We love our sugar and for good reason, our brain tells us that it makes us feel good, which is why it's so difficult to break up with this potentially harmful ingredient. 

In this episode, I talk about my own love affair with sugar how I got it out of my life and the science that tells us why, especially as cancer survivors, we should consider making sugar a distant relative rather than a long-term roommate in our homes and in our diets.

This break up is not easy because we literally crave these sweet, shiny little crystals, but there are ways to overcome the desire for sugar that aren't as tough as you might think.

Listen in and take your relationship with sugar to a level that's healthy for you.

Read the full transcript: 

00:01

This is Laura Lummer, the breast cancer recovery coach. I'm a healthy lifestyle coach, a clinical Ayurveda specialist, a personal trainer, and I'm also a breast cancer survivor. In this podcast, we talk about healthy thinking and mindfulness practices, eating well, moving your body for health and longevity. And we'll also hear from other breast cancer survivors who have reengaged with life, and have incredible stories to share. This podcast is your go to resource for getting back to life after breast cancer.

00:38

Hi, this is Laura. And you are listening to Episode 12 of the breast cancer recovery coach, a love affair with sugar, how to end a toxic relationship. And you know what I'm talking about right? You don't you want to turn this off right now? Like no, no, no, don't make me break up with sugar. But we're going to talk a little bit about the relationship we have with sugar. And look at why it might be a good idea to reconsider the relationship that you have with sugar, and how much of it you incorporate into your life and into the foods that you eat. So I always prefer to talk about things that I have personal experience with because I've learned through my 53 years of life, that everything is different when it happens to you. Right? You may see it happens to someone else. And you heard yourself say, you know if that ever happened to me, this is what I would do. And then it happens to you. And you often say, Oh, well, gosh, I guess I'll do something else instead. So for this reason, I feel very comfortable talking about the love affair that most of us humans have with sugar. Because for many, many, many years of my life, I had that same love affair. And we're going to talk about why it's so hard to break up with sugar, and let that relationship go. And especially as cancer survivors, we're going to talk about why we have to see how this relationship is toxic, and how we can work towards making that change, and just forcing sugar to move on out of our house out of our life out of our relationship. So let me tell you a little story about myself. When I was a kid, I had an in satiable sweet tooth. I was born in 1963. So this is a time when there just wasn't candy everywhere there were Walmart's and targets and all of these places in gigantic displays at the grocery store checkout in Stan filled with candy. Candy was something that we had as a treat on a special occasion. It just wasn't something that was in house. And it wasn't something that was all around. It was very special. For instance, one of the things I remember very fondly from my childhood was that my grandma had this lovely crystal bowl in her formal dining room, which none of us ever sat in, except on special holidays to have coffee after dinner. But she had this crystal bowl. And I remember it was on the end table in the dining room. I think that the only time those candies got touched or open was when we were there and allowed into that living room for special occasions, because they were these beautiful ribbon like candies of beautiful colors, you know stripes of different colors running through them. And they were so sticky from having sat in his bowl and having condensation that you would literally have to break those little suckers apart. But we didn't care. You know, my brother and my sisters and I we didn't care because when our grandma said you can go in and get a piece of candy, we were just thrilled to get the candy. We were happy to taste that sugar, whether it was sticky or not. Another thing that I remember fondly around my relationship with sugar is that when I was a young kid, my brother and I, we used to walk around the neighborhood, we would go to the parks and the fields around us because this was the time I live in Southern California and the neighborhood where we lived in as kids was really just beginning to develop. So there were lots of open fields. And there were lots of different places of construction going on around us. So you know framed houses and people would leave coke bottles and beer bottles. And that was back when Musa came in bottles. And we'd go around and we collect these bottles. And we take a wagon because we could find so many of them that we'd fill up the wagon, and then we'd walk the half mile or the mile. It was to the the liquor store and we would turn them in for money and then we would turn that money into candy. And we'd get these lovely little brown bags filled with candy brown paper sacks and we'd be so excited. But it was so special to have this candy and it felt so good that we actually earned the candy through our whole labor of love that we just treasured. Didn't we take that candy back and we'd plan out how we're going to eat it and when we were going to eat it, and it just became this really special treat right to be able to have sugar whenever you wanted it because we bought it so we owned the candy. And in those days, Halloween was almost