Leche - Cut the Sugar : Youre Sweet Enough - Cookbook

Contents

foreword

How to Enjoy Your Vices

I am a major proponent of people enjoying their vices. I often ignore whatever medical advice happens to be in vogue because research has shown that its not always necessary to be so cautious. For example, the science is very clear, and has been for decades, that salt (excluding table salt), tea, and even chocolate are health foods.

Excess sugar is not healthy. Im not worried about the sugar normally found in fruit, or even the sugar found in small amounts of dark chocolate. (Go for quality, not quantity.) Rather, the problem is the approximately 140 pounds of sugar per person, per year, dumped into processed food. Excess sugar consumption not only can cause anxiety, depression, fatigue, and weight gain, it also is a major trigger for autoimmune disease, diabetes, cancer, schizophrenia, and heart disease.

The answer? It is not to make yourself feel guilty about enjoying pleasure. The answer is to learn how to enjoy pleasure healthfully. This is what Cut the Sugar , Youre Sweet Enough , the excellent book by Ella Lech, does. Once you learn the helpful life skills in this book, youll be able to have your cakeand enjoy it, too!

Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D., author of The Complete Guide to Beating Sugar Addiction,
From Fatigued to Fantastic! and the Beat Sugar Addiction NOW! series

my story

I used to think I had good eating habits. I ate salads, I drank waterbut I also consumed too much of foods that eventually almost killed me. Empty carbs like wheat, gluten, and especially sugar were doing my body more harm than good. But I didnt know that, and I wouldnt know that for years to come.

I spent my childhood in Poland, where I ate mostly all organic, local, seasonal foods. We lived in the countryside and grew our own food on a small family farm. Our vegetable garden and numerous fruit shrubs and fruit trees around the property provided us with plenty of food to live on, nearly year-round.

My mom made every meal from scratch and we six children sat around a big dinner table. She would bake each Sunday, of course. It was instant joy to bite into something delicious made with care and love. We kids were often assigned tasks to help in the kitchenmixing batter, peeling potatoes, chopping vegetables. I was good at observing how things were done, and I started to bake my first treats when I was eight or so.

Then we moved to Canada when I was ten. My mom, a sudden widow, was looking for a better life for her kids. Times were rough, but we always had a great home-cooked meal in front of us. I remember my mom waking up before dawn and cooking so that when we came home from school, dinner would be ready for us while she was still at work.

But meanwhile, through friends, TV commercials, and grocery store displays, we kids were introduced to sugary processed foods like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Pop-Tarts, and Quik Chocolate Milk. We wanted a say in what foods we ate, and we definitely always wanted the sweet stuff! My mom thought food was food and didnt question the ingredients or why the expiration period was longer than our ages combined. The older I got, the more food decisions I made for myself: pizza and Coke, the occasional McDonalds. I was a teen, and thats what everyone ate. In college and during my twenties, candy and Pizza Pockets were lifesavers!

As a money-conscious move, I would buy supersized packs of Kit Kat bars (because it was cheaper to get a pack of six than a single bar at the convenience store). After graduation I started my own graphic design business and it picked up very well, but it was difficult multitasking and staying on top of things. I would often work late, feel tired the next day, then pick myself up with caffeine and sugar. I started skipping meals and relied so much on sugar to keep me going that I carried a stash of sweets everywhere I went. I always had some chocolate bars or granola bars (because I thought they were healthier). I didnt have problems maintaining my weight and thought I was incredibly lucky that I could pig out and still fit into my jeans.

If I didnt have my sugar fix, youd know it. My blood sugar highs and crashes meant I had uncontrollable mood swings and developed a short fuse. I was snappy and anxious throughout the day and had insomnia at night. I suffered from headaches and nagging cravings and often had foggy brain and could not concentrate.

It wasnt until years later that I looked back on this and started to connect the dots. My body was trying to tell me something. But I wasnt listening to my bodyI was listening to my cravings. And after all, I still felt healthy and happy. A lot of my friends were complaining about stress, too, and I thought it was just normal, much like I thought it normal to meet a friend at Starbucks for a Caramel Frappuccino with whipped cream on top (which I now know means slurping 80 grams of sugar in minutes!). I exercised regularly, did yoga, and found downtime for relaxation and fun. I got married, I was building my dream career, we traveled, we bought our first house, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl: Life was amazing!

Yet, only months later, I was in deep depression and losing control of my own body. I started developing mysterious symptoms. I had difficulty breathing and started gasping for air. I had difficulty chewing foods and swallowing. My limbs started to get weak. One day, as I was lifting my infant daughter out of her crib, my legs went so weak that I fell to the floor with her in my arms. She landed on my chest and was unhurt, but my head was bleeding. That began the scariest time of my lifenot being able to trust my own body, not being able to hold my own baby.

Soon, I couldnt manage simple tasks that people take for granted, like brushing my hair, holding soap, walking, and getting up from a seated position. I even physically had trouble smiling. Yet I still kept working (I had no maternity leave). Medical tests all came back fine. According to my doctor, I was physically healthy and it was all in my head. My weakness and symptoms were overlooked, and I was diagnosed with postpartum depression.

I cant even count the many different antidepressants I was put on, and I still wasnt getting better. My depression even brought on suicidal symptomsvery far from the dreams I had of being a new mom. It wasnt until sixteen long months later that I was finally properly diagnosedwith myasthenia gravis, a rare neuromuscular autoimmune illness. The name myasthenia gravis literally translates from Latin as grave muscle weakness and is a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease characterized by varying degrees of weakness of the skeletal (voluntary) muscles of the body. MG medically has no cure. The treatments are surgery, immunosuppressants, and steroids that I didnt feel comfortable taking and to which my body didnt respond well.

But then it just hit me. It took one moment of clarity during one of my many crying-into-my-pillow episodes. That same voice that kept saying, Why me? for months finally said, I don t want to live like this! In that moment, I believed in myself and realized it was up to me to change my life. I started to feel hopeful, and my inner voice started to become more positive and supportive.