Step 1: Food Diary

The first step in trying to change your eating habits is to start a food diary. You need data.  It can be in a notebook, or on the computer, or on your phone, it just has to include 1. what you eat, 2. your digestive response, and 3. how you feel.  It can include more, like exercise, sleep, menstruation, or medication intake, but it has to at least include those first three elements in order to give you information about how food is affecting you physically and mentally. A rough food diary template looks like this:

You can format it any way you like, this is just an example.  For myself, I just use a composition notebook that I keep in my kitchen. Write down everything you eat and how it affects you for at least a month before you try to make any behavioral change.
It is very important that you start understanding the connection between what you eat and how you feel, because every body is different: every person has different digestive evolution, different metabolic type, and different deficiencies in hormones, neurotransmitters, and enzymes.  Only you can discover what affects you negatively or positively, and you cannot rely on guilt and willpower, you must rely on the data. 
Guilt is counter-intuitive to the process of change. It does not make you want to change more, it makes you feel more weak and worthless.  If you eat a donut and all the while hate yourself because "Heather just told me this is so bad for me" you will only make yourself unhappy and uncomfortable. The dopamine surge is powerful when faced with food!  And a person feeling unhappy will be more susceptible to letting the dopamine win.  So instead, rely on the data.  Instead of white-knuckling abstinence with a giving-in to have just one bite, and then since you gave up might as well eat the whole thing, we want your experience to look like this:
"According to my food diary, when I eat white flour alone I get bloated, and when I eat sugar alone I get moody, and let's see when I eat flour and sugar together I feel happy for thirty minutes then I have a stomach ache and I get super irritated and then tired.  Let me check the ingredients on this pastry, yes, there is 26 grams of sugar and a total of 30 carbs, and refined wheat flour is the first ingredient, and oh! it's cooked in soy bean oil which on my food diary shows causes me to feel nauseous.  This will make me feel sick and cranky for sure, I choose to not have the pastry."
This will help you to have tangible proof that what you eat affects you, which will help you change with truth and self worth rather than guilt and shame. This also gives you lots of information when people ask "Why aren't you having dessert? You don't need to lose weight."   Furthermore, perhaps certain food that others deem unhealthy does NOT affect you very negatively, how will you know unless you have the data? If soy bean oil (vegetable oil) causes a flare up in pain for one person it does not mean you will have the same reaction.  As has been stated many times in this narrative, some people are far more sensitive to sugar and refined flour and "inflammatory foods" than others.  You can make the change, start with the food diary.

