Guest Blogger: Amanda in Philadelphia - Sugar Junkie

It's been three months since our guest blogger, Amanda's, last post; that post remains the third most popular on And Topher Too (so go back and read it)! She recently committed to improving her overall health and today I'm very happy to be sharing a few of the challenges and successes she's faced along the way. Thanks Mandy! - Cullen

Sugar Junkie by Amanda D

September 2011 was when I made a conscious decision to be healthy. Not to diet, and not to lose weight, but to change my habits. Though I walk or bike every day as a means of transportation, I wanted to make sure my body was strong so I joined a gym. And while I ate relatively well, with lots of real foods and fresh vegetables, I regularly indulged in full fat local yogurt, humanely raised local beef, and many, many home baked goods.

Cutting back on red meat was easier than I expected. I choose chicken sandwiches or vegetarian options when I eat out, but don’t deny myself a cheeseburger when all my friends want to go to Five Guys. After a few months I found my body craving beef less and less, particularly when I upped my intake of kale, spinach, and other leafy greens. Habit #1 broken!

My next challenge was sugar. I spent the first month of this new lifestyle staring at my flour and sugar canisters in the kitchen and thinking of a million tasty ideas - Millet muffins! Banana chocolate chip bread! Chocolate orange cookies! It wasn’t these individual items, which I made with cage free eggs from the farmer’s market and half the sugar in the recipe, that were my downfall. It was my addiction to sugar, to having treats in the house all the time, that was the habit I needed to break. And much like the beef, I found after a few months that I no longer craved sugar. An orange or some berries in the evening were all I really needed. Habit #2 broken!

Until about a month ago - when I noticed a big bowl of discounted Valentine’s Day candy on my friend’s kitchen table. I mindlessly began snacking on them. Little did I know that with those little hearts I would awake my sugar addiction. I found myself buying candy bars, baking small batches of cookies and muffins, and eating cupcakes for lunch. I have simultaneously been dealing with a torn rotator cuff, working with a trainer and a therapist to strengthen and heal my muscles. My body has ached horribly and I have been very down on myself. It wasn’t until yesterday that I put it all together.

I came across this tidbit on the internet: “We are most often addicted to the foods we are allergic to.” A quote from Dr. Mark Hyman that rang loud and true in my ears. I’ve been living with this injury a long while, but over the last month I feel the aches and pains everywhere. And I really believe that with every bowl of ice cream cake I have been eating, I have been making it harder on my body to get healthy and heal itself. I have no scientific proof, I have no doctor’s opinion behind me, I just know that I felt better, slept better, and had more energy a month ago, before my sugar binge began.

So today is the first day of breaking my old habit. Again. And I won’t see this as defeat, but a lesson in what healthy really looks like for me. Wish me luck!

KW's Food Day bread & her own food journey

KW and I met in 2003 at one of my favorite old haunts, Fontaines. We spent countless nights sitting at the bar eating raw oysters, drinking Miller Lites and becoming very close friends. Over the last eight years both of our lives have changed significantly. One of the less obvious changes has been our relationship to food. We've both moved towards "real food diets" but our motivations were independent of one another and quite different. 

KW was the first person I thought of when I decided to host a "real food" dinner party. Afterwards she offered to share her recipe for homemade bread. I asked if she'd also share the story of how her food choices have changed over the years. I was happy she said yes; her story follows:

I don't think I evolved into eating real food as much as I evolved into eating.  I am by no means a Foodie.  As I child in Michigan I ate vegetables from our garden, was not allowed to eat processed snacks and always had home cooked meals.  As an adult, I would skip meals and only eat when necessary. Sometimes this was a Lean Cuisine others times it was tuna in vinegar and oil. I didn't really put much thought into what I was eating. 

All of that changed five years ago when my body faced an unknown medical crisis and started rebelling against me. After lots of blood work and doctors appointments, I still can't say for sure what happened. I suspect the culprit was some medicine I was taking. This suspicion led to a parallel suspicion of FDA approved GMOs and processed foods.  I recognize that for some people it may seem like a giant leap from pharmacology to agricultural practices but the truth is nutritional science is still too young to know what effects Big Ag chemicals and methods are having on our bodies.   

I now look to food as fuel for my body. Not just calories, but also nutrients and vitamins. More importantly, nutrients and vitamins not modified by science and the poison we use to "grow" our food.  I only have one body and I am determined to treat it right.  I may not be able to control the air quality or the type of material being used in building supplies, but I can control my food intake. For me, eating real foods is a no brainer!   

KW's Homemade Bread
(the one she made for our Food Day pot luck dinner party)

Ingredients

• 3 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast
• 1/3 cup honey
• 5 cups bread flour (KW uses Hodgson Mill Premium Unbleached, All Purpose Naturally white Flour)
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1/3 cup honey (KW uses use dark organic honey)
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

1. In a large bowl, mix warm water, yeast, and 1/3 cup honey. Add 5 cups white bread flour, and stir to combine. Let set for 30 minutes, or until big and bubbly.
2. Mix in 3 tablespoons melted butter, 1/3 cup honey, and salt. Stir in 2 cups whole wheat flour. Flour a flat surface and knead with whole wheat flour until not real sticky - just pulling away from the counter, but still sticky to touch. This may take an additional 2 to 4 cups of whole wheat flour. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to coat the surface of the dough. Cover with a dishtowel. Let rise in a warm place until doubled.
3. Punch down, and divide into 2 loaves. Place in greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pans, and allow to rise until dough has topped the pans by one inch.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 25 to 30 minutes; do not over bake. Lightly brush the tops of loaves with 2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine when done to prevent crust from getting hard. Cool completely

Tips and tricks:
1.You can use your Kitchen Aid mixer to knead the dough (step 2).  Use the hook attachment and knead the dough on 1 or 2 for about 8 minutes.  The result is dough that is smooth like a babies butt.

