How To Quit Sugar (2)

Preparation is key.

Last time we talked about our overall plan for quitting sugar – which actually includes quitting sweeteners as well. I didn’t go deeply into the science of all this – you can find that in other posts and other places on the web. Our purpose in these articles is to talk about strategy.

We have talked a little about preparing to quit sugar and sweeteners, and preparation is very important if you want to succeed. And you can’t just think about “cutting” things – you have to think about the big picture of what you’ll eat.

This is where things get tricky, because a lot of the advice you’ll see online is based on goals that are entirely different than ours. What is our purpose? To fight migraine, of course.

So when you’re looking at various food lifestyles online (forget about diets – we want to change the way we eat), you’ll see a lot of great ideas for “losing weight” (often very temporary solutions, as statistics show). You might want to lose weight, but that’s not our goal.

Or, and this is a classic, people buy into a different type of “diet” and then try to find ways of eating exactly what they did before. That’s why, when you look up recipes for a popular diet, you instantly find brownies, cheesecake, banana bread and chocolate chip cookies. (I still get a chuckle at the number of gluten free cookbooks that feature things like brownies on the cover! — gluten free? Yes. A healthier food lifestyle? Maybe not!)

So our purpose is to fight migraine, and we know that messing with sugars and sweeteners is a huge factor for many people. And that includes refined flours.

This post will get too complicated if I tell you exactly what to eat. You already have your ideas about what is healthy and what is not, and the research is continually changing our ideas about what we should be eating. But you do want to avoid the classic mistake – cutting out sugar, and then filling up on sweeteners and smoothies and juices and “sugar free” breads. FAIL.

So do your research, make a plan for your new migraine-fighting food lifestyle, and download a few recipes. For me personally, not having to think too much about breakfast is important, so one of my first priorities is to know exactly what I’m going to eat/drink during those first hours of the morning.

Collect some recipes ahead of time. Consider how you will “switch out” those quick convenient meals/snacks for something that fits your new healthier way of eating.

I will make one recommendation. A lot of migraine patients are using The Migraine Miracle by Dr. Josh Turknett and Jenny Turknett. This book is written by a neurologist and migraineur (who has found tremendous relief), as as the longer title shows, it fits perfectly with our strategy – “A Sugar-Free, Gluten-Free, Ancestral Diet to Reduce Inflammation and Relieve Your Headaches for Good”

This particular food lifestyle is a kind of paleo diet, but it’s specifically designed for migraine patients, with an acute awareness of triggers and what current research is telling us about migraine. It also explains some of the reasons why we’ll want to quite sweeteners as well as sugars, at least for a few months (as we discussed in the first article).

The book does have recipes, and they’re excellent, though some are quite time consuming. If you like what you’re seeing in the book, you can certainly go out and find your own recipes for free that follow the philosophy of the book. Also, Dr. Turknett has a subscription based service which will provide you with an avalanche of excellent recipes – both easy and complex, dairy free or not, snacks and main courses – worth looking into if you would like to take this path. (And the recipes come from Jenny, who obviously knows exactly what she’s doing!)

(The subscription also takes you through a lot more of the philosophy behind this type of migraine-fighting eating, which will be tremendously helpful if you want to be successful long term.)

So today’s goal – continue to prepare, by thinking specifically about what style of eating is best for you, and what exactly you’re going to eat. Many migraine patients are finding major success by getting serious about what they eat. But if you start without being ready, you’ll only be planning to fail.

If you’ve found success with a particular sugar-free style of eating, let me know! I would love to hear your story.