Overcoming Sugar Addiction

The Serbian tennis player, Novak Djokovic is on fire. After winning 43 straight matches, including 41 in 2011– something that hasn’t been done since 1984 — he plowed through the quarter finals then the semi-finals at Wimbledon this year. Even hadn’t won Wimbledon, his winning streak would have given him enough points to put him in the top spot, ranking him as the #1 men’s tennis player in the world. But, of course, he did win.

So what did Djokovic do to initiate such a dramatic energy boost? A gluten-free diet has been credited for the recent success, according to the Wall Street Journal. As recent as last year, his on-court struggles were evident when closing out matches. His serve became sloppy and his movement lacked the energy to hit closing shots. The shift to a gluten-free, low starch diet has left Djokovic feeling energized throughout his entire matches. As a result, he is not only sharper physically but, more importantly, mentally.

Even if you are not gluten sensitive, when you eliminate starch-based, refined and processed non-foods such as pizza, bread, pretzels, chips, pasta, potatoes, legumes, rice, and other high carb foods, you allow the body to reboot itself metabolically. As a result, it stops drawing it source of fuel from sugar (all starchy carbs are converted to sugar in the bloodstream), and begins to draw its source of fuel from ketones, found in healthy fats. The body (especially the brain) operates much more efficiently on ketones — so much so — that your energy levels tend to elevate after you make the dietary shift. It takes time, however, usually about four to six weeks before the carb (sugar) cravings subside, but when it happens, don’t be surprised if your energy levels skyrocket!

If you are gluten sensitive then you’ll not only want to eliminate all foods containing gluten (such as all wheat-based products), but it would be wise to eliminate “cross-reactive” foods to gluten as well. Cross-reactivity is the reaction to substances that are either genetically or structurally similar to gluten because your immune system tends to associate them with gluten. Some of the most common cross-reactive substances are: casein (found in milk and cheese), oats, rye, barley, spelt, kamut, yeast products, coffee, and milk chocolate.

Other common food sensitivities can result from foods that people usually substitute for the wheat-based gluten products such as: corn, buckwheat, sesame, quinoa, sorghum, millet, tapioca, amaranth, rice, and potatoes. And of course, they are also high-starch foods that turn into glucose after ingestion. Sugar is always sugar no matter what it looks like before you eat it. All starchy foods such as grains and legumes will be metabolized by the body as the sugar; glucose.

Here’s the bottom line. When we return to the diet of our paleo ancestors, the diet that we, as a homo sapiens species followed consistently, day after day, for over 250,000 years, our body’s metabolism will become more compatible with its genetic physiology. It’s all about the genes folks. In the U.S., the average person consumes 1/3rd lbs. of sugar a day, each and every day. The human body is simply not designed for this type of onslaught. No wonder see the epidemic proportions of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. And not surprisingly, the United Health Organization ranks the U.S. a pathetic 39th out of the top 50 healthiest countries on Earth.

Personal Life Coach, Jason Lincoln Jeffers, is the founder of The Art of Transformation, a company devoted to teaching Self Realization to the masses. His Personal Life Coaching practice uniquely synthesizes spiritual wisdom with ego transcendence, wellness coaching, life path astrology, pain-body counseling, heart-based manifestation, and relationship coaching.

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Since the advent of antibiotics nearly a century ago, we’ve been injecting them into our bodies to kill off bacterial infections. Alongside this increased use of antibiotics, American consumers have increased their sugar intake from 20 pounds of sugar per year to about 140 pounds of sugar per year — mainly due to the exponential rise of process foods containing HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). It has been the combination of these two trends that has been the cause for what is known today as the “Candida Yeast Syndrome.”

In the gut, the ratio of “unfriendly” bacteria to “friendly” bacteria is about 15% to 85% in a healthy person. However, when we base our diet on foods such as crackers, chips, white bread, pizza, fries, and other processed and refined foods, the body’s immune system breaks down, causing candida albicans to multiply to the point where this healthy equilibrium is seriously comprised. As a result, people experience symptoms such as chronic sinus infections, sinus headaches, vaginal yeast infections, frequent urination, acne, white tongue, spaciness, constipation, gas, bloating, diarrhea, water retention, and constant cravings for sweet, starchy, “yeasty” foods such as bread, alcohol, and pizza.

