is your friend - she makes everything you eat sweeter and more fun.  Then you make the mistake of crossing her and suddenly she makes it her personal mission to destroy you.  There's that day when your eyes are opened and you suddenly realize sugar is not your friend.  My day came April 13, 2011.  That was the day I learned what a bitch sugar has been to me and to my fellow Americans.  And we let her.  For years.

Last Wednesday the New York Times published an article by Gary Taubes titled, Is Sugar Toxic?  I read and reread it.  I sent it to friends.  I talked about it to co-workers.  It's like a light bulb suddenly went off in my head.  All the pieces fit together, like that moment in Usual Suspects when Kujan discovers he'd had  Keyser Söze in front of him the entire time.

Then I watched the video lecture by Robert Lustig referenced in the Taubes article titled, Sugar: The Bitter Truth.  Sugar isn't just about empty calories leading to malnutrition and a calorie excess (though it's that too), it's about sugar actually actively poisoning your body.  Here's how Lustig and Taubes broke it down for me: sugar comes with an evil ring leader and a side-kick.  Fructose is your true adversary.  Glucose, the other component of sugar, is just along for the ride.  While glucose is metabolized by every cell in your body, fructose is sent straight to your liver (your poison processing center) where, if it's over-inundated, it basically goes into survival mode and the excess poison (fructose, this case) is turned into fat.  Visceral fat, actually - the stuff that clings around your organs and clogs your arteries.

100 years ago we didn't eat nearly the amount of sugar we do today, and it's no wonder our nation has seen a spike in heart disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes.

image via Perfect Health Diet

Today we eat over 45 lbs of sugar a year.

image via NYT

This is in addition to four gallons of high-fructose corn syrup.

image via NYT

Want to know something else interesting?  The difference between the harmful effects of HFCS and regular table sugar is negligible.  It's true.  Sugar is 50% fructose, 50% glucose.  HFCS is 55% fructose, 45% glucose.  This does not mean that HFCS isn't as terrible for you as you thought.  This means that sugar is worse for you than you ever imagined.  Gives me chills.  How 'bout you?  I, for one, am feeling sick just thinking about how I've been unwittingly slowly killing myself for years.

Before having learned the breakdown of exactly how sugar destroys your system at a cellular level, I knew it wasn't great and was looking for ways to cut back, mostly for vanity reasons: I want to be thinner, I want to have nicer skin, blah blah blah.

A friend suggested agave nectar as an alternative to refined sugar, the philosophy being it comes from the agave plant and is a natural substitute.  So I bought some, and I loved it.  I was replacing any call for sugar with agave nectar.  I even went out and bought it in bulk.  I imagined the plant being tapped much the way we tap maple trees to get maple syrup.  I felt good about making the change to get away from sugar.

Then I got educated.  After reading up on sugar I thought, "hey, I wonder what the molecular makeup of agave nectar is."  So I did a little research.  There are no hard numbers, but I did come across a lot of product-sponsored websites praising the stuff, and several health-centered (non-commercially-motivated) websites debunking what the perceived health benefits are.  The most thorough article I found was written by Kristen of Food Renegade.  (Her blog is fantastic, btw.  So glad I stumbled upon it.)  What I discovered in this research is not only is agave nectar 70-90% fructose (depending on which product website is reporting), but it's also highly processed.  Basically it's what we thought HFCS was to sugar - it's much much worse.  Just great.  Now I have a giant jug of a veritable poison sitting at home.

So to conclude this rather depressing post on a lighter note, I'm going to take this new information and use it as a tool of empowerment to further research nutrition.  Being active is a huge part of staying healthy, but holding control of how we fuel ourselves is key as well.  I'm not saying I will never eat sugar again, but I will be making better-informed decisions about my food and be more aware of what's going into it than I ever have before.

Monday Night Dinner - Katie's Thai Honey Peanut Chicken

My friend Katie has a great blog, The Well-Fed Newlyweds, that I love reading; part of the reason I love it is I get to catch up a little with what's going on in her world (we haven't seen each other since we were both 21 and studying in Paris), but a bigger part is she chooses stellar recipes to feature.  I made her Thai honey peanut chicken recently and let me tell you, this one hit it out of the park.  I made just a few tweaks, not that it needed any; I'm just that way.

Thai Honey Peanut Chicken

Ingredients:
1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup honey
lime juice - yield of 1 lime
3 cloves minced garlic
2 Tbsp (heaping) natural peanut butter
1 tsp curry powder
1 tsp Sriracha
2 tsp fish sauce
1-1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into large chunks


Directions:
Whisk all ingredients except chicken together in a bowl.
Add chicken pieces to sauce and coat evenly.
Cook in a large skillet on med-high heat until chicken is just cooked through.

Another 170 calories gets you 3/4 cup rice to go with it.

Currently on My Workout Mix - Ludacris

I love Luda.

Weekly Update

This is gonna be a shorty because I don't have much to report.  I'm still hanging around 151 lbs, but I'm bloated so my everything is puffy.  This inflates my body fat percentage number.  I feel doughy, but I know it's temporary.  I'm trying to do some diet tweaking to help break through the 150s into the 140s, so we'll see.  Next week will be better.

Monday Night Dinner: Lemon and Dill Cheese Tortellini with Asparagus

This dinner makes me feel like the sun is shining and birds are chirping, even when it's gray and depressing here in the ol' Emerald City.  I timed this one, and from the time you put your water boil it's 20 minutes to the table.  I like eating it cold the next day as well.  Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1 lb asparagus spears, cut into 2-inch pieces
• 1 Tbsp lemon zest
• 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 tsp dill
• 2-1/2 cups three-cheese tortellini
• 1 Tbsp shredded Parmesan

Directions

 You can either boil 2 separate pots of water for this one, or do what I did and use the same one for both the asparagus and the tortellini.  It all depends if you have a wire mesh strainer like this one:

Have a medium bowl of ice water ready.  Fill a medium pot fairly full of water, add a little salt, and bring to a boil.  Rest your mesh strainer on the top of the pot and toss in your asparagus.  Cook for 2-3 minutes, then lift your strainer out and place it in the bowl of ice water, making sure all the asparagus pieces are submerged in the ice water, to stop the asparagus from cooking any further from its own endothermic heat.

Toss your tortellini in the boiling pot and cook according to the package instructions (probably about 7 min).
While pasta is cooking and asparagus is icing, grate the zest of 1 lemon (about a tablespoon) into your pasta serving bowl.  Add olive oil, dill, and salt to the zest and stir in the bottom of the bowl.
Drain the pasta and asparagus and toss with your lemony-dill olive oil.  Sprinkle with the parm and serve.

Serves 4

Currently on My Workout Mix - Def Leppard

This came on during the end of my run and helped me get pumped back up for a strong finish. Let's get rocked!

Weight Training - Hammer Curls

Ok so you've gotten down the Arnold Press, the squats, and the bicep curls.  Now it's time to move on to the next exercise of the circuit:  hammer curls.  These are simple to transition into from the bicep curls because it is basically the same exercise - you're just rotating your wrists in for the transition.

In order to make sure you do this exercise correctly and "don't hurt 'em,"  our model today is taking his duties very seriously.  Who better to demonstrate hammer curls than Hammer himself?  Are you feelin' his power?

It really is exactly the same as bicep curls - fancy jacket not required.

A couple things to remember while you're doing this:  keep your abs tight and your knees bent ever so slightly.  Don't lock your knees - it's not good for anything except poor form.