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CYCLE 3: TRANSFORMED!
You did it! You’re through the tapering and transitioning weeks—don’t you feel great?! Not to mention all the weight you’ve already lost! Now that you’ve transformed your relationship to sugar, there’s just one step left. Cycle 3 is all about discovering whether you’re fully sugar-sensitive.
After the Sugar Impact Diet, you’ll understand how sugar works in your body and the impact it has on how you feel every single day. When you’ve lost weight and have amazing energy, I bet you’ll look at that afternoon biscotti in a completely different way. Those things are just not worth it. So you can stay in Cycle 2 forever if you want or need to; stick with all low-Sugar Impact (SI) foods (go ahead and add 1–2 servings of fruit as well), and an occasional medium-SI choice (1–2 servings a day max) is okay, too.
But for now, in Cycle 3, we’ll figure out whether you’re in a place to have an occasional piece of cake without sliding backward, or if you have to spend a bit more time in Cycle 2, possibly even a month, before you get there.
YOU CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH!
It’s time to know how far you’ve come and how much sugar you can handle before you set off your system’s alarm and before cravings see a chink in your armor, so you won’t dive face-first into a plate full of powdered donuts. Cycle 3 will walk you through the responsible reintroduction of medium-SI foods, and maybe a few high-SI foods as well.
In Cycle 3, the lightbulb will really come on. You’ll connect the dots between the amount of sugar in what you eat and how you feel. What combination of low-, medium-, and high-SI foods is best for you? For your energy, your mood, your skin, your weight? This is your chance to write your personal sugar roadmap, unique to you. After this last piece of the puzzle, you’ll know exactly what your sugar-sensitive life should look like, and you’ll really be able to make the best choices for the long term. It’s so empowering!
Cycle 3 Blueprint
Swap 3–4 low-SI servings for medium-SI servings; 1–2 of these servings should be from fruit for 7 days
Follow the recommended servings on the Sugar Impact Plate
Have one high-SI serving at the end of the week
Journal daily
Weigh, measure, and retest at the end of the week. Decide whether you can stay in Cycle 3 or need to return to Cycle 2
Plan to do Cycles 1 and 2 once a year as a reset, or if you “fall off the wagon.”
ARE YOU READY?
This isn’t like that class in college. It’s not pass or fail. But there are two possible paths, and one is that you’re ready for Cycle 3—you’ve passed, get to move on, and can incorporate some medium- and high-SI foods in your life. The other is that you’ll simply stay in Cycle 2 a little longer until you’re ready for Cycle 3.
It can be tough to risk sliding backward when you’re looking and feeling great. Still, if you’re ready, and you probably are, I want you to go for it. Knowledge is power. Besides, you’ve worked really hard… wouldn’t it be nice to know you can have a little treat now and then?
SO HOW DO YOU KNOW?
What really determines whether you move to Cycle 3 is how you feel. You’ll identify this by retaking the Sugar Impact Quiz as you reintroduce medium-SI foods. Here’s a hint: your score should have improved. Let me tell you where I’d like you to be. Ideally, you’ll score 2 or lower for each of the seven symptoms—low or unstable energy, sugar and carb cravings, appetite, poor mood and focus, gas and bloating, difficulty losing weight, and belly fat. My hope is that you’ll be 12 or below overall. Or, if you’ve got a higher score than that, then you at least have had a 50% improvement from your original score.
If you’ve seen a big change, fantastic! You’re ready to move to Cycle 3, and you can skip to the nuts and bolts of how Cycle 3 works: go to Start Me Up, here. If you aren’t quite there yet, let me help.
TURN THAT FROWN UPSIDE DOWN
First of all, don’t be discouraged. You’ve done a lot of worthwhile work getting to a low-SI diet, and since most of you have lost weight, no doubt you feel great about that alone. If you haven’t hit the benchmarks to move into Cycle 3, it will just take a bit more time. For now, let’s look into what else could be going on.
Let’s go over some of the biggest metabolic challenges that can keep you from truly getting out from under the grip of sugar. If you find out you’re dealing with any of them, my advice would be to visit a functional medicine doctor to dig deeper on how best to address them. You can also hook up with a health and nutrition coach. I’ve got recommendations for both in the Resources online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources.