as good as Christmas. Because that big bag of candy that you got going door to door trick or treating was so valuable when you got home. And you could sucker your brothers and sisters out of some of the really good candy bars and make trades for like, I'll give you three of these coconut ones for one of those Reese's peanut butter cups or one of those Milky Way's right or some of the smarties and you're gonna make all these awesome trades and try to get the best candy. And then again, you would treasure that bag of candy, you'd hide it in your room because you knew if one of your siblings finished their candy, or if they didn't want to finish their candy, they'd come and find yours needed. So you make sure and hide that bag of candy and keep that treasure very, very safe. Though as I grew up candy and chocolate was always something very special. You know, on Easter, we would get a box of See's Candy chocolate buttercream eggs from my grandma and man was that just one of the biggest treats ever, we looked so forward to getting that every year. And I have to admit, I was one of the culprits in the house that when my siblings weren't looking, I'd sneak into their boxes and take their chocolate eggs so that I had mine to last a little bit longer. So as I grew up, and I was an adult, and I was a district manager for different clothing companies and I would travel from all tamale checking on the stores. And I was you know, fit and I was active and I had young kids. So I was busy. And I was very busy at work. So I didn't always have time to eat. And, you know, I had no idea about nutrition to the extent that we have understand nutrition these days. And so I'd pop into a See's Candy and one of the malls, and I buy a bag of a half a pound of chocolate butter creams. And I would have a cup of coffee, and half a pound of chocolate butter creams. And it was okay because I was lean, I was fit, I still exercise all the time I look good. So it didn't bother me. And at that time, sugar wasn't known to be to have all of the potential side effects for your health that sugar is known to be now. And we'll go into that in a few minutes here about you know what marketing was telling us about sugar at that time, fat was the culprit, not sugar, so it was okay that I had chocolate butter creams, we'll just pretend that they're not filled with fat too. But moving on. So I can remember when my brother was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and he was in treatment. This was in 1993. And I remember talking with him one day, and he was telling me that if he was to survive, which tragically, he did not survive, then he would never be able to eat sugar again. Now, I was about 2829 years old around that time when he was in treatment. And I was appalled at hearing this. What in the hell do you mean, you can never have sugar again? And what does sugar have to do with cancer? And why would you even want to live a life with no sugar? I don't even understand this. Adds I remember him saying, Well, Laura, that's what the doctor said. And they just told me that you know, certain things I won't be able to eat and sugar and caffeine or two of those because you know, he just had too much cancer and it would increase his risk of recurrence. Of course now I know why his doctors told him that. And we're going to look at that too. We're going to look at first of all the why what is our relationship with sugar? Why do we love it so much? Well, the obvious answer to that is that it tastes good. Now there are some people out there who aren't big fans of the sweet taste. And to them, I say you're lucky. But to most of us, we really enjoy the sweet taste. You know, one of the first piece that we experience as infants is mother's milk, which is sweet. And so we become acclimated to that sweet taste very early, in fact right away when we come into this life. So here's an interesting statistic and a 2013 article that I found in Psychology Today. It talks about an experiment where neuroscientists use an fMRI scan to watch brain activity as people were actually consuming sugar. So they were doing this in real time. And what they saw was that the same part of the brain that responds to cocaine, heroin, and motivation, the nucleus accumbens really lights up and comes to life when we eat sugar. And what it does is it releases dopamine, this neurotransmitter, this chemical in our brain that causes us to feel the sensation of pleasure. So this is the chemical that not only helps us to perceive something as a reward. But it causes us to want to go after to seek out that reward. So we can have that feel good feeling again, and we can experience that flood of dopamine in our brain because it's nice, it makes us feel good. And you know, if you have known anybody that has addictions to things, you can see that there's this drive, even though a person may say, I really don't want to do that they're driven to do that. How many times have you said, I'm don't want to eat sugar again, and then it's there, and you see it in that cupcake looks so good, and you just eat it. And then in the moment that you eat it, hopefully it's a good cupcake. And it's worth the bite that you're like, oh, gosh, that's so good. And then five minutes later, man, why did I do that? Well, this article went on to talk about other studies. And these other studies showed that dopamine receptors in your brain actually build up a tolerance to sugar Again, very similar to other addictions. So what this means is that you may have that one cupcake and get this sensation of deliciousness, and that feels good and dopamine gets released from the sugar, and you feel that sensation