If you know the basics about nutrition you probably know that there are two kinds of sugars, artificial and natural and as much as we try to cut back on their intake, there’s no way around them. All of today’s processed food contains hidden sugars and you need to be extra committed if you want to eliminate them from your diet.
Nutritionist, fitness trainer and acclaimed author JJ Virgin wrote a new book in which she gives practical advices on how to steer clear of this harmful ingredient and protect your overall health.
In her latest book The Sugar Impact Diet: Drop 7 Sugars to Lose Up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks she gives detailed descriptions of every type of sugar we ingest and its effect on our organism and clarifies the popular belief about all-natural sugars, namely that they’re not as safe as many health-conscious people would like to believe. Agave, natural fruit juice, raw cane sugar, and any number of other natural sugars will still have a detrimental effect on your health.
“Sugar is really public enemy number one,” she says. “That’s why I chose to focus on it. I don’t think added sugar is really the problem; I think it’s what’s in a lot of our food that we don’t recognize [as sugar].
Whether it’s having apple juice (which is worse for you than a soda), or having a yogurt sweetened with fruit juice concentrate, or whether you’re just thinking that fruits are free for all, these are all creating problems.
I wanted to create a structured program that could help someone break free of those sugar cravings, drop the weight forever, and then let them go back and [do a food] challenge… in order to connect the dots between what happens when they drink one of those big fruit smoothies that are supposed to be so healthy.”
To end sugar cravings your body needs to burn fat as its primary fuel
JJ continues by saying that it doesn’t matter in what form the sugar you ingest is, it’s all the same to your body. “Food is information”, she says, and eating a muffin, a fruit sweetened yogurt or a smoothie sends the same information – SUGAR!
It will be difficult at the beginning but once you eliminate the constant urge for a sugar fix you’ll find yourself feeling extra energetic and focused. But first you need to teach your body to burn fat as its primary form of fuel instead of sugar.
It can be really challenging for many but that’s why JJ’s book is so helpful in this process. It specifically addresses the gradual process of getting from burning sugar to burning fat as your body’s primary fuel, in order to maximize your chances for success.
“There’s got to be a transition period, where you go from sugar burner to getting your body to be able to start to burn fat again,” she explains.
“You have to taper down from where your starting point is, which is what I call a Sneaky Sugar Inventory, of things you would never think about (like sundried tomatoes and marinara sauce) that we’re just using like crazy not realizing how much sugar this is actually adding into our food.”
The Sugar Impact Scales: A New Way of Looking at Sugar
If you want to do the sugar cleanse you first need to measure yourself and determine the waist-to-hip ratio to find your starting point. Then you need to do a list of all the hidden dangers in your diet, all the sugars you ingest without even realizing it.
How can you do it? It’s really simple, just start reading the labels on everything you eat and this means EVERYTHING. You have no idea how many food items contain sugars and this includes the jar of pickles in your fridge, condiments, sauces and marinades. JJ’s book gives a detailed list of all the sneaky places sugars hide in your diet and she gives a completely new perspective regarding sugars with her Sugar Impact Scales.
“It looks at fructose grams, glycemic load, nutrient density, and fiber. Bad are fructose and glycemic load; good are nutrient density and fiber,” she explains.
“Depending on where the food falls, it can either be low, medium, or high-sugar impact. The reason this was so important to me is I keep looking at programs out there, and they either focus on fructose… glycemic index, or glycemic load.
That can be very confusing because it makes things like agave sweetener look great. It makes milk look great… People go, ‘We should have fructose because fructose is low on the glycemic index.’
The main difference between fructose and glucose is that fructose doesn’t trigger an insulin response, which means that it doesn’t trigger insulin, leptin or ghrelin. Your body doesn’t even realize you ate something, it just goes in the liver where if it can’t turn into glycogen, it turns into fat.
So how can you tell if you have a high sugar impact? The most common signs are gas and bloating, then you have joint pain, headaches, fatigue, inability to lose weight or weight loss resistance, and sugar cravings. By grading yourself on those and other symptoms, while tracking your waist, hip, and weight, you’ll get a clearer picture of how sugar impacts your body, and your progress in terms of retraining your body to burn fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel.
The Three Cycles of the Sugar Impact Diet
In the first cycles you’re starting to adapt your body to the new changes by gradually switching from high sugar impact foods to medium sugar impact foods and this cycle lasts for one to two weeks. For example if you normally eat plain pasta you’ll start eating quinoa pasta.
JJ advises that you measure the time between meals and not eat every two hours but live a longer gap in-between meals so that you don’t feel insulin spikes. Once this period is finished you’ll measure your sugar impact again to see how far you’ve gotten.
The post Alarming Signs You’re Eating Too Much Sugar appeared first on Healthy Food Team.
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