Sugar-Free At Last

Tasting the sweetness of freedom

Skincare is linked inextricably with nutrition -natural skin is a wonderful indicator of good nutrition and nutritional deficiencies. Of all the proactive steps one can take toward healthy skin — becoming sugar-free is the most important. The case for the sugar-obesity link has been decisively made in wonderful documentaries like Fed Up.

The is a direct link of sugar to skin is something that I first read in the work of Dr. Nicholas Perricone — he made the connection between sugar and inflammation and Dr. Daniel Amen detailed the mechanism in how sugar promotes a process called glycation where sugar attaches to proteins to form harmful molecules called advanced glycation end products that affect collagen and elastin — the protein fibres that keep skin supple and firm. This glycation is mitigated to some extent in fruit because of soluble fibre but sugar is sugar and best abandoned for good skin.

Still there is a lot to do in parting with sugar — it is decidedly such un-sweet sorrow. Vilification no matter how honest it is is just not a strategy that has worked for me to let anything or anyone unhealthy go. This is an incredibly personal process but to let go of things I find it more effective to let things go with love — especially things I’ve loved and no memory of my childhood would be complete without sweets especially ice-cream. It’s not that I love sugar any less but that I love great skin more — I have to see that radiant skin, a fit body and an agile brain more. And as Martin Luther King Jr put it so profoundly

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.

I have experimented over the years on sugar-freedom — with extended periods of time like Lent and I find basic sugar quite cloying and have extended my liberty from “natural” sugars too — honey, fruit juices and dried fruit etc though I eat a lot of sweet fresh fruit — berries, melons, figs and clementines and at this time of year — clementines by the carton-loads. What I have learnt is that even these natural sugars need mitigation and there are optimal times to eat them. Here are my skin-health heuristics —

1. Fibre — only with fibre — fruit offers a range of vitamins that are vastly more bioavailable than supplements. I try to eat fruit fresh and whole and if not fresh then frozen in my morning green smoothies with all the fibre intact. Fruit juices and dried fruit make exceedingly rare appearances in my diet.
2. Stevia — when I feel that touch of sweetness is crucial and I’m thinking of my vegan baking here - I use stevia — I wish I knew the differences between all the steviae but I use the liquid from Trader Joe’s.
3. Mornings — I eat fruit first thing in the morning after my canarino and avoid anything raw past 4pm because this can cause acidity and bloatiness. Frozen fruit is invented for smoothies — it makes the kale in my green juices incredibly more palatable — I am like Popeye with spinach but kale is so strange. Skin-friendly smoothies with toasted coconut almond milk and cacao nibs hit the spot for ice-cream and will get their own post soon enough.
4. Mints — there are times when after spicy food one just needs something sweet and I make sure to carry sugar-free mints and Listerine strips to blunt the spice.
5. Quest bars — this is my biggest crutch — I carry stevia sweetened quest bars to meetings where I know there will be cookies — I am social and want to mimic my companions — while I’m happy to wax on about sugar-freedom to my friends I don’t want to seem like I’m judging in professional situations
6. Creation — I don’t often have the time to bake from scratch but knowing that I can make a gluten-free, sugar-free, omega-3 rich thing of yumminess just makes it possible for me to graciously refuse what society so politely thrusts to me as the status quo. This is my way of keeping the dream alive and claiming my sugar-freedom.

And can I just say how wonderfully luminous is MLK’s skin in this image? This is the best example of inner beauty and goodness shining through. This is an image of a person motivated by more than appearances and I too look to a day when people don’t judge themselves by the state of their skin, but by contentment with their character.