"In God we trust, all others must bring data." --BYU Autism Department

TOFI

Thin Outside Fat Inside. Not everyone who eats the Standard American Diet is obese, some don't even look overweight at all. Inside, there is a mess of trouble.  Being a mental health professional I have seen the ill effects on one's mood from an improper diet, and other troubles lurk as well.  I've been doing this "eat clean" for long enough that people I interact with have tried it and shared their TOFI stories, and I'd like to share them with you.  First I will tell mine.
When I made a goal at the beginning of this year to get more toned, I grossly underestimated how hard it would be. I just had to lift weights twice a week, no big deal.  What could happen, a few sore muscles for a while? I can handle that.
I had no idea that I was a TOFI. In 2013 my weight oscillated between 108 and 112, and for a while that year I was up to 115.  I know, that's pretty light, I figured I was just about where I needed to be for a healthy weight at my height (5'1").  I ran two miles three times a week so I thought I was in pretty good shape.  But when I started lifting weights, my body revolted!  I got sore muscles alright, and a nice helping of fatigue, headaches, dizzy spells, and depression. Wait! I thought exercise was supposed to make you have more energy, less depressed, and why on earth did the dizzy spells come back???  Because I was still eating refined food and sugar.
You can eat your way through any workout.  On the outside I looked thin and petite, on the inside my body was still out of balance digestively, mentally, and hormonally, and it was evident when I tried to pretend I was strong enough to weight train.  In 2011 I tried an alkaline diet of all veggies, nuts, oils, and water, and I my weight went down to 103, and my doctor was alarmed and thought I had hypothyroidism.  I felt weak and didn't have much energy, my attempts at lifting weights or doing any anarobic exercise was pitiful, so I thought it was dangerous for me to be that weight. Nope. 100-103 is actually what my weight is now, the difference is in addition to eating whole foods I'm eating sufficient protein and pancreatic enzymes are helping me digest fat, so the fat on the inside is gone and my balance is restored. I'm lifting weights regularly without ill side effects, my muscles are gaining definition, and where I could barely do my circuits with a 3 pound weight before, I've been 6 months on 5 pounds and I'm ready to move up to the 8 pound weights. And that's just one example of the benefits of being thin outside and in.  I don't get head colds! My kids will get them and all the germs just seem to pass by me.  I have less anxiety, less moodiness, increased stamina in many ways--physically and mentally.  I just hope my efforts are not "too little too late" as my pancreas does seem to be chronically damaged from 35 years being TOFI. 
Imagine my delight to know I'm not the only one who has seen positive fruits from eating clean.  I asked a client who I suspected was a TOFI to instead of having her antidepressant medication dosage increased, try to go one month avoiding sugar and refined foods to see if it helps.  She agreed, but I didn't see her again for over a month, so I figured she thought I was a crazy anti sugar extremist and would never come back. When she did make a follow up appointment she reported that she did not have to increase her medication dosage, because she noticed when she went a month off sugar the "heavy depressive" feelings went away!  She still had some anxiety, but not as much, and she was actually doing so well she didn't make another therapy appointment, but started falling apart again when she went to visit her parents and stopped being so strict on her eating.  How simple the solution! (Simple but not easy.)
I have another client who stated that she notices she sleeps better when she eats well, and her son who has emotional dysregulation disorder is less disruptive when he doesn't eat sugar. My sister Heidi started eating sugar free and got pregnant after 4 months of trying with no success, and what is more amazing, she doesn't have nearly the intense morning sickness and nausea she had with her other kids!  She attributes it to eating clean, thin on the inside!  My brother in law decided to "do a lean out" as he calls it and stop eating refined foods and sugar, and he not only lost a lot of weight but reported that his allergies this season somehow aren't as bad as they usually are!  Amazing and wonderful!  I love hearing stories about the benefits people experience from eating clean. It's not just about the weight, although that is important to control, it's about overall health.  Lets be TOHI (thin outside and healthy inside) not TOFI!
"You already know that your food choices impact the blood sugar-regulating hormones insulin and glucagon, but they affect a myriad of other hormones as well.  From health challenges like acne, hypothyroidism, poly-cystic ovarian syndrome, low testosterone, or even fertility complications to mood swings, painful periods, or menopause, I always recommend getting blood sugar regulation under control as the first step.
"Here's the thing about blood sugar regulation: If its not working properly, then the rest of your hormonal balance can and likely will suffer."--Diane Sanfilippo

