I Quit Sugar for Life (6 page)

Coconut oil is mostly made up of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFAs), which permeate cell membranes easily, do not require special enzymes to be utilised effectively by your body,
and put minimal strain on your digestive system.

These factors, and more, imbue coconut oil with a bunch of unique health benefits:

LET’S TRY THIS

EAT A SPOONFUL OF COCONUT OIL AFTER LUNCH

My number-one, hands-down, foolproof way to curb cravings is to:

Eating it after lunch will nip that ‘Now I need something sweet’ hankering in its tiresome bud and keep you fighting full until dinner.

Introducing the TOFI

Heard of her? She’s Thin on the Outside, Fat on the Inside and her health is a real worry. She’s slim, with a low BMI, diets a lot and tends to eat a lot of sugar
(often via a big fruit juice for breakfast in the morning). If she carries any weight, it’s around her ribs or jawline. She also has a much higher risk of developing diabetes, insulin
resistance and cholesterol issues. How so? British scientists have found these TOFIs (very often young women) carry a lot of fat around their organs, which is not always visible from the outside,
hence they look thin. This is the fat that sugar converts to when it’s dumped onto our livers, um, via large fruit juices! (Fat from other food sources, on the other hand, is distributed all
over our bodies, just under the skin, contributing to higher BMI but not necessarily disease.) This organ fat is also the worst kind of fat, directly linked to metabolic disease. I see TOFIs
everywhere and their plight concerns me greatly.

Coconut water:

This is great stuff and is largely fructose-free, but the concentration of sugars in a coconut increases as the coconut matures. As the nut ages, there’s less water, and
therefore a higher concentration of sugar. So if you’re buying a coconut, pick a fresh one between four and six months old. If you’re buying a packaged version, check sugar content on
the label!

DIETS DON’T WORK. PERIOD. TRUE WELLNESS IS ABOUT BEING FREE FROM RESTRICTION AND EXTREMES.
That said, some diets can have
some valid nutritional principles at their core. True wellness is also about being open and cherrypicking helpful tips and tricks, and seeing if it works for you.

This is the boon of living without sugar – it gets your body off the sugar rollercoaster and able to determine the eating approaches that best suit you.

Know this: there is no perfect diet or eating approach. None are scientifically ‘proven’, including the sugar-free one. It’s all an experiment. Let’s
check out a bunch of dietary ideas that you might be able to cherrypick the best of:

CLEANSING, DETOXING AND JUICING

Juice cleanses, lemon juice and cayenne fasts, coffee enema retreats . . . the idea is that by flushing everything out and getting nutrients in an easily digestible (mostly
liquid) form we can get our bodies back on the straight and narrow. But here’s the funny thing: the body is already plenty capable of eliminating toxins on its own. And daily. It’s
called, ah, urination. Also . . .

OUR BODIES DETOX BEST WITH – WAIT FOR IT – SUGAR-FREE FOOD.

There’s also this: liquid diets leave you hungry (solids take almost twice as long as liquids to leave your stomach) and constipated (you need fibre for your gut to move
and to maintain the right kind of bacteria to keep things active), and will slow your metabolism (the calorie decrease can send the body into starvation mode, causing you to store energy). Plus,
juices are often full of fruit, beetroot and carrot, which, when the fibre is removed, are instant sugary fat dumps to the liver, served in a cute bottle.

There are certainly benefits to resting your digestion from time to time. But I have some simpler, smarter suggestions.

LET’S TRY THIS

FASTING

I don’t like the idea of food deprivation for days on end – it’s too emotionally taxing for most of us. But I can see the benefit of giving your guts a good
rest in regular spurts, and intermittent fasts, such as the 5:2 and the Alternate Day Fast, are backed by some sound science and logic. Clinical trials show that reduced caloric intake a few days a
week reduces circulating sugar and fat levels and reduces blood pressure, inflammation and oxidative stress. Research at the US National Institute on Aging’s neuroscience laboratory suggests
fasting is a mild form of stress that stimulates the body’s cellular defences against molecular damage, thus improving longevity. Other studies show a 14–16-hour food break can have
similar benefits. This gels with me as it’s easily done, even daily.

LET’S TRY THIS

THE OVERNIGHT ‘FAST’

DER, RIGHT? A RECENT STUDY FOUND THAT IF YOU EAT A 600-CALORIE SERVING OF WHOLE-MEAL BREAD WITH REAL CHEESE, YOU EXPEND TWICE AS MUCH ENERGY DIGESTING IT THAN IF YOU EAT 600
CALORIES OF WHITE BREAD WITH PROCESSED CHEESE. REAL FOOD – IT’S A HEALTHY WORKOUT!

Fans of this approach maintain that cooking reduces a
food’s
enzymes and the fewer enzymes in a food, the more our own
body’s
enzymes must be drawn
upon to break down a meal. The more of our own enzymes we use, the quicker we age . . . Got it?

Sure, some uncooked food in our diet, daily, is a good thing. However, many of the vitamins and minerals in vegetables are embedded in the plant’s cellulose cell walls,
which require cooking to break them down. So many of the valuable nutrients in raw vegetables end up not being absorbed by the body. Also, ‘raw food’ products often contain a ton of
agave and coconut sugar, with the sell-in that it’s raw. Yeah, raw, but toxic. So, what to do?

LET’S TRY THIS

NOT BLASTING THE CRAP OUT OF OUR FOOD

There’s a middle ground here – we can preserve enzymes
and
access vitamins and minerals by cooking our food slow and low.

▶
‘Sweat’
your vegetables gently at a low heat instead of stir-frying. I’ve touched on this already.

▶
Slow-cook
your meat and legumes instead of frying or boiling them. Many of the recipes in this book use this method, as
you’ll soon learn.

Eating a combination of cooked vegetables with some raw stuff is a great idea.

▶
In summer, eat a salad regularly. In winter, bear in mind winter vegetables are rarely suited to eating as a salad so instead, try adding to
your steamed vegetables or cooked meals some chopped raw carrot or red onion or – best option – some fermented vegetables (see
here
). I like to stir a tablespoon
or two through my Midweek One-Pot Meals (see
here
). The activated enzymes in cultured food overcomes the ‘tough cell’ issue I mentioned.

GLUTEN-FREE EATING

If you have a gluten intolerance, coeliac disease or, indeed, any kind of auto-immune disease, you know not to touch even a speck of gluten, right? Even a speck will remain in
your system for six months and wreak havoc. For everyone else on the planet, sensitive or otherwise? Well, gluten contains toxins. These toxins are wheat’s only defence against predators
(us). Plus, products today contain way more gluten than they did even just 20 years ago. Further, we’re eating more of it today than ever before (on average 6–8 servings a day). Ergo,
we’re consuming increasing quantities of a toxin that causes digestion issues and inflammation, and leaches valuable minerals from our bodies. Add all this together and you can probably see
why gluten is causing so many health issues.