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Step One in weight loss: Ditch the sugar

Updated: Jan 6, 2022




There is no more important step in weight loss than reducing or eliminating the consumption of sugar!

Sugar is the most dangerous food substance on this planet.


There is no other food substance that kills more people than sugar in all its forms.

Many modern lifestyle diseases have their origins in the overconsumption of sugar.

It’s not just sweets, cakes and cokes that are full of sugar. Many, many processed and ready-made foods you buy in the store are full of sugar so you’re getting a lot more of the stuff than you realize.

Here is the problem: when the scientific world, back in the 1950s, decided that dietary fat was to blame for the rising rates of heart attacks, strokes, cancer and obesity the food industry started removing fats from food production and started adding something else to replace the fat for texture and taste. This was (and still is today) high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This stuff is omnipresent in the food manufacturing world and it is actually sugar.

Like sugar, HFCS is made up of roughly half glucose and half fructose, two of the simplest carbohydrates which due to their rapid absorption in the body, cause the fastest spike in blood sugar of any food and therefore result in a rapid rise in insulin levels.

Blood sugar works like a rollercoaster, the faster and higher it rises, the faster and lower it crashes causing people to feel hungry when their blood sugar becomes low, even though the body has ample energy from food.

This often leads to overeating and the excess calories get deposited in our fat stores. These simple carbohydrates also provide energy faster for your cells than the proteins or fats you consume resulting in the energy requirement of the body being met by the time your fats are absorbed by the body. These are then also put in storage in your fat cells.


Blood sugar is actually glucose which is either used by the body to produce energy, stored as glycogen in the muscles and liver or converted into fat and stored. Eat too much and it will make you fat.




Fructose

The even bigger problem however is the second component of sugar and high fructose corn syrup. This is fructose. Unlike glucose, fructose is absorbed higher up in the digestive tract and thus gets absorbed into the portal vein and transported directly to the liver.

There it is either converted to energy or stored in the liver in the form of fat. This is the main source of the worldwide huge and increasing epidemic of insulin resistance (diabetes) and fatty liver (NAFLD) which often escalates to liver cirrhosis and cancer as well as many other modern lifestyle diseases. So sugar, particularly added sugars, in our diet are not only making us fat, they are also making us sick with a myriad of modern lifestyle diseases, the prevalence of which can be exactly traced to the prevalence of sugar consumption in most populations.


So your first step on your weight loss journey is to get rid of all or most of the added sugar in your diet.


As we told you before you do not have to miss sweet treats. At our weight loss retreat on the island of Koh Chang in Thailand, we regularly serve our holiday resort guests a chocolate mousse while they are considerably losing weight and shrinking belly circumference.


Just use a natural sugar replacement such as erythritol, stevia or monk fruit extract and you won’t taste the difference.


Be mindful however of the added sugars in processed and prepared foods. Added sugars are hidden under many names on a nutrition label. A list is provided at the end of this article.


This is your first and most important step to lose weight, keep it off and gain back your health.

Do it now and let's continue on your weightloss journey together in our next article.

Alternate names for added sugars in foods:

Dextrose

Fructose

Galactose

Glucose

Lactose

Maltose

Sucrose

Beet sugar

Brown sugar

Cane juice crystals

Cane sugar

Castor sugar

Coconut sugar

Confectioner's sugar / powdered sugar)

Corn syrup solids

Crystalline fructose

Date sugar

Demerara sugar

Dextrin

Diastatic malt

Ethyl maltol

Florida crystals

Golden sugar

Glucose syrup solids

Grape sugar

Icing sugar

Maltodextrin

Muscovado sugar

Panela sugar

Raw sugar

Sugar (granulated or table)

Sucanat

Turbinado sugar

Yellow sugar

Liquid or Syrup Sugars:

Agave Nectar / Syrup

Barley malt

Blackstrap molasses

Brown rice syrup

Buttered sugar/buttercream

Caramel

Carob syrup

Corn syrup

Evaporated cane juice

Fruit juice

Fruit juice concentrate

Golden syrup

High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

Honey

Invert sugar

Malt syrup

Maple syrup

Molasses

Rice syrup

Refiner's syrup

Sorghum syrup

Treacle

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