
How Giving Up Refined Sugar Changed My Brain - kareemm
https://www.fastcompany.com/3050319/lessons-learned/how-giving-up-refined-sugar-changed-my-brain
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Afton
The fogginess that the author describes sounds like the 'keto-flu'. But if he
was eating carbs from vegetables and fruits, he shouldn't have noticed this.

I also found this odd: "I missed the sugar and milk in my coffee " Wait, why
were you eliminating milk? Sure it contains some sugars naturally, but they
aren't "refined sugar" that the article is demonizing.

The mental clarity and focus he describes are very likely due to the increased
quality of sleep. I have no explanation for why his sleep improved.

My own anecdote is that I ate a high fat, super-low carb diet for about a
year, and one of the primary motivations was that one of my friends couldn't
stop talking about the mental improvements (calmness, focus, short-term
memory). Sadly, I experienced none of that. It makes me think that either it
is placebo, or sugar/carbs really does affect _some_ people badly, but others
not so much. I will say that I found loosing weight to be effortless when
eating that way (in fact I had to go off it when I wanted to gain some
weight).

Finally, I hate it when people point out things like "(a large Big Mac meal
deal has 85 grams of sugar—236% of your daily allowance). That means if I were
to escape refined sugar, I was going to have to spend more time at home
cooking fresh foods than I was used to. " but then ignore the breakdown:

    
    
        Big Mac: 9g of sugar
        Medium Fries: 0g of sugar
        Large Coke-classic: 76g of sugar.
    

In other words, you don't need to cook more fresh foods, you could just get
diet coke and double down on fries to get the calories you need without the
sugar.

None of this is meant to say "No, we should all eat lots of sugar". I get that
in the quantities that most people eat sugar, it's way too much. But I'm
frustrated that we can't have an honest conversation about sugar and how it
ought to be consumed. My personal opinion is that people should in general
just stop drinking regular soda. If people did that, I suspect a fair amount
of our sugar-consumption problems would just stop.

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chipsy
It really is different for everyone. I found that milk protein was actually
the lynchpin of my diet troubles. But both our medical practice and food
culture don't speak in terms of food sensitivity outside of "you swell up and
die immediately". There are lots and lots of bad things that can happen that
don't involve swelling up and dying.

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hellbanner
"The average American currently eats 126 grams of sugar a day—though most
don't realize it. Much of that amount comes from the refined sugars added to
our foods during manufacturing."

"foods during manufacturing" \-- that's the problem -- foods manufactured, not
grown.

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PopeOfNope
Yup[0].

[0]: [http://freetheanimal.com/2015/08/fall-bloodletting-
iron.html](http://freetheanimal.com/2015/08/fall-bloodletting-iron.html)

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Terretta
To me, 12 lbs in 2 weeks sounds like not re-hydrating.

My guess is the volume of sodas, juices, and energy drinks wasn't replaced
with an equivalent volume of water.