If you’re still feeling some fatigue or moodiness, cravings haven’t completely left you, or, worse, you’re flat-out frustrated that the weight hasn’t come off as much or as fast as you hoped, you may find out why very soon. There are six common issues I’ve found that can really shut down weight loss. Thankfully, all of them can be fixed.
1. Insulin Resistance or Diabetes
If you have:
High blood pressure
Elevated triglycerides or an elevated TG/HDL ratio
High fasting glucose, insulin, or hemoglobin A1c, and/or
A high waist circumference
… you may be struggling with insulin resistance or diabetes. If so, your fasting insulin is higher than it should be, which signals your body to create inflammation and store fat rather than burn it off. This makes weight loss difficult, and sometimes downright impossible. If you suspect you have insulin resistance or diabetes, refer to the recommended Lab Tests online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources and ask your doctor to run them. Consider supportive supplements, too, which can also be found online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources. Some that can help are fish oil, Vitamin D, lipoic acid, chromium, magnesium, vanadium, zinc, berberine, and fiber. Resistance training and sleep also help restore insulin sensitivity.
2. Low Thyroid
Low thyroid function, or hypothyroidism, is a biggie, and often goes un- or underdiagnosed. The thyroid gland has a huge responsibility—it manufactures the hormones that regulate the speed of your metabolism. When it’s dragging, it can rob you of energy, lead to depression, make your skin dry and your hair fall out, cause your LDL cholesterol to rise, make you constipated and cold, and cause weight gain. There are a lot of reasons you might have hypothyroidism, including stress, genetics, toxicity and diet, but most are not your fault. It tends to run in families, and is more common in women. If you rely on soy as a “healthy” protein source, you could be contributing to a thyroid problem, as soy can impair thyroid function. Ask your doctor for a complete thyroid panel and be sure to include free T3 and thyroid antibodies. Combine your symptoms with ideal thyroid lab markers, because you can still have low function and be in the “normal” test range.
3. Adrenal Exhaustion
You also might have adrenal exhaustion. Adrenal problems can be masked as thyroid problems, but the two often go hand in hand. If you’re constantly going nonstop, besieged by stress and pounding coffee to get through the day, you’re crushing your adrenal glands (you were beating them up even worse when you were hoovering sugar all day). Your adrenals regulate the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. When you’re stressed, your adrenals release more stress hormones, which causes your blood sugar to increase, so insulin increases. That’s how you gain belly fat. In fact, increased cortisol alone can cause you to eat more. Stress also depletes serotonin, which will also make you crave sugar. If you’re chronically stressed, your adrenals will eventually get fatigued. Then you’re tired all of the time, which of course makes you go for more… sugar.
When you’re exhausted, it’s even harder to lose weight. You should be getting at least 7–9 hours of quality sleep a night—yes, that means you! According to a 2010 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, just one night without enough sleep can trigger insulin resistance, which is linked to type 2 diabetes. It can also make you hungrier, especially for sugar. The fastest way to heal your adrenals is to make time for sleep. Burst training–style exercise also helps your body handle stress faster. Don’t overschedule yourself, and make sure you have some downtime. Vitamin C, the B vitamins, fish oil, and healing herbs, including rhodiola, can also help you de-stress (for more tips, go online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources).
4. Toxicity
We’re all walking vessels of toxicity, to one degree or another. There’s no avoiding some toxins in the air or in our homes. But clean eating and exercising go a long way toward flushing most toxins out of your system, and if you’re still hanging on to yours, they can get in the way of you being able to lose weight and set you up for chronic disease. Toxicity creates brain fog and fatigue, makes you hold on to fat, and slows down your metabolism. A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey study found that obesity by itself wasn’t the cause of diabetes. It was the toxicity—in this case, phthalates—stored in the fat of the women studied. If you’re toxic and it’s the cause of your weight-loss resistance, you may have to go through detoxification with a functional medical doctor before you’ll start to see improvements.