of pleasure. But then, if you consume sugar consistently, then you're going to have to consume more and more sugar in order to get that same sensation of pleasure. So another thing if you do or have known anyone in your life with addictions, or maybe you've heard of people who are in 12 step recovery programs, these people will often be told to eat candy. And there often be candy around at these different meetings, because consuming that sugar affects the same part of their brain that the addiction was affecting. Now, it doesn't by any means have the same kind of a magnitude as a drug like heroin or something like that. But it still gives you that little bit of a release of dopamine. And so maybe you take the edge off a little bit of different cravings that might cause someone to go back to an addictive substance to drugs or to alcohol, which is really interesting. We're going to talk about the big sugar scandal. Now, you may or may not have heard about this. So I'll fill you in. The details came out in November of 2016, in JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association and the internal medicine. And this was a study from scientists at the University of California in San Francisco. And they published results that they had found from some historical research that they did on earlier studies. And this showed that evidence of sugar contributing to coronary heart disease was known as early as the 1950s. But the scientists discovered that the Sugar Research Foundation sponsored this research project in order to downplay the role of sugar in heart disease, and to change the focus and tidbit on dietary fat and cholesterol as the culprits to heart disease. So this was kind of drawing that line in the sand where everything shifted to low fat, right, and all of a sudden, it was all about eating fat, free foods. And sugar was no longer a problem. Sugar wasn't the enemy, it was deemed perfectly acceptable to eat a sugary bowl of cereal as long as you had nonfat milk on it. Right. So in fact, there was even a marketing campaign in the 1970s that encouraged people to eat sugar before a meal, because sugar was so satiating, that it would cut down your cravings to eat other food and help you to manage your weight. And it worked. Imagine that. So this sugar study is just one in hundreds that contributes to this controversy over whether or not we should let industries fund research on the products that they make. And some people say that this is fine, because, you know, if we didn't have industries funding research on their own products, then there wouldn't be enough money to do any kind of research. Other people say this is not cool, because if you've got the sugar industry funding research on sugar, of course, the results are going to be skewed. So we end up having this controversy, right. And this hidden information that's been you know, hundreds or hundreds of years but decades ago, that we had this discovery that sugar could contribute to these diseases, but it was kind of covered up. So now we fast forward to current day 2017. In an article in today's dietitian, this article tells us that sugar added to food increases your risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type two diabetes, non alcoholic fatty liver, and cancer just to name a few horrible things that could happen to us. Doesn't sound so sweet anymore, right? So this article also cited a study that people who ate 50 grams of sugar a day A in any form. So it could have come from high fructose corn syrup from regular table sugar sucrose from honey, that if they consumed 50 grams of sugar a day for two weeks, even if they had perfectly normal blood sugar levels before doing this, they had an increase in their triglycerides. And you know, we've all heard when you have high triglycerides, you're at a higher risk for heart disease. So isn't it interesting that even though lots of people say, Oh, I can't have those foods with cholesterol, or I can't have those foods with fat, these studies actually show that the triglyceride levels increase with the consumption of sugar. So how does that affect us as cancer survivors? Well, it impacts us in a couple of ways. So first of all, eating a lot of excess calories through consumption of sugar, and it's very easy to get extra calories by eating sugary foods, it increases the body fat. When we eat too many calories, we gain more weight, and especially when we eat calories in the form of carbohydrates, aka sugar. In fact, the American Institute for Cancer Research claims that up to 33% of breast cancers could be prevented by maintaining a healthy weight and frequent physical activity. And kind of even more startling is a statistic from the American Cancer Society that says that 1/3 of annual cancer deaths in the United States can be attributed to diet and physical activity. And this is the same amount of cancer that's caused by tobacco products. Yikes, that's scary. And postmenopausal women fat tissue is one of the main sides of estrogen production. And we know as breast cancer survivors, especially if we had estrogen or progesterone positive or sensitive cancer, that we want to keep our estrogen levels as low as possible in our body. And some of the other ways that excess body fat increases our risk of cancer is that it influences the increase in hormones like estrogen, estradiol, insulin, and it has an impact on our immune function and increases inflammation in our body, which many, many studies are now saying may be the route to all cancers is chronic inflammation. So the second way that that impacts us as cancer survivors is that cancers love sugar. So we've talked about that, in