Author Archives: Jen James

How much sugar do you eat in a day?

How much sugar do you eat in day? If some of us are being honest, we know that we eat too much sugar. The biscuits or sweets that we tend to eat mid morning, and during that afternoon energy slump add up. I’m sure there are others who eat whole grains, with plenty of fibre, who would say that they don’t consume too much sugar.

Have a look below at an “unhealthy” day of eating, compared to a “healthy” day. The results might surprise you. The examples below are all taken from widely available UK high street retailers, though I haven’t named them, or the products specifically.

The important detail to know is that ALL carbohydrates turn into sugar when eaten, this may not be immediate, but it will happen. Also, this is the case for all of our bodies, NOT just diabetics. So when a label says carbs, read that as sugar.

Unhealthy day’s eating:

Breakfast:
3 crumpets, without jam – 58.2g carbs
Pure apple juice. One glass, 150ml – 16.7g carbs
Total breakfast carbs – 74.9, 18.7 teaspoons of sugar.

Lunch: A meal deal.
Chicken mayo baguette – 62g carbs
Ready salted crisps 45g – 23g carbs
Can of fizzy drink – 35g carbs
Total lunch carbs – 120g carbs, 30 teaspoons of sugar.

Dinner:
Four cheese pizza 330g – 93.4g carbs
Mini cup leading brand ice cream, 81g serving – 22.8g
Total dinner carbs – 116.2g carbs, 29 teaspoons of sugar

Total daily 310.9g of carbs, 77.7 teaspoons of sugar.

Healthy day’s eating:

Breakfast:
Superberry granola 50g – 31.7g carbs
50ml skimmed milk – 2.5g carbs
Banana, avg flesh weight 100g – 23g carbs
100% pure squeezed orange juice, with bits. One glass, 150ml – 15g carbs
Total breakfast carbs – 72.2g carbs, 18 teaspoons of sugar.

Lunch:
Tuna and sweetcorn sandwich, on malted bread – 44.5g carbs
120g portion of mango chunks – 16.3g
Smoothie drink, with added vitamins and no added sugar – 33g
Total lunch carbs – 93.8g of carbs, 23.4 teaspoons of sugar

Dinner:
Chicken breast – 0g carbs
Sweet chilli dipping sauce, 29g serving – 12.2g carbs
Brown rice, 75g uncooked weight – 65.3g carbs
Leading brand steamed vegetable bag – 9.8g carbs
Total dinner carbs – 87.3g of carbs, 21.8 teaspoons of sugar

Total daily – 253.3g of carbs, 63.3 teaspoons of sugar

Please take a look at the YouTube we have linked, Richard Smith explains extremely well the impact of sugar on our body. Each time we consume over one teaspoon of sugar, which is just 4g, our body has to use insulin to offset the glycemic load.

I have been told in the past that a Ketogenic lifestyle is unhealthy and dangerous. The NHS recommendation for daily “free” sugar intake is no more 30g, and to eat a therapeutic Keto diet is to have no more than 20g of total carbs a day. I don’t believe that our pancreas can detect a difference between a naturally occurring sugar, and an added sugar. So the insulin responds to the glycemic load. So can eating 10g fewer carbs in a day than the Govt advises be dangerous? Please have a look for Dr David Unwin, he is lovely NHS GP, who has made a hugely positive impact in his practice. He is, in my mind, showing the NHS how it should be done, showing how beneficial lowering carbs can be for our health.

I have lost over 6 stone since I realised that eating fat wasn’t the problem, it was eating low fat and high sugar that was hurting me. Simon, my husband, put his Diabetes type 2 into remission by eating this way. His T2 diabetes has not been “cured”, because if he were to start eating high carb, therefore high sugar again, his blood glucose would increase quickly. This is why it is only in remission, not cured. So I don’t see how the Keto diet can be dangerous.

Don’t blame the fat for what the sugar did.

Yet again, these are purely my own thoughts, based on our experience and research. This is not medical advice, just sharing what has helped us.

What does breakfast mean to you?

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Breakfast very simply means the first meal after you have fasted, when we break our fast. You might be thinking, “I don’t fast”, but we all do, to a greater or lesser degree. We all fast when we sleep, which hopefully for most of us will be 6/8 hours, depending on what our individual bodies need. If you eat your last meal at 6pm, and do not consume any food or drink that contains calories until 8am next morning, you will have fasted for 14 hours. Which is classed as IF, an intermittent fast.

Our bodies understand that we will naturally fast overnight, the dawn phenomenon is activated each morning to help us prepare for the day.

Our blood pressure rises a little, to help us to not feel dizzy when we stand up, after lying down for hours overnight. Our blood glucose levels increase marginally, to give us energy; this is why it is inadvisable for diabetics to use the pinprick test to check their glucose levels in the morning, as it will give a false high. For those of us who don’t eat carbs, the liver will not have stored sugar to release. So it will activate gluconeogenesis (production of new sugar made from naturally occurring amino acids) to give our bodies the energy boost.

I used to eat cereals or toast for breakfast, maybe even crumpets if I felt like a real treat. Which I now understand is high in carbs, and therefore sugar. When our body consumes over a teaspoon of sugar, just 4 grams, our pancreas needs to send insulin to stop the blood having too much sugar circulating. Eating carbs too early in the day, when we already have a naturally occurring rise in blood glucose, puts extra strain on the pancreas.