5. Gastrointestinal Conditions
You may also be dealing with a gastrointestinal issue like leaky gut. Leaky gut can lead to food intolerances, Candida, and small intestinal bacteria overgrowth (SIBO). It’s unbelievably common, and just as commonly goes undiagnosed. Leaky gut is the condition of having a permeable small intestine, and it can be caused by issues like stress, gluten, fructose, toxicity, certain medications, and altered gut flora. When your gut is leaky, food particles slip into places they don’t belong. They then trigger an immune response, which can make you inflamed, gain weight, and crave the very food that is hurting you. Addressing and fixing these food intolerances is the foundation of my book, The Virgin Diet. If you haven’t done the Virgin Diet yet, I highly recommend moving onto that next.
SIBO is a condition marked by large numbers of bad bacteria in your small intestine. Our bodies are actually made up of more bacteria than cells, and it’s critical to have the right balance of bacteria in your gut—about 80% good bacteria to 20% or less of the bad guys. Poor diet, especially sugar and processed foods, stress (again!), and antibiotic use can contribute to SIBO. It gives you presents like gas, bloating, diarrhea, and weight gain. Depending on the severity of your SIBO, you might need a doctor to prescribe a special antibiotic. I also like berberine, a good probiotic, and a daily dose of a fermented food like kimchee, cultured veggies, or coconut kefir. They’ll all help restore the balance of bacteria in your gastrointestinal tract.
Candida overgrowth creates a variety of symptoms, including brain fog, sugar cravings, and bloating. Candida yeast in your gut needs sugar to survive, but if you’ve got a severe case, you may not be able to starve it out without some supplements or other support. My favorite nutrients are antifungal herbs and probiotics (go online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources for Supportive Supplements).
6. Hormonal Issues
If you’re 40 or older, you might be struggling with sex hormone imbalances. This happens to both men and women and can make it nearly impossible to lose weight. For men, it means low testosterone and possibly elevated estrogen, and for women, low testosterone and an imbalance of estrogen and progesterone. An imbalance in your sex hormones can lead to depression, low energy, joint pain, low sex drive, and an inability to put on muscle or lose weight. If you’re struggling with any of these symptoms, I recommend you see a functional medicine doctor (go to http://sugarimpact.com/resources).
Speed-Healing Techniques
If you score at 20 or above on your Sugar Impact Quiz, consider using one or more of these techniques to help you reclaim your sugar sensitivity faster.
Burst train to blast fat and improve stress tolerance (see here)
Resistance train to improve insulin sensitivity
Sleep 7–9 hours a night to reduce appetite and improve insulin sensitivity
Meditate to lower stress hormones
Eat by the Sugar Impact Plate: protein, healthy fat, and slow, low carbs help balance blood sugar
Drink green tea to improve insulin sensitivity
Take Supportive Supplements for specific concerns (online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources)
START ME UP: CYCLE 3
Welcome to Cycle 3! I’m going to walk you through the nuts and bolts of how the cycle works and what to expect.
First things first. You’re here because you’ve redone your Sugar Impact Quiz and scored each symptom a 2 or lower, or you’ve improved overall by 50% or more. Next, do a weigh-in and measure. Measure your hips and your waist. From here on out, you’ll measure both every week. It’s extremely important to journal through this cycle, or you’ll miss out on the heart of what the Sugar Impact Diet can do for you—help you connect the dots between the amount of sugar you’re eating and how you feel. You don’t want to miss that—it’s such a gift to your weight and health!
You’ll still be eating by the Sugar Impact Plate in Cycle 3, and really paying attention to portions, so keep that diagram close and commit it to memory. The same rules apply for meal timing, too—be sure to eat by the Sugar Impact Clock.
THE SWAPS
Cycle 3 is a test week to see whether you’re fully sugar-sensitive. The Scales pendulum is swinging back from the direction it went in Cycle 2. You’re going to take 3–4 low-SI foods and swap them for 3–4 medium-SI foods every day. That’s it. Simple, right?
The exception is fruit, since you weren’t having any fruit in Cycle 2. In this cycle, you’ll get back to 1–2 fruits a day, and real fruit, not just avocados, olives, lemons, and limes! Just add whichever low- or medium-SI ones you choose. Toss berries in your shake, have some grapefruit in your salad, or have a couple small tangerines with your almonds as a snack.
Let’s take a closer look at how these swaps work. For dinner, an example of an acceptable trade would be to have quinoa pasta in place of quinoa, if that was your low-SI choice in the grains category. It doesn’t mean portions go out the window, though. A cup of pasta should count as 2 slow, low carb servings.
