The Sugar Monster

Let me tell you a story.

I was always the smallest kid in the room growing up. I was shorter than everybody else and easily the lightest weight-wise. Being an athlete, I was constantly faced with an uphill battle to prove to coaches I could be an impact player on the field, in the rink or on the court. Coaches would take one look at me and brush me off assuming my play wouldn’t compensate for my lack in size. I proved them wrong. I knew my body and how to use it, and my athleticism and work ethic payed off.

This wasn’t enough for me. Even though I impressed people with my play — being able to compete and hang with the “big guys” — I was constantly ridiculed for how I looked: “You don’t have abs, you’re just skinny.” It drove me nuts. I began to criticize myself for how I looked even though I was a great player. I needed to gain weight.

I wanted to be bigger. Sure, I was fit, but it was “skinny fit”. It didn’t count. I wanted to turn heads when I walked in a room. I wanted to intimidate people with my size. Not fat or anything, just bigger. I wanted to be toned. I wanted muscles like that of a Greek god.

I didn’t want my small stature to be a distraction or a reason for coaches to overlook me. I was entering my Junior year in high school as a man on a mission: pack on pounds.

A strength coach I knew told me, “You gotta load up on carbs man. How much do you weigh, like, 150?”

“Uh, closer to 135 coach.” I was rounding up. I weighed about 120 pounds soaking wet.

He began to list off the many ‘benefits’ of carbs and starches, suggesting if I wanted to gain weight, that’s where my focus needed to be. He wanted me to overload foods like pasta, rice and potatoes. He told me to eat as much protein as possible. He said junk food was fine because, “…at this point, you just need pounds, dude.” He told me about some mass gainers and protein powders that would help speed up the process.

I followed his regiment religiously.

I began to load up on any carbs I could get my hands on. Nearly every night I was throwing back massive bowls of spaghetti, slathered in thick, oily meat sauce, with half a loaf of Texas toast to go with it. When I went to Chipotle, I made sure to get double rice (with an extra extra scoop just to be sure I got all my carbs in), double chicken, two sopping ladles of sour cream, their entire cheese inventory and a disgusting amount of guacamole. Even if the football-sized burrito didn’t need to be double wrapped (which it almost always did), I had them throw another tortilla around it because, well, “carbs and starches baby!” I had at least four pieces of toast with breakfast everyday and made sure to eat at least two or three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches throughout the day. I became obsessed.

My weight started to go up. Sure, there were nights I would eat myself into a coma, nearly vomiting from being over-stuffed — but it was all worth it. I remember stepping on the scale December of my senior year and seeing ‘150.49 lbs’. My dedication had finally begun to pay off.

But, as my external appearance began to resemble the physique I had always hoped for, my internal well-being took a turn for the worse.

I remember working out with the baseball team in late April of my senior year. It was a normal Friday: a light lift with some batting practice to follow. I warmed up and began our squat routine.

Let me backtrack for a moment. In the few weeks prior, I had noticed a shift in my energy. I was constantly groggy and always craving sugar. I started to notice that about halfway through my workouts, I’d feel a burning sensation in my throat (acid-reflux) followed by a nauseous/queasy-like feeling. I figured it had something to do with the proximity of when I ate to when I’d work out. I decided to stop eating two hours before any exercise to keep this from happening.

Back to the story. I began to squat and felt the liquid fire start to creep up my throat again. I started feeling nauseous. But why? I made sure not to eat anything for at least two hours before my lift. I quietly excused myself to the restroom where I spent the next 10 minutes puking my brains out.

I didn’t have the flu, nor did I have food poisoning, so what was the issue? I was eating plenty of carbs and protein and made sure not to eat right before I exercised, so, why did I feel sick?

I brushed it off. I had committed to playing Division III football in the Fall and could not afford to deal with any weight issues. My plan was to attack the high-carb, high-protein diet twice as hard as I did the first time around. There was no messing around; I was going to play college football. I needed to gain weight.

My freshman year of college went by with little issue. I still weighed about 150 lbs but was still able to fall back on my athleticism. Nonetheless, I didn’t want my college coaches thinking I’d be small forever (I was the smallest on the team — no question.) I was determined to hit 165 pounds by the start of my sophomore season.

Summer going into my sophomore year of college is where everything really began to change. I had to keep resetting the time at which I ate before my workouts in order to not feel sick while exercising. I didn’t allow myself to eat sooner than five hours before any form of exercise to be sure I would make it through my lift or my run without any problems. If I wanted to lift at noon, I’d have to finish eating breakfast at 7 A.M. I tried lifting early in the morning before eating anything but that didn’t work. I’d feel nauseous after lifting and often couldn’t eat for hours after — detrimental to anyone trying to feed their muscles and pack on pounds. Not to mention, my acid reflux was through the roof. And for whatever reason, I didn’t think my carb-obsessed diet had anything to do with it.