previous episodes, how cancer cells absorb glucose, blood sugar faster than any other cell. Now, there are other facts in the growth of cancer, many other facts, it's a complex convoluted disease. And so we're not saying that sugar is the reason that cancer grows, but just be aware that it grows faster, and that cancer cells absorb sugar at a much higher rate than other normal cells. And that studies are showing that keeping consistent low blood sugar levels may be something that is helpful in preventing cancer or cancer. reoccurrences. So here's the tricky part. How do you do it? How do you cut sugar out of your diet and stick to it? A lot of people just want to go cold turkey, and they're just like, No, I'm, I'm just gonna stop it. I'm just gonna stop eating that. And again, that's awesome. It's great that some people can do that. But not the majority of people can do that. You know, we can see also from a neurological level that our brain kind of fights back and we make a big drastic change very quickly, our brain kind of fights back on it and says, Hey, I'm uncomfortable. I don't like that. And then we end up not being successful that would that change. Some people like to replace sugar with artificial sweeteners. And that that opens a whole other can of worms, right? Because there's this controversy over whether or not artificial sweeteners are safe for consumption. Science says yes. Well, other individuals, holistic health practitioners say, maybe it isn't, or no, it isn't. And some people say, you know, there's such a thing as a spa chain toxicity syndrome. And others argue that, you know, that's not even true. So for me, without even going into the debate over the safety or not safety of artificial sweeteners, I can't even can't stand the taste of it. So it doesn't matter to me if it's safe or not, because the taste and the aftertaste of artificial sweeteners, for the most part, is just something that is not appealing to me. And even, you know, I know stevia is all the rage, and it's a natural sweetener and natural artificial sweetener, lots of people talk about it, put it in your recipes. For me. It's still an aftertaste that's just not appealing. And so I kind of go to the other end and say, Okay, well how can I fix things with maybe adding the juice of fresh fruits in them or something and get a little sweetness or vanilla extract? But then I came across an awesome product that I think is awesome, called Xylo sweet. And this is a product that's made with sugar alcohols. This does not mean that there's alcohol in the product there isn't. It's granular. So it's just like regular table sugar. And honestly, in my opinion, it tastes just like sugar. I've baked with it. I've cooked with it, I've sweetened fruit with it. And I've even made desserts for friends who have tasted it, and then said, Okay, that's all I can have, you know, just one bite, I can't have sugar, where I'm trying to cut back on sugar. And so they're really excited when I tell them well, there's actually no sugar in that it has a really good flavor. So that's something that I do highly recommend people trying if they're interested in checking out and incorporating a sugar substitute to help them kind of curb those sweet cravings. One thing I know for sure is that once you get sugar out of your diet, it's really kind of amazing that every now and then when you go back because you get a craving or you talk yourself into the fact that you know this is going to be so bad. And you indulge in something sweet, that looks absolutely delicious. You kind of noticed that it's so sweet and becomes overpowering. Once you get that taste of sucrose kind of off the tongue for a while and you get out of that habit. You go back to it and you realize, Wow, this is awfully sweet, almost intolerably sweet sometimes. And you might also notice a difference in your body. I know for me, I noticed hot flashes almost instantly. shakiness feelings of being really thirsty and just kind of a funky, itchy kind of feeling in your skin like just just not good, creepy crawly. Right? And it has a really bad effect on my body. And I've talked to many people who once they get it out of their life, come back and say, you know, yeah, it really makes me feel kind of sick when I eat sugar now. So the first thing that I would suggest for you to try is to track all the food that you eat for seven days and use an app like My Fitness Pal or any other nutrition app that tracker that's easy for you to use, or just write it in a journal. Because even though we might think that we're eating well, and we don't have a lot of sugar in our diet, often, very often actually, we underestimate both our calorie intake and our nutrient intake. So it's really great if you can track what you're eating and get a baseline. And when I say track, don't try to be good. Don't think, Oh, I'm tracking this. So I'm not going to eat that no, just eat normally eat anything that you would normally eat and make sure that you incorporate a week and day in this tracking process. Because we tend to eat very differently during the week than we do on the weekends. And so it's important to get at least one weekend day in there. I say do it for a whole week Sunday through Saturday so that you get you know, a nice picture. And then you can look at that. And you can see where am I actually at on a normal week of eating, what is the amount of sugar that I'm consuming. And now it's really important that you write this down or that you do track it in an app where you can go back and look at it and get an honest to God written down document that says here's what it is, a lot of us don't like to take