Look at how many grams of sugar are in what you’re eating (on the nutritional label). Now divide that number by 4. That’s how many teaspoons of pure sugar you’re consuming. Kinda scary, huh? Sugar makes you fat and fat-free food isn’t literally free of fat. I’ve said it before in many articles, but occasionally, I’ve had person lean over my desk and say “How in the heck does sugar make you fat if there’s no fat in it?”. This description will reply that puzzler, and provide you with some helpful suggestions to accomplish not only weight loss success, but improved body health.
First, let’s make some qualifications. Sugar isn’t inherently evil. Your body uses
sugar to survive, and burns sugar to provide you with the power essential for life.
Many truly healthy foods are literally broken down to sugar in the body – straight through
the conversion of long and involved sugars called polysaccharides into short and
simple sugars called monosaccharides, such as glucose. In additions to the
breakdown products of fat and protein, glucose is a great power source for your
body.
Fat
However, there are two ways that sugar can sabotage your body and cause fat
storage. Excess glucose is the first problem, and it involves a very simple concept.
Anytime you have filled your body with more fuel than it literally needs (and this is
very easy to do when eating foods with high sugar content), your liver’s sugar
storage capacity is exceeded. When the liver is maximally full, the excess sugar is
converted by the liver into fatty acids (that’s right – fat!) and returned to the
bloodstream, where is taken throughout your body and stored (that’s right – as fat!)
wherever you tend to store adipose fat cells, including, but not small to, the
popular regions of the stomach, hips, butt, and breasts.
As an unfortunate bonus, once these regions are full of adipose tissue, the fatty
acids begin to spill over into your organs, like the heart, liver, and kidneys. This
reduces organ ability, raises blood pressure, decreases metabolism, and weakens
the immune system.
Not good!
Excess insulin is the second problem. Insulin is a major hormone in the body, and is
released in high levels anytime you ingest what would be carefully a “simple”
carbohydrate, which would include, but not be small to: fruit juice, white bread,
most “wheat” bread (basically white bread with a small extra fiber), white rice, baked
white potato, bagels, croissants, pretzels, graham crackers, vanilla wafers, waffles,
corn chips, cornflakes, cake, jelly beans, sugary drinks, Gatorade, beer, and
anything that has high fructose corn syrup on the nutritional label.
Two actions occur when the insulin levels are spiked. First, the body’s fat burning
process is shut down so that the sugar that has just been ingested can be
immediately used for energy. Then, insulin takes all that sugar and puts it into your
muscles. Well, not quite! Actually, most of us, except those random Ironman
triathletes and 8000-calories-per-day exercisers, walk colse to with fairly full power
stores in the muscles. As soon as the muscles power market are full, the excess
sugars are converted to fat and, just like the fatty acids released from the liver,
stored as adipose tissue on our waistline.
But that’s not all. After the blood sugar has been reduced by going into the muscles
or being converted to fat in the liver, the feedback mechanism that tells the body to
stop producing insulin is slightly delayed, so blood sugar levels fall even lower,
below normal measurements. This causes 1) an immediate increase in appetite,
which is regularly remedied by eating more food; 2) the yield of a stress
hormone called cortisol. Cortisol triggers the release of stored sugar from the liver
to bring blood sugar levels back up, which, combined with the meal you eat from
your appetite increase, begins the whole “fat storage, metabolic decrease” process
over again.
This process of destabilizing blood sugar levels and sending your body on a roller
coaster ride can occur throughout an whole day, week, or month. The immoderate
cortisol that accumulates in the body finally distresses your hormonal law
and results in other problems, including a additional decrease in metabolism, obesity,
depression, allergies, immune weakness, persisting fatigue syndrome and other
serious side effects.
So what kind of carbohydrates can you eat to avoid de-stabilizing blood sugar
levels, permanently sabotaging your weight loss, and spending hundreds of thousands
of dollars in condition care as you get older? Here is a list of carbohydrates do not
trigger such a strong insulin response and instead provide long-term, stabilized
energy: apples, oranges, pears, plums, grapes, bananas (not overly ripened),
grapefruit, oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat spaghetti and egg fettuccine, whole-
wheat pasta, bran cereal, barley, bulgur, basmati, Kashi and other whole grains,
beans, peas (especially chick and black-eyed), lentils, whole corn, sweet potatoes,
yams, milk, yogurt (preferably low-fat or fat-free) and soy. Stay away from
processed and packaged foods as much as possible, because they are very likely
to comprise artificial sweeteners (which basically have a similar succeed as sugar), as
well as simple and refined sugars. Keep your eye out for ingredients that comprise
sucrose, maltose, dextrose, fructose, galactose, glucose, arabinose, ribose, xylose,
deoxyribose, lactose, and other fake names for sugars. Even “healthy” juice and
many condition food products will need to be avoided if they comprise high levels of
sugar.
If you need more help with your diet, just let me know. Feel free to e-mail
elite@pacificfit.net, and I’ll give you some suggestions on how a personal trainer can
help you with your nutrition. My new book, Shape21, includes 21 days of nutritional
intake that thoroughly stabilizes blood sugar levels, which, when combined with the
perfect rehearsal schedule that I’ve detailed in the book, leaves you with a lean,
athletic body. You can check it out at my website, http://www.pacificfit.net, or at a gym
near you. E-mail elite@pacificfit.net for more information.
How Sugar Makes You Fat
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