Balance

I have a beloved cousin who lives in Oklahoma who I grew up with, and his birthday is 5 days before mine so I always remember him on his birthday and call him, and if I don't reach him he usually calls me on my birthday 5 days later. This year we were talking and he asked if I was still strict off sugar. I told him I was even more strict off sugar than I used to be, and he applauded my effort, but warned me about getting to extreme.  "I have to have my dessert each night, that's my splurge." I told him that having half a tortilla or sauce on my chicken was splurging for me, what he has for dessert is simply going overboard. "No, Heather what you do is too much." We kind of left it there, but I later pondered on how differently he and I defined balance in our intake.
Fast forward to this scenario a week later: I registered for an Autism conference at BYU and always look forward to those events for two reasons, 1. I get to spend the day with my good friend Shannon, and 2. there is a luncheon catered for participants. I got ready bright and early and had my sensible egg and green shake breakfast, made sure I had nuts in my purse and water with me, and eagerly drove to BYU. I was confronted with a continental breakfast at the registration area: bagels, cream cheese, and juice.  Strike strike strike. Good thing I ate before I came. But since I told the dining staff when I registered for the lunch that I don't eat sugar, surely I will be able to have something at lunch. I met Shannon and enjoyed the information and catching up with her. When we went out on the beautiful patio under a covered pavillion with Y mountain in view for lunch, I started to panic. All the lunch settings had been preset with plates of lettuce, with a cake above the plate, rolls on the table, and salad dressing. Three strikes again.  I started to choke down my plain lettuce trying to concentrate on my visit with Shannon instead of the greens, and again informed a kitchen staff I don't eat sugar.  Obviously they don't consider dressing, cake, and rolls sugar. They brought out the main course, chicken with white sauce and pasta (strike), covered with sun dried tomatoes and mushrooms.  Looks delicious.  As I pushed my pasta aside and wondered what the sauce was made with but knowing I had to eat something, I devoured my chicken.  Meanwhile a staff had filled my cup with sparkling apple cider. Strike 5.  I looked around the table and people eating the rolls, cake, juice, and pasta.  I felt the familiar tug of despair that I could not join them, combined with the knowledge of the unknown consequences they were falling prey to, and top that off with my own guilt for eating food of which I didn't know what the ingredients were. Shannon engaged me in conversation as to why I don't eat the refined carbs, and I felt even more mortified talking to her about the dangers of sugar consumption while she was eating cake.  She didn't seem to mind the side order of guilt, she was very understanding, and thankfully the chicken was sufficient to fill me up.  When 3:00 came they announced a cookie break in the next room. 9 strikes in one day.  I was emotionally spent.
But the day wasn't over. That evening I had the privilege of taking my Grandma to a play at BYU. We didn't have time to go to a sit down restaurant but I had to provide dinner for us, so I reluctantly took her to a fast food place, she ordered a chicken sandwich and I got a baked potato and chili.  Her dinner looked so good, with the bun and honey mustard sauce, and I had to choke down chili that probably had some sort of covert sugar in it that I didn't know about, so I was splurging but at least I was trying to avoid refined carbs, and it didn't even taste that good. Strike 10. And I burned my tongue. I had had it.
In the movie "Fed Up" it talks about this very thing, our bodies can handle a little refined sugars and flours but we are eating far far more than a little every day, and that Friday at BYU I witnessed the overflow. The World Health Organization suggests 6 teaspoons or refined sugars a day as a maximum, yet a typical conference attendee who would have eaten the bagles, cream, juice, rolls, dressing, cake, pasta, sparkling cider, and cookies, and then went home and ate out at Wendy's with their family and had a chicken sandwich, would have consumed over 40 teaspoons of refined sugars in one day. Who is the extreme one now?
The labels on food have a percentage next to the ingredients contained therein, this percentage represents the WHO daily recommended intake for that ingredient.  Sugar has no percentage next to it, because if it did, the percentage would be so high it might discourage patrons from purchasing that item.  For example, if we are only supposed to have 6 teaspoons of sugar a day, then putting three tablespoons of cream cheese on your refined flour bagel (sugar 90%), having 2 cookies (sugar 120%) and soda with your lunch (sugar 200%), you've crossed your threshold or the recommended intake by about 200%.  Its no wonder that what used to be called "adult onset diabetes" is now diagnosed in over 50,000 children and adolescents.
So when my cousin tells me he has to have his dessert every night, I'm not faulting him for having a little ice cream and chocolate sauce (sugar 180% of daily recommended allowance). I'm thinking about the toast and jam he had for breakfast (sugar 60%), the gatorade, ketchup and hotdog bun he ate for lunch (sugar 150%), the teryaki sauce he had on his meat and veggies and white rice he had for dinner (sugar 100%), and finding it odd that he thinks I'm the one out of balance. But again, why bring that to his attention?  All it will do is give him a side order of guilt, because when confronted with refined sugars, the brain will always choose in favor of intake over abstinence. Unless you like me got fed up.