For the roots category, try adding a starchy carb rather than swapping it outright for a vegetable, because I still want you to have those veggies. Add beets to your salad. Or you might choose sweet potatoes in place of legumes. Be sure to keep up with your 5 or more servings of non-starchy vegetables, but live a little and bring in a couple of foods from the medium-SI list.
The news for low and no-fat foods in Cycle 3, especially dairy, is short and sweet (a pun!). Stay out of the high SI. That keeps it easy, right? (PS—that doesn’t mean you can’t have no-sugar-added coconut milk ice cream! or unsweetened coconut or almond milk yogurts—all of which are in most grocery stores these days… okay, I’ll stop.)
As for beverages, bring back the libations! Yes, you can now start having a little bit of dry red or white wine, if you’d like. Or tequila, or a little gluten-free beer. Keep it to 1 drink a day for women, 2 drinks for men. And what’s my rule? Don’t save all your allotted drinks for the week for just one day! I always have to say that, right? Enjoy.
In the sauces category, you can bring back no-sugar-added marinara sauce, which is on the medium-SI list. You’ll notice that sugar-added marinara sauce is on the high-SI list, so stay away from that still. Different dressings straddle those columns, too, because some have more sugar than others.
Finally, the sweeteners. This is where I want you to be really careful. Sweeteners are a slippery slope—a sugar gateway. I’m betting sweeteners will all taste too sweet to you now, but even so, I’d prefer you not dip into the high-SI sweeteners at all and that you limit the mediums to no more than one a day. Maybe your walk on the wild side is 72% dark chocolate (if this is a weakness, keep yourself together—break off a small piece and walk away!). For those of you who want to use honey for homeopathic reasons, local, organic raw is back in play. And if there’s a little added coconut sugar or honey in something, you don’t have to avoid it; just make sure you count it.
Or better yet, go with a natural flavoring to sweeten up your food. There are more than a few. Sweeten with spices like cinnamon, vanilla, or nutmeg, or add cumin, cardamom, allspice, mace, star anise, or clove. Try extracts like vanilla, almond, hazelnut, orange, or coconut. You can also add in zests of orange, lemon, or lime.
And just a snack quickie—if you were noshing on guacamole and veggies, you can move to guacamole and bean chips. There’s just something liberating about that. If you like a dry crunch, you can swap from dehydrated, low-roasted nuts to rice chips as a Cycle 3 indulgence, in small amounts.
Detailed Cycle 3 Blueprint
In Cycle 3:
Be sure to journal daily (download a sample journal page online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources)
Swap 3–4 low-SI servings for medium-SI servings
1–2 of these servings should be from fruit
EXAMPLE 1:
Add 1 cup of berries to your shake
Swap your quinoa for quinoa pasta
Have a glass of dry red wine with dinner
EXAMPLE 2:
Have guacamole with bean chips for a snack
Toss an orange in your shake (vanilla + orange—think 50/50 bar!)
Trade your legumes for a sweet potato
Add one high-SI serving at the end of the week and deploy the three-bite rule (take three polite bites—bites you’d be comfortable having if you were being watched on national live TV—and put the fork down!)
At the end of the week, reevaluate:
Weigh and measure
Retake the Sugar Impact Quiz
If you feel the same or have continued to improve, then follow the Sugar Impact Cycle 3 guidelines.
If your Sugar Impact Quiz score increased by 3 or more points overall or 2 points in any category; you stopped losing weight; or you gained back 1–2 pounds or an inch around your waist: choose from low-SI foods most of the time. Limit yourself to 1 medium-SI choice daily, and limit high SI to 1 per week until your Quiz scores improve or you start losing weight again.
This will keep you at:
10 grams of fructose
25 grams of sugar overall
150–200 grams of carbs overall
Depending on your biochemistry—if you don’t tolerate sugar well because of your genetics or a very damaged metabolism—this may be where you have to stay. But most of you will move to the next level, below.
You’re Sugar-Sensitive
If you are in good health, have reached or are close to your ideal body composition, and are physically active, stay at:
25 grams fructose total per day
50 grams of sugar total per day
150-200 grams of carb total per day
3–4 medium-SI choices (or less) per day
1–2 fruit servings per day
1–3 high-SI servings (or less) per week
Plan to do Cycles 1 and 2 once a year as a reset or if you “fall off the wagon.”
