Cutting out sugar is easier than it sounds.
Eliminating sugar from your diet is not easy. Sugar and simple carbohydrates are the real culprits in driving diabetes and obesity, but not many have managed to cut them out completely from their diet.
For Ajuth Deng, an advocate of the High Court, it took the weighing scale to tip at 96 kilogrammes for her to quit sugar, follow a meal plan and start walking as a form of exercise.
“It was not an easy decision,” she says. “At 27 years old, I could barely take a flight of stairs, I was constantly tired, and my breathing was continuously laboured.”
Her life then was devoid of any physical activity. “From the car to the court to the office to the house, that was my lifestyle,” she says.
She weighed 96 kilos with a metabolic age [which measures a person’s overall health and fitness] of a person who is over 40.
“For a long time, I was okay with my weight until my doctors advised me to shed off some kilos to manage my congestive heart issue better,” she says.
After seeing a clinical nutritionist who helped her develop a meal plan, she started by tapering down her carbohydrate intake and watching her food portions. She also stopped drinking soft drinks and whatnot.
Sticking to a new diet is not easy and her first goal was to push three months and if that did not work, resign to fate and let nature take its course.
“At first, I gained an extra kilo, and just before I could give up, it realised that I looked smaller, my breathing was better, and I felt less tired,” she says.
This convinced her to work on herself even more. She later started walking 10,000 steps a day and the results shocked her.
“I moved from 96 kilos to 60 kilos which is her ideal body weight for her recommended Body Mass Index (BMI),” she says.
Cutting out sugar is easier than it sounds, and it starts with evaluating some of our most basic habits and Denis Leli, who works in a bank in Mombasa, knows this too well.
Two years ago, he noticed a spike in his weight. He moved from 95 kilos to 123 kilos.
“I used to frequent restaurants and bars a lot for networking purposes. While at it, alcohol and high-carb foods formed a central part of my diet. This led to a sharp spike in my blood sugar level. At age 32, my metabolic rate was of a 50-year-old. The weight caused me weak knees, backaches, loss of sleep, blurry vision, continuous body malaise, laboured breathing, and dipping mental health,” he says.
For Denis, the situation was exacerbated by the steroid medicines he was taking while recovering from surgery. His doctor and friend advised him to see a specialist as he exhibited signs of a health scare. At the other end of the test, the results showed he had diabetes.
Dennis Leli at the Gym in Nyali, Mombasa on July 16, 2024.
“It was enough not to feel good about how I looked then, but diabetes, at my age? Something had to change,” he tells Lifestyle.
Denis sought the services of Philip Lundu, a clinical nutritionist at MP Shah Hospital in Nairobi, who had been his family’s nutritionist.
“We came up with a diet and fitness regimen to right the wrongs,” Denis says. “I started by cutting down on my alcohol and carbohydrates consumption, significantly replacing them with leafy vegetables and protein-rich foods. I incorporated walking into the regimen and started seeing the results almost immediately.”
Denis set two end goals, a healthier body and a possible reversal of his diabetes. The latter was founded on research Mr Lundu had done earlier in his career about the reversal of type II diabetes through lifestyle and diet change. At the start of these changes, his sugars read 15.3 mmol/L. [A blood sugar level should be less than 7.8 mmol/L).
The two made it their goal to reverse this by taking the levels below 7.8 mmol/L.
MP Shah Hospital clinical nutritionist Philip Lundu during the interview on June 20, 2024.
In May 2022, he transitioned to running from walking. By this time, his gut and pulmonary health had significantly improved, and he could take a five-kilometer run three times a week without a struggle.
“Walking 5,000 steps daily seemed difficult at first, both physically and mentally. I worried about how people would perceive a grown man like me walking on the road, panting and sweating,” he says.
By December, he had reduced to 89 kilos and his sugar level was reading at 4.6mmol/L.
Beyond physiological and physical gains, Denis and Ajuth both concur that their self-confidence has greatly improved.
“I am more focused on my goals, working better on a high-pressure job, I have a better swing at the golf course, and best of all, I sleep better. All these can be attributed to how I feel about myself after my body transformation.” Denis says.
“For me, I fit better into dresses I couldn’t before, and my esteem is at an all-time high,” says Ajuth.
Mr Lundu says sedentary lifestyles and diets high in sugar and fat are the main contributors to not just weight gain but also some non-communicable diseases.
The clinical nutritionist who works at MP Shah Hospital in Nairobi and has attended to hundreds of patients for over 12 years, adds,
“Other factors like age, gender, and health status are also determinants of one’s body weight. It is important to say that a leaner body is not a sure indicator of good health. The excess storage of unutilised fats leads to weight gain, which people describe as fat.
"It is common to be concerned about an increase in your body weight. It is prudent, however, that, before one embarks on a weight loss journey and/or a change in diet, they need a full nutritional assessment to first establish if they need to lose weight and, secondly, to create the best arrangement that suits them.
Dennis Leli at the Gym in Nyali, Mombasa on July 16, 2024.
"Many people pick up a habit because they see it in other people. However, healthy living is never linear and what works for one person, it might not work for another.”
Goal-setting at the start of one’s weight loss journey helps in mapping out key indicators to look out for as well as tracking progress.
Understanding the motivation behind the efforts one is employing can be one’s true north, as Philip explains.
“One has to know if they are doing it to solve an existing issue or to avert a possible one. After that reconciliation, one can embark on targeted results upon the advice of a professional,” he says.
These successes, however, have not been easy to achieve.
“I have had cheat weeks when I just want to eat cake. Now that I I am wiser, I know how to control my cravings and how to pay for them when I fall,” says Ajuth. For Denis, he has had to abandon a lifestyle he once was so fond of.