Freedom

"Defend your beliefs with courtesy and with compassion, but defend them." --Jeffrey R. Holland

I experienced a long list of health benefits when I broke free of my sugar/refined flour addiction and started eating whole foods. So much so that I made it my crusade to see that my family also broke free of the addiction as well. When you stop the dopamine surge cravings for carbs you not only see how much it affected your body, but also how much it affects those around you. Needless to say people didn't like my crusade to improve their lives. Even my dear husband, who loves me so much and tried so hard to be supportive, was frustrated with me.  My kids and husband were at the mercy of my eating beliefs because it's my job to buy the food and prepare it. As the pantry started changing, and they didn't even have the option to make something else because it wasn't available, moods started to be tested.  Our food storage still had some carbs, after all fiberous, nutrient-dense foods don't store well so what is in store is the addictive refined foods, so my children turned to that. The once passed over granola was now a highly coveted treat, the canned peaches started disappearing. Even though I served three meals a day the kids were wandering around behind my back making food they wanted to eat, and if a meal didn't satisfy the carb cravings it was picked through and not finished.  I saw my kids choosing not to eat at all rather than eat an "unsatisfying" meal.  Since gaining freedom from food's grip I have different glasses on, and I can see that our culture and the food I used to serve my children and the food I ate in the womb created sugar addicts out of my children.
Its not just about our health, it's about freedom from addiction.
I like using the analogy that our body is a vehicle. There are different sizes, makes, models, and types of vehicles. But no matter what your vehicle looks like, there are commonalities among them all--we all have an engine, a battery, a steering device, a radio, and brakes. The engine is our digestive system and cardiovascular system, it is what ultimately allows us to keep going.  The battery is what motivates us to get moving, what inspires us, drives us to action, and keeps us "charged".  The steering device and brakes are our agency to go where we wish to go and need constant vigilance to keep us on the right track and stop us when danger may be ahead. The radio is our mind, emotional state, what we tell ourselves, allow ourselves to be influenced by, and our perception of this road trip (life). Bumps in the road, construction and road hazards, and tedious stretches of driving represent the challenges we will face in life, seat belts represent people and angels that protect us. Our spirits are the drivers of our vehicles, we are not our vehicles, we are just the drivers. In other words, we are infinitely more than our physical body, but we are part of it in this life and sometimes identify ourselves with our bodies and thoughts.
As you can imagine, it is very important to keep our vehicles maintained in order to negotiate the difficulties the road may present us. We need constant fuel, oil changes, and occasional tune ups on the engine.  If you were to put the wrong fuel in your car, your vehicle would not go very far without breaking down. If you don't change the oil the engine will seize.  If you don't charge your battery you will not be able to start at all (spiritual fuel).  And the radio--what are you telling yourself? Watch your thoughts, your words and your intentions, and change the station if you are on a negative channel, how well you overcome road blocks will have much to do with what is playing on your radio.  And lastly, we constantly protect our agency, freedom of choice, so we can get to where we want to go. People have given their lives in pursuit of freedom.
I know that my vehicle is a lemon. I will freely admit that I have a much more fragile system than the vehicles around me. I have to be very careful about the fuel I put in my tank, and careful about the station my radio is on, and careful to keep moving or I may stop and never get started again.  My fuel has to be completely sugar free and can't have too much of any one thing or it's going to clog my filters.  Not every vehicle has to be as conscientious about what they put in their tank, well-made engines can go 100 years on any gas as long as it has methane in it! But just because they can live with it, doesn't mean it's wise to take it in, and any gas that is addictive will cause problems.  Maybe not engine problems, but steering and braking problems.  The long lasting model vehicle may not have to care what quality oil and gas it is consuming, but they will be hurting when their addictive gas is no longer available.
Being in the mental health profession I have seen the signs of addiction and the outcomes of losing one's ability to choose. I think we all have had experience with ourselves or someone we love falling prey to addiction. If you have, you know that a person needs the complete ability to brake when they need to brake and steer where they need to steer, and addiction deprives one of this.  Craving certain foods and only wanting certain foods, not being able to stop eating certain foods, not being satisfied with other foods, not having pleasure in certain foods, having too much pleasure in certain foods, these are signs of addiction and whether they cause your engine to seize or not, they will compromise your brakes and steering.
These days we have a lot of food options and not very many people are aware of their addictive hazards. My doctor told me to drink Sprite when I had to go on an all liquid diet. I told him that wasn't going to happen, so he suggested Gatorade because that doesn't have the calories. I kindly asked him if I could just juice my own fruit and veggies, but inside I was screaming "It's not about calories!!!" He didn't want to hear what I had to say of course, so I couldn't explain that I'm a lemon and my vehicle will start to shut down on sugar water. Still, I couldn't believe that a health care professional would prescribe sugar carbonated liquid as a cure for anything, just because it provides some temporary relief. A concerned family member told me I should listen to him, that it would probably help me feel better. In fact I should probably have some caffeinated drinks to help me have more energy, she said. I love this person, and it's more important to me that she feel loved than that I be right, after all I am a lemon. So I compassionately and with as much courtesy as I could muster tried to tell her that anything that causes me to experience cravings I try to stay away from.  I know I'm not a model of health, but I also know with every fiber of my being that I have experienced freedom from food addictions by eliminating refined food and sugar and thereby helped my engine run more efficiently.  Neither doctors, family, pancreatitis, nor society at large will ever stop me from lovingly defending this belief!
Try going off white bread, pasta, and all forms of sugar for one week, read the books listed in my "resources", watch "Fed UP", and THEN tell me whether you belief in the sugar addiction epidemic, and then I might consider talking to you about whether or not I should use soda as a healing agent.