MEAL PLAN: CYCLE 3
In Cycle 3, make the Sugar Impact Shake with one fruit serving, and modify meals for intolerances.
DAY 1
BREAKFAST:
Sugar Impact Shake
LUNCH:
Pan-Seared Salmon Wrap made with Rice Tortilla
Easy Roasted Asparagus with Red Palm Fruit Oil
DINNER:
Spice-Rubbed Beef Tenderloin with Raw Tomato Salsa
½ baked sweet potato
Classic Creamed Spinach
SNACK/DESSERT:
Strawberry Avocado Mousse
DAY 2
BREAKFAST:
Sugar Impact Shake
LUNCH:
Bean and Bacon Minestrone Soup
Arugula and Watercress Salad with a Poached Egg and Lemon-Dijon Vinaigrette
DINNER:
Mediterranean-Style Chicken Kabobs served on a bed of brown rice
Grilled Eggplant with Olive Relish
Snack/Dessert: Cherry-Berry Fruit Salad with Shaved Dark Chocolate
DAY 3
BREAKFAST:
Sugar Impact Shake
LUNCH:
Turkey Burger with Goat Cheese, Sautéed Onions, and Cucumber Salad
Serve on Gluten-free English Muffin
DINNER:
Pesto-Topped Sea Scallops with Asparagus served on a bed of brown rice
Warm Napa Cabbage Slaw with Shallot Dressing
SNACK:
Homemade Cashew Butter on Celery
DAY 4
BREAKFAST:
Sugar Impact Shake
LUNCH:
Chicken Noodle Soup
Substitute brown rice or quinoa noodles for the shirataki noodles (2 cups brown rice for 4 servings)
Mixed green salad with Simple Vinaigrette
DINNER:
Italian Burgers with Tapenade
Serve with ½ baked sweet potato
SNACK:
Apple slices with 2 tablespoon almond butter
DAY 5
BREAKFAST:
Sugar Impact Shake
LUNCH:
Shrimp and Shirataki Noodle Salad
Serve on 2–4 cups of your choice of greens tossed with 1 tablespoon sesame oil and 1 tablespoon lime juice
DINNER:
Pork Stir Fry with Snow Peas, Asparagus, and Peppers served with 1 cup of brown rice
SNACK:
Sliced honeydew (approximately 1 cup) topped with Lemony Frozen Greek-Style Yogurt
DAY 6
BREAKFAST:
Sugar Impact Shake
LUNCH:
Roast Beef and Vegetable Lettuce Wrap with Chipotle Vinaigrette—make with rice tortilla and keep lettuce in as filler
DINNER:
Texas Bison Chili, serve with mixed green salad with Simple Vinaigrette
SNACK:
Roasted Garlic and Lemon Hummus with Bean Chips
DAY 7
BREAKFAST:
Sugar Impact Shake
LUNCH:
Vegetarian Lentil Soup
Serve with Pan-Fried Artichoke Hearts with Lemon and Garlic
DINNER:
Spaghetti Squash alla Checca—substitute quinoa pasta
Roasted Spice-Rubbed Chicken Thighs
Mixed green salad with Simple Vinaigrette
SNACK/DESSERT:
Test one serving of a high-SI food of your choice
TRACK HOW YOU FEEL
For this week, as you dabble in medium-SI foods, choose wisely—you only get 3–4 servings each day. You could also decide to have a double serving of a medium-SI food, which would count as 2 servings.
Tune in to how you feel as you swap those 3–4 low-SI foods for 3–4 medium-SI foods. Pay attention and journal your results. What happens? Does your weight stay the same, or do you start to gain weight? How’s your energy level? Do you get bloated? Is your waist measurement going up? How’s your focus? What about your mood? Are you getting hungry or struggling with cravings again?
Check the way you’re feeling against your scores on the Sugar Impact Quiz at the beginning of the week. I know it can be frightening to feel yourself slipping, but you’ll course-correct in no time, and then you’ll know how to avoid ever going back.
