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Me & My Sugar

By Mee Tracy -McCormick 'Princess Know it all'

Springtime is almost here and swimsuits are everywhere. We all want to look good, but wouldn’t it be slammin’ to feel good too?  Folks ask me all the time what’s the one thing that they can do that will make a difference in their health and beauty and I say, “Kick that sugar to d’curb!”

I will share a brief image with you - when you heat sugar in a pan on it crackles, bubbles and burns.  When you take room temperature sugar and put it into a body that is at least 98 degrees, it hits our hot blood and the bubble, sizzle, crackle burn begins, causing inflammation INSIDE our bodies, our the tissues become swollen from the heat.  Our blood becomes acidic and then disease moves in. It is a KNOWN fact that Cancer thrives in an acidic atmosphere....SO if you want to be preventative, get your gram-reading-self and take a peep at what your eating!

I had NO idea how much sugar I was ingesting. In fact if someone asked me if I ate a ton of sugar I'd say I was a salty gal...

That was until I decided I needed to make some changes... When facing an inflammatory disorder one of these changes was to CUT sugar for 3 months and afterwards only reintroduce small increments of natural substitutes, such as brown rice syrup. Fermented grain sugars like brown rice syrup & barley malts are better for us because they move into our blood at a slower rate, which saves us from wall slammin’ crashes.  Plus, these sweeteners actually contain minerals, unlike refined products that strip the body of chromium and cooper.  

'Fo'sho' I thought OH, this will be easy - the dairy seemed way tougher...HA,ha, ha...Once I started paying attention to everything that contained sugar, my vision of what I was actually eating took over. For starters, reading labels was new to me, and when I say reading labels I mean understanding what's in it the product and if I didn't know, Google became my friend.

Never before in the history of mankind have we been so slammed with sugar. As sugar became cheaper to produce, it also suddenly became the main ingredient in most of our foods.

I soon learned just how addicted to sugar I truly was! I needed a sweet fix, if only a bite of chocolate or a cookie after every meal. I craved muffins, breads and donuts with hot coffee loaded with sugar! I LOVED a vanilla soy latte...dang! I now know that I was probably taking in at least 40 teaspoons of sugar a day, the AVERAGE for an American. Can you imagine having a sugar bowl on your coffee table and eating 40 teaspoons a day throughout your day until bed?

The real shocker was discovering just what "grams of sugar" meant, I don't carry a scale around, so understanding this is tough, but it helped to learn that there are four grams of sugar in every teaspoon.  When buying boxed cereal I was BLOWN away as I walked the aisles dividing my teaspoons into grams!

Without a doubt my character “HI I DON’T WANNA CHANGE” dug her nails deep into my pantry door, serving up tons of excuses of why I should keep my relationship with sugar, expressing the classic excuse “I need it, I get shaky and need a soda fix due to my blood sugar dropping...” Finally I had to pry her from the sugar bowl and let her know “You are JONESIN' dude...You are craving a fix "mang" (sorry, couldn't resist "Scarface"), what you need to do is eat an apple or a few carrot sticks.

Of course ‘HI I DON’T WANNA CHANGE” gave me the OK, fine, I will use HONEY talk, but what she didn’t know was that honey is actually much sweeter than sugar and is quickly assimilated directly into the bloodstream, the only plus is that honey DOES contain minerals.  For centuries honey has been used medicinally so if you have a specific use then go for it, but to use as a daily sweetener is abuse.  Another known fact is that once honey is heated it looses its positive properties, so only buy and use raw honey, which you can find online or in health stores.

My “HI I’M JUST SOMETHING TO LOOK AT” was a way easier aspect/character of my personality to convince. Once I let her know that a diet high in processed sugars sucks the collagen from her face at a faster rate, leaving behind dry, flaky, wrinkly skin, she was all about cutting back sugar and seeking out brown rice syrup.

But what I really needed to do was to restructure my entire diet, so that I didn’t jones no'mo.....

You can do this - feed your body whole grains and veggies so that our bodies absorb sugars and minerals, keeping the jonesin’ at bay!

At the start of my sugar free diet I was given this recipe and told to drink it every day...guess what? It worked RAPIDO!

I no longer have bad cravings and when I do get a bit of sweetness, I can actually taste it!  For example, I now KNOW that sweet potatoes don't need marshmallow, brown sugar or honey because they are slam bammin' sweet all by themselves...I had to clean out my body and detox my taste buds so I could re-taste my food.

Good luck...on your sweet journey.

This is really yummy and is like drinking veggie soup broth...I promise you will like it!

To prepare sweet vegetable drink, you need:

1/4 cup carrot

1/4 cup cabbage

1/4 cup pumpkin or squash

1/4 cup large onion

Grate or finely cut the vegetables.

Add four cups water and bring to the boil. Reduce fire and simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes.

Strain and drink only the liquid.

You can eat the veggies too, and store the broth in a covered container in the fridge so you have it for a couple days, be sure to drink a cup of broth at least once a day, but the more times the better!

Mee Tracy-McCormick was interviewed about kicking the sugar habit on Big Blend Radio. To listen to the interview, please click here.

Mee Tracy-McCormick (aka PKIA)  - 'Princess Know It All' is about Wide and and Expansive living. She encourages women to question what they don't know.  PKIA is all about CHOICES, and helps us by enabling us to see ourselves and the characters that we create to protect our greatest selves. PKIA is about personal ownership, from food to beauty. She is inspiring and empowering. Check out her self-empowering blog at www.PrincessKnowItAll.com