Hey Guys - suffering from an awful sinus headache but i wanted to post the article i got into the paper about sugarbusters....this is a big paper so i hope the word got out well - article is NOT perfect but it's a start. Let me know what you think:
Sugar Busters' Is No Atkins Deprivation Diet
By CLAUDIA VAN NES
The Hartford Courant
May 30, 2001
I've tried every way to lose weight except having a zipper stitched on my lips. And a low-carbohydrate diet.
Because the latter is one of the most popular weight-loss plans in recent history, it's quite astonishing that I, a veteran of many a diet war, have not joined this campaign.
That's not altogether true, however. I've come to believe sugar is a major deterrent to weight loss, so I've certainly cut back on my consumption and increased protein intake. I also recently tried a week of very low-carb eating, which affirmed my fears about this way of eating.
I lost 3 pounds following the plan and using the easy, tasty recipes in a book I wrote about in last week's Food section called "Low Carb Meals in Minutes" (Bay Books, $18.95) by Linda Gassenheimer.
Sparing you the details, I'll just say havoc was wrecked in my innards, although I was not hungry and did lose my craving for sugary stuff by the second day.
But this plan and Robert Atkins et al., with their long lists of forbidden fruits and vegetables, fiber and starches, are too Draconian for me. Further proof comes from readers who talk of slipping off the Atkins wagon a lot more than they talk of staying on.
Those who've written about weight loss, including me, tend to lump the authors of "Sugar Busters" (Ballantine, $23.95) with Atkins and the rest. The "sugar busters" are from the New Orleans area and include three doctors and one big-time businessman.
Indeed, the book reads like yet another get-rich-quick diet book. The writing is boring, and the promises are as big as the typeface to ensure enough pages are filled to have something to put between two covers.
"Sugar Busters," like other diet books, describes the scientific processes connected with food consumption, and it's tough to read. You can get advanced college degrees in this stuff and trying to explain it in a couple of chapters is impossible.
So, take the mind-numbing writing and the title, which certainly makes it sound like another no-carb diet, and it's not surprising "Sugar Busters" gets grouped with Atkins.
It shouldn't, though, because, as a Simsbury advocate says, it isn't a no-carb plan; it's a no-sugar, sensible carbohydrate plan. On Sugar Busters, you can eat bread, pasta and rice as long as they're whole-grain. You can eat fruits, except for sugar-loaded ones like watermelon and bananas, and you can eat vegetables except for white potatoes, carrots and other root vegetables, and the big one, corn.
I've heard from other Sugar Busters advocates, but the Simsbury reader really hit home with her well-grounded enthusiasm.
She's 42 years old with 7- and 10-year-olds, a husband, a job, a busy life and a tendency to be, since the kids, about 20 pounds overweight. A healthy eater, she says she tried Weight Watchers and other diets and though faithful, didn't lose.
Finally, she turned to Sugar Busters. From the beginning of February to mid-March, she dropped 11 pounds, was never hungry and didn't feel particularly deprived.
Some personal problems caused her stress and the need to travel so she rather purposely decided to spend time on a plateau, adhering to the basic principles of no sugar but not as strictly as she had been.
Now, she's back on, determined to whittle off the last 9 pounds and figures once she does, she'll ease off now and then and if she gains, get strict again for a spell.
What she misses most is pizza, off-limits because of the white flour, and sushi, made with white rice.
Cereal is a problem because there are so few without sugar, molasses, sucrose, honey or other sugary stuff. She eats Uncle Sam's or Special K, but for most breakfasts, she has fruit - one half-hour before the main meal, which is a Sugar Busters rule - and then a piece of multi-grain bread toasted and spread with two triangles of "light" Laughing Cow cheese or light Swiss. She often uses Ezekile, a brand of bread in the frozen food section at Stop & Shop and at health food stores called because it's one of the few she's found without much sugar.
This way of eating requires careful reading of labels because sugar and its equivalents are in a lot more products than we might assume. (Lactose, a milk sugar, is permitted, so milk and other dairy products are on the list.) Corn, or its oil, also is a common ingredient in food.
This woman uses as a sugar substitute agave nectar, made from a cactus plant that looks and tastes like honey but with a thinner consistency, she says. Some other sugar substitutes, including aspartame, are also permitted.
A website this woman discovered offers a better explanation of sugar busting, a number of recipes and some impressive before-and-after pictures of its author, who lost 100 pounds on the plan. It's called
www.prettyimpressivestuff.com/sugarbusters. Also helpful to the Simsbury reader is a cookbook, "Sugar Bust for Life" (Shamrock, $14.95 ), by Ellen and Theodore Brennan.
So, I'm sold. I'm going to try Sugar Busters' plan and keep you posted. Please tell me your experiences on this plan, as well.
So>>>...???
Viv
Hope your having a great weekend.
LOL
farmbabe 
in my defense, it was partly due to missing ww the weekend before, my period being late (ugh--I hate mos like this!), had 2 deaths in my family, AND a little depressed cause I hit the big 40........ BUT I'm over all that and back on program. doing really well, even over the weekend. 