Eventually it became intolerable. I would go 40+ hours without eating a proper meal. I prioritized lifting over eating, not thinking about the counter-productivity I was forcing upon myself by starving my muscles from nutrients.

I vividly remember eating rigatoni alla bolognese at an Italian restaurant with my parents when suddenly, I had forgotten how to swallow. The mushed-up pasta I was chewing on barely squeezed down my throat. I took massive gulps of water to help push the food down my esophagus and into my stomach. I couldn’t take it anymore. Something was off.

I began to see GI doctors. I had plenty of blood tests done to test food allergies, all of them coming back negative. I had an upper endoscopy done to look for stomach ulcers and the infamous H-pylori bacteria. Nope, neither. The process went on for months. I wore a catheter that went up through my nose and down my throat, with the tip extending to the bottom of my esophagus. It was used to check the acid levels in my stomach, which turned out to be normal. I had a constant tightness in my chest. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with me. Doctors loaded me up with different acid reflux medications and told me to “see how this works for awhile.” I was becoming mentally unstable, convincing myself I would have to suffer like this forever. One doctor wanted to put me on an anti-depressant to “stabilize the nervous system.” My parents tried convincing me it was all in my head — that I was stressing myself out so much it was causing a physical reaction. That I was crazy.

The summer after my sophomore year a mentor/friend of mine suggested to go on the Paleo diet — primarily eating meat, veggies, and fruit. At that point I had nothing to lose. The doctors told me to stay away from “strenuous” activity until they could figure out what was wrong with me which was the last thing I wanted to hear as a rising Junior hoping to see some playing time the coming Fall season.

The switch from an extremely high-carb, high-protein diet to a more plant-based, low-carb diet combined with virtually no exercise (compared to my normal high-intensity and extremely demanding football workouts) caused drastic change in my body. My acid reflux began to slowly go away and my nauseousness wasn’t as bad, but the lack of carbs and less protein I was consuming caused me to lose weight — a lot of weight.

I was back to my skinny, less-than-impressive self. And I still had no answer to what was actually wrong with me. Until I met Kylene.

Kylene is a nutritionist at the Functional Medicine Department of the Cleveland Clinic. I was introduced to her through some of my coaches. I was skeptical about sharing my story with her as it had done me no good with all of the doctors and nutritionists prior. But again, realizing I had nothing to lose, I let it all out.

To those who don’t know much about functional medicine, it’s basically an “eastern” approach to healing. Rather than studying symptoms and prescribing medication like that of modern “western” medicine — which only suppresses the issue for the time-being and almost always lead to more issues down the road — functional medicine aims to find the root cause of the problem and suggest lifestyle changes for the long-term instead of prescribing harmful medication.

To say she helped me with my problems would be a gross understatement. Kylene was able to get me onto the 13 month wait-list in her department. Luckily, due to another patient’s cancellation, I found myself sitting in the waiting room just five months after. I was able to meet with Dr. Anna Herbst who suggested I undergo testing to measure any inconsistencies in my body and what’s at the heart of my problems. Optimism returned to my life.

Remember the strength coach who told me to overload on carbs and proteins, eat as many calories as possible and reap the benefits later? Yeah, fuck that guy.

Due to all of the carbs, starches, and excess protein I was eating, I developed harmful parasite, blastocystis hominis, which inadvertently caused a massive yeast overgrowth in my stomach. Finally, I had a concrete answer to what was causing all of my issues.

But how does all of this relate to the question about sugar being harmful to our bodies? Well, to put it simply: the body breaks down sugar and starches virtually the same. Meaning, a cup of rice or a piece of bread breaks down as sugar in your body. Same with pasta. And potatoes. On top of this, the body can only digest and break down a small amount of protein each day. Excess protein in your diet can lead to the body breaking it down as, you guessed it, sugar.

And sugar feeds yeast. I went four years shoving ridiculous amounts of pasta and protein down my throat, trying to gain weight, unknowingly feeding the problem that was keeping me skinny and sick all-the-while.

Now, please take this all with a grain of salt.. or sugar (sorry, I couldn’t help myself.) Everyone’s body is different. Some people can tolerate higher amounts of protein and carbohydrates in their diet. And actually, many people can live with blastocystis hominis their entire lives without the parasite affecting them the way it did me. Trust me, I’m well aware our fast-paced, eat-as-you-go lifestyles makes it hard to concentrate on what we put in our bodies. But take it from someone like me — a student-athlete that, despite being active, in-shape, and eating relatively healthy (or so I thought), that: limiting the amount of sugar in your diet is the most important, health-conscious decision you can make for disease-prevention, mental and physical strength, and longevity.