When I first started Keto, I changed to having bacon and eggs for breakfast. Very quickly, once I became more sensitive to ghrelin, the hunger hormone, I found I didn’t need breakfast, as I genuinely wasn’t hungry. My body can then carry on fasting a little longer, and can utilise the benefits of autophagy.

Click here to read about autophagy.

As ever, the above is not medical advice, just what I have researched and learned from my own experiences over the last six years.

The effect of highly processed foods, on our hormones and weight

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A hundred years ago, our great grandparents ate foods that were farmed, or grown in the fields. Now, sadly, the majority of the foods available in the supermarket, are produced in factories, highly processed and made using ingredients that would have been unheard of a few generations ago. I would argue that our relatives were far healthier too.

The trend for the last 40 years plus has been for low fat foods. When the fat is removed, so much of the flavour disappears too, so sugar or sweeteners are added to help with the flavour; but this still can be classified as low fat. Which of course is good for us, isn’t it?

The general consensus would say that there is nothing wrong with sweeteners, that they are zero calories, so what is the issue?

Think about what happens to your body when you eat something sweet, this includes sweeteners. Your tongue registers that sweet taste, and then your pancreas is signalled to produce insulin to process that sugar, to try to keep our blood glucose level stable.

But sweeteners aren’t sugar, so they do not put up our blood glucose, this insulin spike is not needed by the body, but it still occurs. This is just one of the ways our body becomes insulin resistant. Insulin insensitivity is one of the many markers of metabolic syndrome. Below is a list of ingredients copied from a supermarket own brand sweetener. Apart from the issues relating to metabolic dysfunction, I now believe that eating anything that was created in a laboratory, and the requirement for a chemistry degree to understand what it is, is not good for my body.

INGREDIENTS: Sweeteners (Sodium Cyclamate, Sodium Saccharin), Acidity Regulators (Sodium Bicarbonate, Trisodium Citrate).

Yes, there are no calories, but how are these ingredients impacting on our bodies? How are they affecting our hormones such as insulin, cortisol, leptin and ghrelin. (Leptin and ghrelin are the satiety and hunger hormones in our body) So many of us now are desensitised to our own hormone signalling. We struggle to understand when we are truly hungry, and to be able to stop eating when we are full. Between this and what I now understand to be my sugar and processed food addiction, it’s not surprising that I have struggled to be a healthy weight for so many years.

I know now that zero calorie doesn’t mean something is good for me, and high fat doesn’t mean it is bad for me. It is the ingredients, and how they will impact on my hormones that is important. As ever, this is not medical advice in any way, just me sharing what has helped me, as it might help you too.

Jen x

Bacon & Goats Cheese Fritatta

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Ingredients

250g of Smoked Bacon
8 Eggs (free range if possible)
120ml Double Cream (not cream substitute: eg Elmlea)
½ tsp course sea salt (not table salt, it contains anti caking agent)
120g Goats Cheese (diced) or cheese of your choice

Method

Preheat the oven to 200c or 180c fan.
Grill or air fry your bacon. Then cut into small pieces.
Whisk together the eggs, double cream and salt.
Stir the goat’s cheese and cooked bacon into the egg mixture.
Line an 8 inch square baking tin with baking paper. It’s easier to take out of the tin when baked.
Bake in the oven for 30 minutes or until there is a slight wobble of the frittata.
Allow to cool before cutting, it’s easier.

Autophagy

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If I was ever tempted to try for Mastermind, my specialist subject would not be The Nobel Prize for Physiology. Having said that, because of my Carnivore lifestyle and fasting, I know a little of the 2016 winner, Yoshinori Ohsumi. He discovered the powerful healing of autophagy, and the wide positive impact it has on the human body.

Autophagy occurs when you have fasted for around 16-24 hours, but when you enter into a prolonged fast, eg over 24 hours, its power increases. Fasting is when we rest our digestive system by not asking it to continuously process food. (The average person now eats 5/6 times a day, snacking between meals counts as eating) It is worth saying that fasting is very different to starvation. When we fast for either religious or health benefits, we are safe, nourished and hydrated.

In basic terms, I think of autophagy like giving your house a good deep clean. You don’t just dust off the surfaces, you get down into all the nooks and crannies, and sort out all the junk hiding at the back of the cupboards. That junk either gets taken out as waste, or gets recycled. This is exactly what autophagy does.

Modern life, aging and ill health causes damage to the cells inside our bodies, these damaged cells can cause us major health issues. It is these cells, along with damaged proteins and mitochondria that are broken down during autophagy. It is this issue that some people become quite alarmed by, thinking our body will start breaking down its own muscle and healthy tissue, but it’s not the case. The body breaks down the damaged cells, which it recycles into healthy new cells and proteins. This is hugely protective from long term chronic and progressive health conditions. Fasting has been used safely for thousands of years, both therapeutically and religiously, but modern day consensus tells us that it is bad for us to not eat. Thankfully, Yoshinori Ohsumi has helped to show the world how incorrect that assumption is.

If you want to look deeper into mitochondria, have a look for Dr Isabella Cooper; and for further information on fasting, Dr Jason Fung knows all there is to know. Or if you are feeling particularly ready for a challenge, look for the 2016 Nobel Prize winning study.