Krebber - Low sugar, so simple: 100 delicious low-sugar, low-carb, gluten-free recipes for eating clean and living healthy

ELVIIRA KREBBER
Creator of the Low-Carb, So Simple blog Delicious Low-Sugar, Low-Carb, Gluten-Free Recipes for Eating Clean and Living Healthy I used to be a real sugar addict. Thanks to my sweet tooth, I was overweight throughout childhood, and I was bullied at school because of it. (I was even heavier than the heaviest boys in the class!) My mom is an excellent cook, and whenever I was around, her pies, cakes, and cookies disappeared as quickly as she prepared them. When I knew shed baked a delicious blueberry pie, I couldnt resist the temptation: I would cut one slice, then another, and another until there wasnt a crumb left! Inside, though, I was vulnerable and suffering from the constant bullying. I so desperately wanted to be thin that I started to cut calories drastically. Eventually I was diagnosed with anorexia.

After high school, though, I really lost control of my eating. I went back to eating sugar, and things got even worse. When I was studying industrial design close to the Arctic Circle, not a day would pass when I didnt indulge in a gigantic chocolate barand the endless darkness during the polar night exacerbated my sugar cravings. So it was no wonder that I started suffering from migraines and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). I devoured pizzas and pastas, and poured copious amounts of sugar onto just about everything I ate. I bought cakes, muffins, candiesanything sweetand ate them all at once.

I knew it didnt do me any good, but I couldnt stop. Later when I attended a language course in England, I enjoyed all the local delicacies. My favorite was a super-supreme donut, a huge pastry filled with vanilla custard and coated with chocolate glaze. I gulped it down cheerfully along with a large chocolate milkshake. On the way home from school to my host family, I grabbed some humbugsa local sweetplus some fudge, and enjoyed them while walking. On my class trip to France, I bought a 14-ounce (400 g) bar of Toblerone and ate it in a single day.

On the last day of the course, I celebrated by buying a huge carrot cake, which I divided with my roommate. (At least I didnt gobble it up all by myself, for a change!) All that sugar made me feel miserable. Not only did I have physical ailments, but I was also suffering from depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. I had anorexia in my past, and now I developed another type of eating disorder: bulimia. I was frightened to death of vomiting, so I popped laxative pills like candiesdozens and dozens per day. Sitting in agony on the toilet didnt bother me much, as long as I got rid of the junk Id eaten as quickly as possible.

Soon my condition worsened. I started suffering from unexplained stomach pains. In 1999, my colon was removed, and for a year after that I felt wonderful. However, the IBS symptoms came back, along with even worse pain. My weight plummeted until my BMI was only 12.7. I had arrhythmia, terrible stomach pains, and brain fog.

No doctor could give me a diagnosis. The lab results all came back fine, but I felt like I was dying. So I had no other choice but to take control of my health. I started to study nutrition, and soon I learned how destructive sugar is. I cut it out of my dietand cereals, too, because Id heard lots of success stories from people who regained their health by omitting gluten from their diets. (Little did I know at that point that cereals were, in practice, sugar.

If that comes as a surprise to you, too, dont worry: Ill explain in the chapters that follow.) As I quit sugar, I added more fat to my diet. It took a long time to understand how vital fat is to healthnatural fat, that is. My brain fog finally disappeared after I started consuming butter and other natural fats. NOTE TO THE READER All eggs used are U.S. size large, and should be organic and free-range whenever possible, because these contain more omega-3 fats and other nutrients. (Plus, they taste better!) Be sure to use the freshest ingredients and those of the best quality.

Organic, non-GMO vegetables are best. As for meat and dairy products, choose those from animals fed with a species-specific diet. (For example, choose dairy and beef products that come from grass-fed cows.) Milk and cream should be organic, if possible, and free from food additives. All citrus fruits (especially lemons) should be organic and unwaxed. Baking powder should be aluminum-free. Cinnamon should be Ceylon cinnamon, or true cinnamonnot the more common cassia or Chinese cinnamon, which is toxic to the liver.

After I made these changesquitting sugar and starch, and adding more fat to my dietI started getting better. Much, much better. My weight normalized, and I was no longer bulimic; I suffered fewer migraines; and my anxiety and panic attacks disappeared. I wasnt depressed anymore. And my stomach finally felt great! No more IBS, no more bloating; all that crippling pain had disappeared. Now I enjoyed a flat tummy.

I had six-pack abs without even trying. My entire body composition was ripped and muscular in comparison to the way it looked before. When I ate sugareven when I wasnt overweightI had a flabby stomach, enormous thighs, and a round face. Now my body looked toned and fit, even though I didnt do any sports. With my new lifestyle, though, I noticed that it wasnt easy to find truly healthy recipes. In fact, most of the sugar-free recipes I came across didnt seem to be sugar-free at all.

They contained dried fruit, syrups such as agave or rice syrup, or starches. Many of them had artificial sweeteners, too. Id found healthy, sugar-free natural sweeteners myself, but couldnt find recipes for them. So I had to create everything from scratch. I developed recipes for breads, desserts, breakfasts, main courses, side dishes, and moreall with a minimal number of ingredients and steps, because I was busy and impatient. Then in 2012, I established my Low-Carb, So Simple blog to help people in the same situation as I wasseeking easy, healthy recipes after switching to a low-sugar lifestyle.

Five years later, Im delighted to have more than 600,000 Facebook followers and hundreds of thousands of blog readers. There seems to be a huge demand for easy, truly healthy low-sugar recipes, and this is very understandable. With the current biased dietary guidelines and a food industry that spends billions on marketing its junk, people are getting sick, both literally and figuratively. They have to discover the truth behind these lies by themselves. Like parrots, doctors and dietitians still adhere to the low-fat religion, emphasizing the importance of healthy whole grains and fruit, not realizing that these substances actually make people sick. Today weve finally started to understand that fat is your friend while sugar is the thing making you sick.

Knowing that, we can move toward perfect health by savoring delicious, natural, clean food without sugar and starch. This book will show you how to do just that. Enjoy!

Sugar is everywhere. Our diets are filled with it. Yet few people realize how harmful this extremely common ingredient is, and how damaging it is to our long-term health. Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) advises cutting sugar intake to a maximum of 25 grams a day, we often exceed this recommendation by more than three times: The average American consumes 76 grams of sugar per day.