that extra step. And we try to make this a mental exercise where you kind of note to yourself what you put in your mouth or if you sat down to a meal. But that just doesn't cut it. That's just not good enough. Because we can forget, we often underestimate. And it's nice to have this journal to look back on. Because that way you can also see where your largest sources of sugar are and where the hidden sugars are in your diet. So it's important that as you go through this exercise, you don't judge yourself regardless of what the outcome is, if you're having, you know, a pound of sugar a day, you just trying to figure out what you're having. And if you're having two teaspoons of sugar a day. Either way, we're not judging. We're not going to be beating ourselves up over anything. But you, I guess could congratulate yourself for like, wow, I'm only having two teaspoons of sugar in my day to day. That's pretty good. So at the end of your week, just check it out and see if your intake is within the American Heart Association recommendations of six teaspoons or less a day for women and nine teaspoons or less a day for men. Now some of you are saying like come on Laura, about cancer, I got thrown into chemically induced menopause. I've had my breasts cut off, I'm tired all the time. My bones hurt for God's sake, I deserve it indulgent. Don't take my sugar away too. And for you, I say that, of course that is your choice. And if you're not ready to let that go, it's okay. You're not ready to let it go. But if you're listening to this podcast, then I'm assuming that there's something about the way you're feeling physically, mentally, emotionally that you want to change and you really may be surprised at how much better you feel if you eliminate or begin to reduce the sugar intake in your diet. So maybe just give it a try and see for yourself. And if you really struggle with it and you have a Hard time and you're kind of angry because you don't want to have to give that up to this, look at those feelings and really get in touch with why you're feeling that way and know that you are a free person and a free spirit. And you can go back anytime you choose to go back. But don't put blinders on to this food source, and the impact that it may be having on your health. And the potential risks that it may increase for you, as a breast cancer survivor, and also as a person may be aging may be over the age of 50 may be facing higher risk of coronary heart disease. And knowing that decreasing the amount of sugar will help you in that category as well. I always recommend if you've listened to any my podcast, taking baby steps, do things a little bit at a time. Because it's just easier, it's more comfortable that way. You know, some of you again, are all or nothing people and by all means go for that and more power to you. But for most people, if you drink a few sodas a day, try cutting one a day out for a week. Or even if that's too scary, and you think about it in your heart takes a little preflop try cutting out one a week, look at how many you consume in a week when you do your seven day journal, and then say no, I'm going to cut that down by one. And maybe you do one soda a day. And then once you've eliminated or reduced your intake by one a day, then start one more a day. And before you know it, you've kind of just reduced that you haven't kind of you have reduced that intake and you've really brought down your consumption of sugar, you'll probably notice weight loss during that journey as well, because of the impact that sugar has on weight gain. So that can be really encouraging. And when you make small, gradual changes to your diet, your brain just gives less resistance and you have a higher chance of long term successful change. And that's what we want, right? As you know, tempting as quick fixes are in this world and you know, seven days to a whole new body in 60 days of this and all of that stuff great and wonderful. And I hope it works for some people. But for most of us, we want lasting change. And lasting change means slow, deliberate, intentional changes in our health behaviors throughout our life. And that's really the brass ring, long lasting change that helps you feel good, and helps you be happier. That is what the end goal is. So hang in there, take baby steps, and post your progress and challenges and successes on my Facebook page because I would love to hear from you. You can find me on Facebook and Twitter as Laura Lummer on Instagram as the breast cancer recovery coach. And if you haven't gone to my website yet, Laura lummer.com and download my free ebook, six habits of healthy happy breast cancer survivors. Go to my website right now where you can get that book for free. And join my email list where you'll have access to content through email that I don't post anywhere else. Thank you for listening today. And if you have the time if you enjoy this podcast if you get anything out of it. Take a minute now and go to the iTunes Store and leave a positive review for this podcast, which will help it just become easier for other breast cancer survivors to find. Thank you so much. I'm just honored that you continually tune in and download the breast cancer recovery coach and it just you know more and more people by the hundreds actually are downloading it every month and it just is incredibly It's a huge honor for me and I really appreciate your time. So until next time, let your lifestyle be your medicine

28:50

voices in your head you've put your courage to the test laid all your doubts your mind is clearer than before your heart is wanting more your futures you know you been waiting on

29:21

this