Outrageous. Maybe the trans fat companies will be next.

In regard to six weeks of doing everything right, a friend asked me how it was going in the comments, and I thought I'd reply here rather than there. Anyway, here's how it's going:

It's going okay-ish. I just finished my second six weeks, and am now in the midst of a four day break before signing on for a third six-weeker (happily, the break coincided with a long vacation weekend visiting friends and playing in a tournament). Friday was quite a few Ella-safe blondies (my daughter has allergies, so these had no dairy, but sugar galore). Saturday was pretty good, just chocolate mousse for dessert. Sunday was a bunch of Oreos on the ride home and a Blizzard from DQ. Not sure what poison I'll pick today, and then it's back on the wagon tomorrow.

I can definitely feel a change though. The desire for sugar, while still there quite powerfully, feels like it's more in my head than in my gut. It's the memory of how great it tastes rather than the deep-down craving (most of the time, sometimes the tough one is still there). And I have found myself slightly ambivalent about my current little sin siesta, with more feelings of "do I really want to do this?" than I had last time. I even find myself toying with the idea of jumping back on the wagon today rather than tomorrow, but man, I haven't made Ella-unsafe brownies yet, and there's that "Endangered Species" brand dark chocolate with toffee chips with my name on it lurking out there.

So, three months in and I can feel changes, although the beast is far from licked. I really feel like any health or fitness plan that tells people "stick with it for 3 weeks and you'll stop wanting it", or "exercise for 6 weeks and it will becoming a habit" are doing their adherents a disservice. For me, the exercise habit took probably TWO YEARS of fighting for it before it became a habit. And my sugar battle is in its infancy at three months. To tell anyone they just have to make it a few weeks before it gets easier is setting them up for failure when that inevitably turns out to be untrue. Of course, the truth might be too discouraging, so I don't really have an answer.

Coincidentally, the friends we were visiting called this very interesting article on leptin to my attention: Can't Keep the Weight Off? Maybe Leptin is the Culprit. (and here's a brief postscript). In a nutshell, there may be a powerful hormonal response to weight loss that suggests to you (in much the same way Tony Soprano might suggest something to you) that maybe you should think about putting that weight back on. And this hormonal response can last for YEARS. Sucks. But you gotta love that last paragraph:

How do some people manage to overcome the leptin effect and keep weight off? Generally by watching their food intake very carefully and continuing to increase their physical activity. "Anybody who has lost weight and kept it off will tell you that they have to keep battling," says Dr. Rosenbaum. "They have essentially reinvented themselves, and they are worthy of the utmost admiration and respect."

Yeah baby.

I meant to give at least a couple of these more individualized attention, but I moved this week, and that is always a nightmare (I think it's the top of my "Suckiest Non-Tragic Things" list). Anyway...

• The Great Fitness Experiment: Sugar Busted. I met (online) Charlotte recently when Mark's Daily Apple linked us both up in the same post. She runs a great (and funny!) blog, and her sugar post hits home given my current abstinence experiment. Sounds like we have pretty much the same sugar bug, and she even links me up! Very cool.
• I've written a bunch on Tabata Intervals, but Matt Fitzgerald really sums them up nicely (can't remember who pointed me to this one). Like Charlotte's, Matt's blog just found a prominent home in my aggregator.
• The World's Healthiest 75-Year-Old Man. Three THOUSAND reps?!

I wasn't going to write anything up about this, as I didn't really think it was significant, but I read this series of blog entries from Ross Enamait:

• Bad Habits and Weight Loss
• Learning How To Eat
• Learning How To Eat - Part II
• Inspirational Display

... and taken together, along with this bit from the last one:

...transitioning to a healthy lifestyle may not be easy at first. If you've lived the last 20 years with poor nutritional habits and limited (or no) physical activity, you can't expect to suddenly transform yourself into the next Jack Lalanne. Self discipline will be needed to kick start the transition. Any change in habit requires a conscious (active) effort on your behalf.

Once you see the light, you'll realize that it's easy to keep, and certainly worth your time and effort. You won't see the light on your first day however. The transition from inactive and unhealthy to active and healthy is one that will take time and patience.

... got me thinking it might be worth posting a little something on my dietary struggles after all.

So, I eat too much sugar and white flour, both poisons. While I've made great strides over the past four years in both exercise and nutrition, I've never managed to kick the habit. HIGHLY addictive, those things. I've read all about alcoholism, and the behaviors I exhibit are the same (without the drunkenness and the social stigma). I've read all kinds of posts from evolutionary fitness folks that once you get yourself off the stuff, you'll stop wanting it, so I thought I'd put that theory to the test.

First, I tried a Thin Red Line approach. On a calendar, I'd draw a line through days I was good (no sugar, no deep fried stuff, no starch/minimal grains, and only whole grains at that), an X through days I was bad, and I'd try to make the line as long as I could. I thought just by tracking it that would be enough reinforcement. No way. The red Xs just piled up. I think I made it 11 days once, and when I'd fall of the wagon I'd stay off for days before climbing back on.

So I figured drastic measures were needed. Time to really give the whole "you'll stop wanting it" idea the best chance for success. I needed an interval where I'd be nothing but good. I thought six weeks would be enough. Short enough I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, long enough that my body would have time to adjust, and the cravings would lessen. I hoped.

