WHERE IS MY SUGAR?!
Where it can be and shouldn’t be.
“But everything has sugar!”, — said my roommate when I told her why I can’t use her creamer for my coffee — it had sugar.
“No. Not everything.
I use the unsweetened almond or coconut creamer that has 0 sugar.
I like to stay as lean as possible, plus my brain works better, and I don’t have hunger attacks anymore. That’s why nothing I use has any sugar.
“Do you really think sugar makes you fat?!”
Yes it does.
Sugar makes our body produce more fat.
Simply bio-chemistry.
Sugar and carbohydrates raise blood sugar in our body. Blood sugar must stay within certain numbers — it’s very important for our body, for survival.
So when there is more sugar around, our body either got to use it for energy, or, if there is excess, store it, as energy, that means store it as fat (Glucose or blood sugar, can also be stored in muscles and liver but there is a limit on how much can be stored).
When we get sugar in our blood our body releases hormone, insulin, to give a signal to cells to use that sugar for energy, store it in our liver or muscles for later use, or, if the stores are full, store the excess energy from sugar as fat.
It’s that simple.
And although there is a difference between the kind of sugars (or carbohydrates) we consume — some are released into our bloodstream slower (because of the fiber and other factors), some are released faster, if we raise our blood sugar too much and our body can’t do anything with it but store it as fat — it will do just that, convert excess sugar into fat, because between survival and getting fat our body will always choose survival — would you care how much fat you have if you were dead? — your body wouldn’t either.
This mechanism of storing sugar as fat comes from our early days as humans, when we consumed the most carbs during summer before autumn and winter, when the food was scarce and our body was supposed to use our fat reserves we got during summer for fuel to survive.
So when we eat too much fruit, honey, dried fruits and crappy sugars — doesn’t matter really, our body will do more fat storing than fat burning.
Our exercise doesn’t matter that much, because most of us don’t exercise at the level that will cover diet of modern-food-products-eating homo-sapiens.
Plus exercise doesn’t burn that much energy anyway, unless you are a pro-athlete doing insane workouts daily.
Ever wonder why no matter how little you seem to eat, how much you exercise you never see your 6-pack and firm butt?
Why?
Stop counting portions and calories and start tracking your carbohydrates — anything too sweet, too much of it — bye-bye 6-pack and toned butt.
You can still have it sweet!
There are some sweeteners that are totally safe for you, don’t raise your blood sugar and don’t make you fat or hungry.
My favorite is stevia.
“We need to be off of sugar, but we need good alternatives, and stevia is the safest sweetener there is, period,” says Donna Gates, who led the movement to bring stevia, a natural sweetener, into this country more than a decade ago. All types of stevia are extracted from the leaves of the stevia plant, but some forms taste better than others, says Gates.”
http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/food/the-5-worst-sweeteners-5-healthy-alternatives?slide=1/slide/7
“Honey, brown sugar, and cane juice may sound healthy. But sugar is sugar. Whether it comes from bees or sugar cane, it can cause your blood sugar to rise.”
Although honey and some other forms of natural sugar sources have more nutrients, they also have lots and lots of carbs, that are absorbed into your blood stream very fast and will make us fat eventually.
Ever wonder why bears, when they get ready for winter sleep, are such huge fans of honey? There must be a reason.
We humans were never designed to consume so much of carbohydrate-rich foods!
And yes, grains are not a part of a lean diet either.
Too many carbs even, if they are “slow carbs” (meaning slowly released into blood stream), means more fat storing. Plus a lot of anti-nutrients, plus even with all the fiber, most of the grains are empty calories, meaning they provide energy, carbs, but they do not provide that much nutrition compared to vegetables and other foods.
Did you know, for example, that brown rice can cause zinc deficiency, if it’s a part of your daily diet?
Carbs are not evil, but our body is a machine designed to store fat, when we get too much of them in our system, because our blood sugar got to stay within certain numbers. And probably because we needed that fat for winter in our early days of evolution.
Nothing personal. Just bio-chemistry applied to human body.
One thing you can start doing today to lose fat, get leaner, lose your food cravings, have mental clarity and no crashes and fatigue?
Start tracking your carbs.
If you want to lose fat fast — 50 g of carbs or less is your way.
For most people keeping it under 150 g will do the job of losing fat.
And yes quality still matters.
Carbs from vegetables are not the same as from white sugar.
Quit sugar, that doesn’t come from whole foods is my advice. Quit it for good. After 10 days — you won’t crave it. After a month — you will not understand why it was a big deal at all.
