G'day All,
First post, not about CT's but something I can offer some assistance with...
About 12 months ago my wife was given a book by David Gillespie, and watched one of his lectures on YouTube (
http://www.howmuchsugar.com/), this guy has done a heap of work on what effect sugar has on the body and the way the body reacts to different types of sugar - there is a heap of really good science behind it all which is on his site, and in the book and youtube clips if you are interested, but basically there is "Good" sugar and "bad" sugar. After 2 kids my wife was struggling to shed the kgs and had tried a few different things that didn't work but ended up going mad with what this bloke said, and in under 12 months, without changing anything else, ie not adding any additional exercise, and not changing the occasional junk food meal she dropped 30kg (from pushing 100kg down to 70kg). Giving up "sugar" (and interestingly a lot of "sugar free" foods with artificial sweetners that apparently your body reacts to in the same way as real sugar) isn't actually that hard, AND cutting out the sugar after a week or so stops you wanting to nibble on a chocky bars or timtam etc which is what does a lot of damage.
Sooo, one of the side effects of my wife going off sugar was that I ended up cleaning up the "leftovers" of the occasional cheesecake or desert we made, or finishing off the last few chocky biscuits that she would normally have had that the kids didn't get to. This, along with buying a couple of cases of coke on special over summer, and a few other things resulted in my belt going out several notches. For a bloke who has been pretty skinny and hovering in the mid 70 kg for years, a bit over a month ago with a wardrobe of trousers that I was convinced must have shrunk in the wash, I jumped on the scales and was quite surprised to see 86kg. I decided to give this no sugar thing a crack, and while I haven't gone cold turkey altogether like my wife did, I have stopped the coke (drinking CokeZero if I have to have coke), given away the chocolate, and not had the evening bowl of icecream, I have also given up the mixup water cordial I used to drink heaps of when it was hot (I hate plain water normally, but if really cold in the fridge I can drink it no worries) about all I have sugar wise now is 1 teaspoon of sugar in my 2-3 cups of coffee a day, which is down from the 2 teaspoons I used to have (I may even try to get that down to 1/2 maybe) and maybe the occasional shortbread with a coffee. In around a month, and again not doing anything other than cutting out the sugar my trousers have all stretched in the wash again, my belt is now back in the notch it used to be, and last time on the scales I think was 76kg which makes 10kg in 6 weeks or so, which I have to say I am pretty happy with.
Probably sounds all a bit whacky and "fad" like, but like I said, there is some sound science behind it, and I have now seen it work for several people. The beauty of it is you can still eat whatever you want (within reason I guess) so long as you don't have the sugar.
Hope there is something in there for someone, like I said, worked for me pretty painlessly - except the coke zero - that is a bit hard to take at times!
Good Luck
Cheers
Rod