Pancreatitis and an ovarian cyst

When I went on the 21 day sugar detox I ate a lot of cooked vegetables and meat.  Poultry, pork, beef, seafood in various types. And I cooked my food in ghee, bacon fat, and coconut oil.  I ate no sugar or grains of any kind.  Three meals a day of meat and cooked veggies. My dizzy spells and headaches disappeared, I had increased attention, slept better, I lost 8 pounds, my fingernails grew strong and little baby hairs sprouted all over my head and I felt strong and had good endurance.

About a week after I started incorporating grains and fruit back in my diet and trying to ease off the meat, I got sick again.  My belly bloated, even though I wasn't constipated I had intense rectal pressure, and I had a lot gas. I went through three painful days of gas pressure and abdominal pain before I went to the doctor, knowing something was wrong, because I wasn't eating anything that used to cause me bloating yet I was bloated, and it was at the wrong time of the month for it to be cause by my menstrual cycle. The doctor did an x-ray and found no obstruction, so he took my blood, and I went home angry because my labs always come back at "normal levels." I was left for the next 24 hours wondering what I ate or did that would cause this pain. The doctor called the next morning and said my pancreatic enzymes were high, which means I have pancreatitis, caused by gall stones or alcohol use.  Pancreatitis? I had to look it up: a disease in which the pancreas becomes inflamed, pancreatic damage occurs when the digestive enzymes are activated before they are secreted into the duodeunum (small intestines) and begin attacking the pancreas; symptoms include pain in the abdomen and weight loss caused by poor absorption (malabsorption) of food because the gland is not secreting enough enzymes to break down the food normally.  Since I have no gall bladder and I haven't had a drop of alcohol, the Dr. didn't know what the cause was and told me to eat an all liquid diet (in fact he suggested sprite of all things) for three days and don't eat anything with fat in it.

I was in a conundrum. I can't eat sugar and I can't eat fat? Despite all my efforts my body seemed to be falling apart. I felt like I had somehow damaged my pancreas with the 21 sugar detox and high meat/fat intake, and it discouraged me.  No matter how I tried to pick up a positive consequence for my body, my choices seem to pick up a negative one.  "Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" became tempting to believe since fasting, being sober and disciplined wasn't keeping me alive.  It was frustrating. My mother empathized with me, and informed me that my grandfather had pancreatitis so she feels the cause was hereditary, and she encouraged me to find balance. "I'm not a doctor, but my brain is telling me you can have a little fat and a little sugar and you will get back in balance."  It gave me hope. My brother Jesse told me that sometimes people with no gall bladder sometimes get pancreatitis because the sphincter of oddi which controls the flow out of the pancreas and the gall bladder sometimes malfunctions.  I don't know the cause of the pancreatitis, but I do feel that my pancreas is damaged and this is probably in part why I've had a "hypoglycemic complex" and why I've had so many digestive issues. But I didn't damage it by eating fat!