So I did it, and it sucked, and through the whole thing I never stopped craving brownies, donuts, french fries, chips, ice cream etc. I thought I wanted it just as bad on on day 42 as I did on day 1 (it didn't help that I pulled my hamstring pretty good 12 days in and really wanted to say "screw it" and eat my way out of the resulting funk).

So I thought my experiment was a failure. I took three days, ate whatever I wanted, and then had a decision to make. Would I basically throw away six weeks of work by reverting to my old habits, or would I go once more into the breach? Well, I'm now two days into another six weeks. Sigh. I must confess I'm not dreading it quite as much as the first round. Here's what I've taken away so far:

1. Holy crap, kicking sugar is HARD. Even at my worst, I was fit, and ate pretty well otherwise. Even after six weeks of abstinence, I still crave it.
2. Jury is still out on whether it's possible to stop wanting it. Since my second six weeks fills me with a bit less dread than the first six, I'm going to take that as a sign.
3. Another sign: after the six weeks were up and I ate whatever I wanted for three days, I did not binge nearly as badly as I have in the past. It wasn't three days to be proud of, but it also wasn't embarrassing.
4. Man, I hope it's possible to stop wanting it altogether, because as Ross points out in one of his articles, any diet based on a feeling of deprivation is doomed to fail over the long term.
5. I suspect that your body chemistry has to change in a pretty deep and significant way before your desires change, and I don't know how long that takes. I wish I did! Pretty long time, it seems, so hang in there and give your body a chance if you embark on a similar effort. However long you think it will take, that's not long enough.

P.S. Some people have it easy, some have it extra hard. I'm betting I'm in the middle. The difficulty of the battle varies with the individual. UPDATE: I posted a bit of follow-up in the comments below.

P.P.S. A reader comment below. EIGHTEEN MONTHS?! Yikes.

Mmmm.. donuts:

In the experiment, 43 rats were placed in cages with two levers, one of which delivered an intravenous dose of cocaine and the other a sip of highly sweetened water. At the end of the 15-day trial, 40 of the rats consistently chose saccharin instead of cocaine.

Sure, it's rats. Hard to know how much this correlates with human experience. But for me at least (and I know I'm not unique) sugar is a powerful addiction. I haven't had any first-hand experience with other addictions, but I know I've been unable (so far) to kick this one. I've gone for stretches, but never more than a few weeks, and usually never more than a couple days. Binges are rare, but also happen. I'm very well-informed as to how harmful it is, and yet I rationalize, cave, etc. It's an addiction, just like any other. Alcohol, tobacco, sugar, coke, what have you. They all hook you hard, they're all bad for you, and, insidiously, they all (generally) kill you very, very slowly, so you can build a (shortened) lifetime out of saying "just this once...", "I've been good", "I'm depressed", "it's not that bad", etc.

To satisfy my sweet tooth, I've come to increasingly rely on Splenda (sucralose) sweetener. Usually just a packet in my oatmeal in the morning, or a packet in some plain yogurt. Not a big deal, but as sucralose is increasingly finding its way into a variety of products, I wondered as to its safety. After googling "splenda", you don't have to scroll down very far to get to pages from one of its more vociferous critics, Dr. Joseph Mercola. Not really sure how to take his stuff though, given how many hits a search for "mercola" and "quack" returns. So you've got Mercola on one side and Michael Fumento on the other side. Who to believe? Ultimately I found The Truth About Sucralose by Cy Willson at T-Nation to be the most persuasive. The best course of action is certainly to avoid all sugar and artificial sweeteners, but I'm not ready to pull my sweet tooth just yet. So for me, Splenda it is. For now.

From The New Yorker, Deal Sweeteners:

What's stopping the U.S. from doing the same [distilling better ethanol from sugarcane rather than corn]? In a word, politics. The favors granted to the sugar industry keep the price of domestic sugar so high that it's not cost-effective to use it for ethanol. And the tariffs and quotas for imported sugar mean that no one can afford to import foreign sugar and turn it into ethanol, the way that oil refiners import crude from the Middle East to make gasoline. Americans now import eighty per cent less sugar than they did thirty years ago. So the prospects for a domestic-sugar ethanol industry are dim at best.

Interesting. And, like so many interesting things involving politics and special interests, depressing.

Sorry, bit of a link backlog:

• I'm kinda late with this one, but another big holiday is right around the corner. De Vany on holiday binging:

  And, in case you say "I will binge just this one day," note that the high insulin spike from a meal full of stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and other starches and simple carbs will amount to a massive assault on your insulin sensitivity. The footprint of that meal will be there for a long time. You will be curiously vulnerable to carb temptations for some time after because your sensitivity is diminished and your circulating insulin will remain elevated.

• Two via Straight to the Bar (who I'm poaching from with regularity these days): Joachim Bartoll's weblog (I read the fish oil post first, and immediately decided it was worth adding to my aggregator) and this BBC story on desk jockey posture. Maybe my programming slouch isn't such a bad thing!

146 Reasons Why Sugar Is Ruining Your Health. If only I couldn't think of 146 desserts that just wouldn't be the same without sugar.