2.  This is a gluten free recipe that will yield a slightly more dense loaf of bread.  To make a lighter sandwich bread you can add some gluten.  I used about 4 tbs. for the the whole recipe and added in step 1.

3. Take the loaves out of the pans to cool. This allows the bread to "air out" and prevents early mold growth.

The food is gone (also titled: Every single thing I ate on Friday)

It happens to everyone: you wake up one morning to realize all the food is gone. The milk, the cereal, the lunch options - eaten up and gone. Friday that was my day.

The alarm clock rang and I instantly realized I'd forgotten to buy breakfast foods on my way home the day before. No  breakfast, no reason to get out of bed. I rolled over and pulled the covers up. But Oliver siezed the opportunity and insisted this was the time for me to try his delicious oatmeal concoction. (Need I point out he is a morning person?) I said no, I'd skip breakfast and sleep a little more. Fifteen minutes later when I finally rolled out of bed there was a piping hot bowl of oatmeal topped with half and half, golden raisins, walnuts and maple syrup waiting for me on the kitchen table. 

It was amazing. I thought I hated oatmeal. I realize now, I hate those creepy factory flavored packets of instant Quaker Oats. The real stuff with real toppings is WOW.

At the office work kept pushing my lunchtime later and later. By 1:15 I was very hungry. I drove past the Moes, Panera and Wendys to reach Alon's (one of Atlanta's local bakery cafes). I picked up a $3.50 container of their tuna salad, a $.69 fresh baked multigrain roll and a $1.30 Orangina. I sat on the worn wooden bench in the front and enjoyed my traveler's style meal while catching up on Sunday's New York Times. (I admit, preserved tuna and mayo is not the healthiest - but it is better then Wendy's.)

 

Oliver commutes on his bike. Friday he decided it was a nice enough day that he didn't mind riding all the way from Georgia Tech to YDFM for a few of the groceries we were in such need of. Round trip it was just shy of twenty five miles. The last minute dinner he whipped up was a beef bourgogne made with Omaha steak tips from a gift basket I'd recieved earlier in the year. (Thank goodness for meat in the freezer!) He combined the thawed steak tips with mushrooms and a bottle of cheap red wine. Walla! Romantic dinner for two!

For a day without a meal plan I feel ok with how we managed. Granted, we didn't eat anything green; but we also didn't eat anything fake. Sometimes it's all about those last minute choices!

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A Heart Healthy Lifestyle: How it happened to us

To the best of my memory, we arrived at our current heart healthy lifestyle in three steps: two major life events combined with a bit of self-education.


In March of 2009 I was getting by on a diet of cold cereal, Lean Cuisines and Kashi bars. This had been my go-to meal plan for a little over ten years. Even two years with a chef as boyfriend had been unable to break my addiction to highly processed and rarely real food. March of 2009 is when I met Oliver; six weeks later he moved in (and by May 2011 we were husband and wife). His passion for cooking and his horror of Lean Cuisines quickly began to chisel at my frozen food devotion. Within six months my taste buds had changed enough that I could no longer eat a Lean Cuisine without cringing at each bite's intense amount of salt.


We spent Christmas that year in New Orleans with Oliver's family. When New Year's rolled around we could feel the added pounds from too many parties and too many po' boys. It was time to take our work outs more seriously. I suggested we give the gym a try; Oliver resisted saying that we were fine working out at home and in the park. By February he relented and we signed up for a two week trial membership at our local 24 Hour Snap Fitness.


It was that week that we received an unexpected and devastating phone call. Oliver's Dad, with whom we'd just spent a week in New Orleans, had died of a heart attack in his sleep. He was only 57. It was his first heart attack. Just weeks earlier he'd been to the doctor for a stress test and seemed okay. How could this have happened?


When we returned to Atlanta after the funeral our food goals became more defined. It was no longer enough to set our standard at "real food" we needed to learn about "heart health". Defining "heart healthy food" lead to a maze of vague nutrition claims and mixed results from studies. In the end I decided to my trust in Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and Jamie Oliver. Their books were the beginning of our self-education. We're still reading and learning about foods, their sources, their benefits and their detriments.


Today, our family standards for heart healthy eating are as follows: high fiber foods (most often in the form of black/ pinto beans and dark leafy greens), whole grains, never fast food, avoidance of CAFO meats, no highly processed foods (no Goldfish, no Lean Cuisines) and avoiding anything that has sugar (or corn syrup) in the first three ingredients. Weekday breakfast has been the biggest challenge; after two years of searching we have found only ONE breakfast cereal that does not have sugar in the first three ingredients. It's name will give an idea of how tasty it is; it's called "Twigs". Our biggest weakness remains bacon. We love bacon.


The trial gym membership turned into a full membership. We go three times a week, most often together, and stay for 30 to 45 minutes. We work out hard and focus on getting our heart rates up. On days that I don't want to be there I find myself repeating "use it or lose it". I'm proud that my devotion to the gym is not fueled by vanity; it's fueled by a real desire to be active and clever well into my 90s.


As our lifestyle has become more committed and refined I've found it hard to press the importance of heart health on those around me. When I do talk about these things in person I come across as preachy.  I hope that knowing the history of why we live the way we do will help others consider living the same way. It worries me that so many people live their lives as if a heart attack (or diabetes) can't happen to them. It is my hope that this blog will serve as inspiration for the little ways that we all can make our lives a little healthier.