I did some research on chronic and acute pancreatitis, and my symptoms were more in line with chronic type.  Acute causes intense pain and inflammation (I was inflamed, I felt my gut was a flame of fire, but the pain they described didn't really match the pain I'd experienced), chronic pancreatitis causes weight loss, malabsorbtion of food, dehydration, and oily stools (me, me, me).  What a bummer, apparently this has been going on for a long time, it wasn't just an isolated instance. What to do? If I go to a specialist or the Mayo clinic and find out exactly what my GI track is doing, what are they going to do?  Take out my pancreas?  The complications are somewhat severe (scar tissue in the pancreas that can cause cysts, diabetes or cancer), but I haven't experienced them yet, so I started taking pancreatic enzymes and Beta Pluce to manage the problem of malabsorbtion.

A month later the "flare up" pain returned, exactly on the first day of my period like it did the first time. It was so painful I couldn't ignore it, even though the doctor had already diagnosed me and given me a solution (juice fast).  In my heart, I knew it wasn't due to pancreatits, it had something to do with my menstruation. I went back to the doctor, he scheduled a pelvic ultra sound for me. The pain was being caused by a complex ovarian cyst, which wasn't big enough to be removed surgically and the only solution was to wait for it to burst or go away, awesome! but at least we knew what it was. My pain was not being caused by pancreatitis and healthy fat intake, it stopped when my menstrual cramps stopped three days later, and it came back the next month. Fun times!

I have hopes that the chronic pancreatitis and the ovarian cyst are just more problems from a lifetime of sugar/gluten abuse and that with time on a healthy diet they will resolve themselves. Not everything can be healed immediately. The headaches and dizzy spells resolved immediately, but these two issues are going to take a little longer to resolve. Some miracles take time.

Fed Up

Last night I went to a Dave Ramse live event in Salt Lake City, I love seeing motivational speakers express the truths they've learned in hopes they can inspire others to live better. I found that Dave had some very similar experiences with financial issues that I have had with health issues.  He said "Stupid woke me up.  Some of you don't have to stop and look, I had to stop and look.  When that happens you shake your fist and say 'That's it! I'm not living like this any more!' Its an act of passion, you have to have a healthy level of disgust if you are going to get out, it's an emotional decision to change behavior."  I didn't experience bankruptcy or massive debt, but every word he said applied to my experience with the Standard American Diet. 
Some of you don't have to stop and look, being as sugar sensitive as I am I had to look.  I developed a disgust for refined sugars that will stay with me the rest of my life, and that is what helped me change behavior.  I was FED UP.
As my passion for eliminating sugars grew, my desire to talk about it grew as well.  I had to create this blog because people don't really want to talk about it.  I laughed when Dave Ramse said last night, "If you want to be skinny find a skinny person and ask what they eat."  We all know that some skinny people eat very unhealthily so that was an overgeneralization, however, I do wish people would ask me what I eat.  Sometimes people hear or I let slip out that I have found the answer to my health problems and am on the mend, so at first I get a listening ear.  "What did you do that helped you?" they ask.  I try to ease in, I don't just say, "Stop eating sugar!" I give some back ground information and prep it with "I've found this is true for me" and couch it with "every one has a different metabolic type" and start talking quickly and passionately hoping to get as much information in as I can before I let the bomb drop. Because inevitably when I get to the part about eliminating all refined sugar/flours from the diet, and tell them that's the secret, they get this blank look on their face and the conversation is diverted or stopped completely.  I think this means either the person does not want to know that is the secret and is not willing to go there, or they simply don't believe me and everything I said previously is dismissed because now I am just viewed as an extreme raving lunaitc. This response leads to some feelings of sadness and loneliness on my part, even though I have read the books people have written testifying to the same principle, and the thing that keeps me moving forward in this direction is that I tried it myself and found it helped. I just don't like for others to think I'm wrong, I guess that's hard for everyone.  Dave quoted his pastor as saying, "The man with experience is not at the mercy of the man with an opinion," because a lot of people have told Dave he is wrong, but his 25 years experience is his proof his financial principles work! I have tried the principle and proven its true, my experience is my ally.
One day I was feeling alone in all this and I came across a movie trailer on facebook that looked intriguing. It was called Fed UP and seemed to be about how sugar is the source of the current diabetes obesity epidmic in our country.  It filled me with so much joy to see that there were others out there that shared my "healthy disgust" and were saying something about it.  The title says it all.
View the trailer at that link or watch it below. I am going to see the movie at its first release time in Salt Lake City tomorrow and I can't wait!

