I was just shooting with Kelvin Koh at a wedding, 2 and a half weeks ago, and just offered him a drink.
“No, thanks Why Keen, I am trying this new diet.”
That was how it started. The premise, which he shared with me throughout the rest of the day, was simple. According to the book Sweet Poison, by David Gillespie, fructose, a seemingly harmless sugar, is messing up with our body’s ability to tell us that it is full, and reducing the consumption of this sugar type, would produce drastic results, ceteris paribus (all things remaining equal).
Fructose is found naturally in a lot of fruits, and with glucose, forms half of sucrose, or the refined sugar which we eat. Basically, glucose good, fructose bad.
The “Sweet Poison” diet, according to Kelvin, was just a 3 week to a month detoxification process where we take as little fructose as possible. Which means that we can still take our char kway teows, our pastas, our pizzas, and chicken wings, and chicken rice. Just stay away from Coca Cola, cakes, cookies and ice cream.
You better believe that I am taking that “challenge”!
“It is not even a challenge at all!” I remembered thinking.
Kelvin also mentioned that (remember, at this time, I haven’t even read the book!) after 3 weeks, we can go back to trying sweet stuff again, but by then, our body would be able to tell that certain things are too sweet. By then, our bodies would also be able to signal to the brain when we had enough food, and to stop us from eating more than we should.
So I tried the diet first, without reading the book, because it seemed so simple. Of course, I did try to find the book, but found it very hard to get a copy from either Kino or Borders, but then thought of finding the ebook instead, since I am reading books on my Iphone most of the time anyway, and found it at Kobo, an online store with a free Iphone app, here’s a link to the book :-
When I read into it deeper, eventually, I found out much more from the research that David Gillespie did on the effects of fructose in our diet. The famous Atkin’s diet, (zero carbohydrates) and other diets, (zero fat, only salad) all work to a certain extent, but he felt that there was something wrong somehow. These are the major food types, and our bodies need sugar, protein and fat to operate properly, so why should we need to stop eating any one of these types to stay lean?
He eventually found that huge amounts of refined fructose was cause, and he backed it up with a lot of research data. But I think most of all, I tried it, and the effects are quite apparent. In order to remain fair, I maintained all else the same, I didn’t increase my exercise regime, nor eat any less of anything else, so that I can prove to myself if this diet works. But I think if I had repeated what I learnt from “Slow Burn” too, the effects would have been much more profound!
More on that later!