And the only way that happens is if you pay attention to how you feel when you eat. It’s the key to unlocking you from the prison of overweight and nagging symptoms. When you discover a trigger food—say, when you eat a sweet potato and suddenly start scrounging for what’s left in the casserole dish—it’s just easier to stay off them entirely, right? The risk is too big. I know this; I’ve been there. I don’t ever want to visit again.
At the end of the week, take another look at your Sugar Impact Quiz, your weight, and your waist—see what happens.
WHERE TO GO WITH WHAT YOU KNOW
There are two possible outcomes: You either stayed the same (or continued to improve), or you took a few steps backward. It’s the difference between discovering you’ll be fine having a high-SI treat once in a while, or that you have to stay low SI—at least for a while longer—to keep the weight off and feel your best. Let your outcome direct you to the right path, below.
IF YOU’RE STAYING THE SAME (OR CONTINUING TO IMPROVE)
Congratulations—you’ve graduated! You’ve become sugar-sensitive, and you’re exactly where you should be. See if this describes you: you’re in overall good health, you’ve got your weight close to or where you want it to be, you’re active, and you don’t have a lot of stress.
Here are the specific guidelines for managing your daily sugar consumption going forward (don’t worry, if things didn’t go as well for you, I’ll help you chart your course in just a bit).
- 25 grams fructose overall
- 50 grams of sugar overall
- 150–200 grams carbohydrates overall
The total daily sugar tallied above translates to 3–4 medium-SI foods maximum a day. Stay mostly with low-SI foods, and monitor your medium-SI choices based on your weight and what your body tells you in response to those foods, with symptoms. You can also sneak in a high-SI food once or twice a week.
The American Heart Association (AHA) recommends that only 10% of total daily calories (based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet) come from added sugar. In 2002, the World Health Organization suggested the same, but it has since proposed that you reduce your total daily calories from added sugars to below 5%, or about 6 teaspoons daily, for more benefit. The AHA refines its guidelines further, suggesting only 5 teaspoons maximum of added sugar a day for women and 9 for men. Of course, most people are getting way more than that, but don’t feel like you need to hit the AHA recommended amount, either. If you must use one, be sure to use a product with low- or medium-SI sugar.
As for high-SI foods, when you have to have one, go with my three-bite rule. You can have three bites of something normally off limits when it’s really, really worth it. A diet cookie or a gluten-free muffin do not pass the “really, really” test. But something delicious, amazing, to-die-for worth it gets the three-bite blessing. (Only if it won’t set off your food intolerances, though. No matter how sensational a treat, if it’s made with a food you’re intolerant to, like gluten or dairy, that trumps the three-bite go-ahead.)
But as a newly crowned Sugar Impact Diet graduate, you can implement the three-bite rule one to three times a week. Whether your food crack is a muffin or red velvet cake, you can have three polite bites—not three how much can I shove in my mouth bites, okay? Then get rid of it.
DE-FRIEND YOUR TRIGGERS
If you have those three bites of that awesome high-SI treat and it triggers a reaction for you, or a craving, it’s out. For good. You’re breaking up with that food. You don’t want to have any food in your life that sends you back into the downward spiral of cravings and crashes and weight gain, right? Moderation is a slippery slope, because so often people really believe they can have just one cookie. This is the beauty of connecting the dots, and a giant dot is when you figure out that a food triggers your cravings. That means it counts as a high-SI food for you—and it’s gone, baby, gone.
HELP! I GOT WORSE!
If your symptoms get worse by swapping 3–4 low-SI foods for 3–4 medium-SI foods this week, don’t stress. You’re just not fully sugar-sensitive, at least not yet. Go back to Cycle 2 and re-challenge again in 4 weeks to see if you can move into Cycle 3. By the way, you can live in Cycle 2 forever. I live in a modified Cycle 2—it’s just where I feel best. This means that I might have a piece of fruit or a medium-SI food several times a week, but the majority of my food comes from the low-SI categories. So know that’s an option for you, too. And guess what? The longer you live in it, the less you want any of those medium- and high-SI foods anyway!
Cycle 2 is also your place to live a little longer if you’re dealing with any more serious health problems, such as hypertension, insulin resistance, heart disease, metabolic syndrome, autoimmune diseases, or cancer.