There are large number of probiotic products on the market but the best I’ve found are “Raw Probiotics” and “Yeast Freeze” from Garden of Life. But if you’ve been suffering from chronic systemic candida, then probiotics alone will not be able to reduce its overgrowth and get the yeast overgrowth under control. A diet based on zero starch and zero sugar for at least six months is often necessary to get your gut’s bacteria back into a healthy balance and put the candida in check.

Because your anti-candida diet should not include any starch-based foods, this means eliminating the so-called “healthy” carbs such as legumes (soy, hummus, peas, beans, lentils), grains (wheat, oats, corn, rice), pasta, and potatoes. It’s not enough to only eliminate the obvious starches such as processed foods, but it requires eliminating all starches because no matter how organic or “whole grain” they are, they are still metabolized by the body as glucose (sugar). And sugar is what the candida feeds on. So, essentially what you’re doing by excluding all the starchy carbs, is starving the candida to death.

You will also need to eliminate all fermented foods such as pickles, vinegars, soy sauce, and products that contain them such as ketchup and mustard. And remember that all dairy products contain lactose sugar. So milk and cheese must be discarded as well — and this includes yogurt, despite its probiotic benefits. Instead, replace the yogurt with Bubbies brand, probiotic-rich raw cultured cabbage. Or you can learn to make your own probiotics from coconut milk. Simply Google “coconut milk kefir” and you’ll find a host of recipes. And finally, remember that antibiotics are added to eggs and poultry in high doses so you’ll want to look for the free range, antibiotic-free kind at the supermarket.

Jason Lincoln Jeffers is a Wellness Coach, Online Life Coach and the founder of The Art of Transformation, a company devoted to teaching Spiritual Enlightenment to the world. His Online Life Coaching practice uniquely combines spiritual wisdom with self transcendence, holistic wellness, life path astrology, heart-brain intention, the power of presence, and the law of attraction.

We have been given false information regarding dietary fats by the Food and Drug Administration. Saturated fat has been a huge part of the diet of the homo sapiens species for the last 25,000 years. It’s only been in the last 1/10 of 1% (5000 years) where agriculture has gradually replaced fats with glucose (from complex carbohydrates), that our source of fuel for the human body has dramatically shifted.

More and more experts on nutrition and holistic medicine today are coming to realize the importance of healthy fats in our diet. The alarming thing is — the nutritional advice we are given regarding (the elimination of) fat in our diet has not been corroborated by any evidence to support it. L.A. Corr and M.F. Oliver, in their book, “The Low Fat/Low Cholesterol Diet is Ineffective,” note, “The commonly held belief that the best diet for prevention of coronary heart disease is a low saturated fat, low cholesterol diet is not supported by the available evidence from clinical trials.”

A diet consisting of saturated, monounsaturated and essential polyunsaturated fats such as omega-3 has been sustained by our paleo ancestors since the dawn our species. It has only been since the advent of industrialization and better refining processes that highly polyunsaturated vegetable oils, grain-fed (rather than grass-fed) meats, farmed seafoods (rather than wild), and partially hydrogenated oils have become our primary fat sources. I don’t believe that it’s just a coincidence that our species has not seen the levels of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or cancer that we see today. It is estimated that 1,529,560 people around the world died from cancer in 2010. That’s 4200 people dying every single day.

Americans spend 17% of our GDP on healthcare. That’s roughly double what other countries spend. So, if we’re spending $1.2 Trillion a year, why are we dying in droves? I believe that it all stems from our diet. As a society, we are addicted to sugar. And all processed foods are mostly sugar because they contain HFCS (high fructose corn syrup). It’s not a coincidence that cancer thrives on sugar. And sugar makes your body more acidic so that cancer can flourish more effortlessly.

Ketones are energy units of fat that the brain requires for optimum function and health. The diet of our paleo ancestors depended on them for fuel. By shifting our dependency from sugar to ketones, we will be returning to the way our body’s were meant to metabolize foods. Returning to the paleo diet is the only way to reverse the dramatic increase of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. There is no magic pill coming, no instant cure to be found, despite the billions of dollars a year given to disease research. That’s all a waste of money, time, and energy. It all begins with the knowledge of our genetics, physiology and the nutrient-dense, sugar-free diet that the human body was designed to follow.

Jason Lincoln Jeffers is a Wellness Coach who founded Sunlighten and co-founded Sunlight Day Spa; wellness companies devoted to infrared radiant heat therapy, sound therapy, and massage therapy. His Wellness Coaching program embodies infrared sauna purification, upper cervical care, and adhering to an alkaline-forming, antioxidant-rich, sugar-, gluten-, and starch-free diet.

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