What to NOT eat

The following sugars may affect your blood sugar/insulin response or they may not, depending on how sugar sensitive you are so its important to pay attention to your body's response (craving more, feeling happy, feeling sick) and check the label of whatever food you just ate. Here is an extensive list of covert sugars you will want to check for on the ingredients list labels on every food product:
Amasake
Apple sugar
Barbados sugar
Bark Sugar
Barley malt
Barley malt syrup
Beet sugar
brown rice syrup
cane juice
cane syrup
carbitol
caramel coloring
caramel sugars
caramelized foods
concentrated fruit juice
corn sweetener
d-tagalose
date sugar
dextrin
dextrose
diglycerides
disaccharides
evaporated cane juice
florida cruystals
fructooligosaccharides (FOS)
fructose
fruit juice concentrate
galactose
glucose
glucitol
glucoamine
gluconaolactone
glucose polymers
glucose syrup
glycerides
glycerine
glycerol
glycol
high fructose corn syrup
inversol
invert sugar
iso malt
karo syrups
lactose
levulose
"lite" sugar
malt dextrin
malted barley
maltose
maltodextrins
maltodextrose
malts
mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, malitol
mannose
microctrystaline
nectars
neotame
petose
polydextrose
ployglycerides
raisin juice
raising syrup
ribose rice syrup
rice sugar
rice sweeteners
rice syrup solids
saccarides (any)
Sorbitol (Hexitol)
Sorghum
Sucanat
Sucanet
Sucrose
Sugar cane
cellulose
molasses
monoglycerides
monosaccharides
trisaccharaides
unrefined sugar
Zylos

Also, Kahtleen DesMaisons tells us to be aware that if the chemical structure of a carbohydrate has more than two sugar molecules, it will be called a complex carbohydrate on a food label instead of sugar, so the label may say it has no sugar but has 35 grams of carbohydrate. Your body will respond to it as a sugar, so read the food labels in detail and learn the subtleties of where sugars are hidden. 
Many people will ask you if you can just have a sweetener substitute, like stevia or Agave, and that is entirely up to the individual.  I personally get triggered by just about any sweetener, so I have to be very careful about what sugars I ingest, healthy or otherwise.  I abide by the rule that if it is a nature-made-whole food it's more safe than a man-made chemically altered sweet food.

There are more toxins in our food than we realize, sugar is just one of many. I focus on sugar because it makes me sick, but its worth noting that there may be many other toxins affecting your health.  Chris Kresser a health professional who quotes from Francine Kaufman's. book "Diabesity" stated that 6.5 trillion pounds of different chemicals are manufactured each year, and the average person has over 91 toxic chemicals in their body. He warns that the Standard American Diet itself is highly toxic as processed and refined foods, industrial seed oils, high fructose corn syrup, and so-called healthy foods like whole grains and soy all have a toxic effect on the body. He further states that environmental toxins interfere with glucose and cholesterol metabolism and induce insulin resistance, disrupt mitochondrial function, cause oxidative stress, promote inflammation, alter thyroid metabolism, and impair appetite regulation. The first step in detoxifying your food is to get rid of processed and refined foods, industrial seed oils, high fructose corn syrup, and toxic grains. The second step is to reduce your exposure to chemicals at home, choose non toxic household cleaning supplies, bath and beauty products, and organic foods. There is no way to completely avoid toxins, but using compounds that support health and liver detoxification will help, i.e. bile stimulants, bile motility enhancers (such as Beta Plus), antioxidants, vitamins C, E, B, and zinc, magnesium, and selenium.

The bottom line: We don't eat toxic food if we can help it!  We won't be perfect at it, but we must be intentional about it.