Remember, you can live in Cycle 2 forever. There’s no reason to leave a place that helps you feel good and lose weight. It’s easier than you think, and you won’t have any cravings! The dots that connect there seem to point to not messing with a good thing, and I don’t want you to end up in a situation where all of a sudden you’re eating your trigger foods, you feel crappy, and you go down a deep dark rabbit hole and never come out again.
Plan to do Cycles 1 and 2 once a year as an annual reset—it’s an awesome plateau buster, and we all need that on occasion. You should also go back and do Cycles 1 and 2 again if you really “fall off the wagon.”
MY IMPACT!
Kelly Doerr
Starting weight: 158.6 lbs.
Current weight: 148.4 lbs.
Total lost: 10.2 lbs.
I have struggled and struggled my whole life with my weight. Putting it on, taking it off, and putting it right back on as soon as I alter one little step. I would exercise 2 hours a day, cut my calories back to 700, and would literally get nowhere except more frustrated. I even had a doctor tell me to start smoking! But something told me to not give up. I think it was fate that I stumbled across JJ Virgin.
I am 45 years old and dealing with the usual hot flashes, joint pain, skin problems, high blood pressure, gas, bloating, constipation, fatigue, and weakness. At least, I used to think these were usual—I don’t deal with them anymore!
Before I started the Sugar Impact Diet I had been following the Virgin Diet. I had been on it for 7 months. I had lost a good deal of weight—43 pounds, to be exact. Easily, too, I might add. I was feeling pretty good, I thought, but I still struggled with certain things.
Then I found the Sugar Impact Diet. In all honesty, I wasn’t that excited. What I was doing was working for me. I hadn’t been losing any more weight, but I wasn’t gaining. However, after spending 4½ weeks following the Sugar Impact Diet, I was astonished. I was down 10 pounds and almost 3" on my waist and 4" on my hips.
Now I’m healthy! I feel great! And it was easy! The Sugar Impact Diet gets you to where you need to be without you even knowing it! JJ’s plan steps you down, bit by bit, and before you know it, you’re doing it, and loving it! It’s like the Sugar Impact Diet targets major problem areas like your waist and belly, because that’s where I see the most difference! I’ve lost more inches on my waist on the Sugar Impact Diet in one month than in the previous 6–7 months!
My energy is at an all-time high. I’m a part of this world again, not just someone who watches it as it goes by. I find myself dancing as I’m washing dishes. I’m getting more done in a day than I ever have. When I do laundry, I pull out something that looks small and think, whose is this? Then I realize, it’s mine! My confidence is high, my skin glows, my hair shines, my attitude is brighter, my blood pressure is down, my joints don’t hurt. But most important I think what I love the most is that I can now trust my body. I don’t think about doing things now. I just do them.
Taking the sugar out of my diet has allowed me to realize the effects (and limitations) it had on my life. If sugar slips in my diet now, I immediately get a headache. The next day, my knees are killing me. I’m grumpy and miserable. It’s not worth it.
I’ve been inspired to try to help others as well. I want to shout it from the top of a mountain that this plan works! It’s easier than you think. If I did this with ease, then anybody can do it. So make a lifelong change and do the Sugar Impact Diet. You won’t regret it.
WELCOME TO YOUR NEW LIFE
You’ve had an enlightening, empowering journey. You’ve come a long way, baby! Now what?
When you look at food from here on out, think about its SI. Where does it fall on the Scales? Will it have a low, medium, or high impact on your blood sugar, your energy, your weight? Remember, if broccoli isn’t available, it’s not necessary to default immediately to the mashed potatoes!
Cycle 3 has clearly outlined the amount of sugar you can handle so you know how to make sure you feel fantastic for the rest of the great life ahead of you. I’m willing to bet you couldn’t have even imagined being here before you started. And it gets even better. With your new appreciation of food’s subtle, natural sweetness and the rich contribution of savory and spicy flavors, your food will explode with flavor. Your cravings and extra pounds will never find their way back. But the new you is here to stay.
You’ve used the recipes for each of the cycles, but don’t toss them out now—enjoy them regularly to keep burning fat, looking great, and living a low-SI life, symptom-free. Keep eating by the Sugar Impact Plate and the Sugar Impact Clock and relying on the Sugar Impact Shake as your go-to breakfast. Create your own yummy path forward. Mix it up and share what you discover—you’re carrying the torch now!