In short, yes. Sugar really is that bad.
Sugar is a major factor in most people’s health issues.
Regardless of if you are talking about obesity, Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, energy levels, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, MS, Parkinson’s (the list goes on and on), your diet should be a top consideration. One thing that everyone needs to consider in the early stages of assessing their diet, is sugar intake.
Here are the Coles notes about sugar:
- Sugar in the blood is toxic and cannot stay there long term.
- The body uses insulin to remove sugar from the blood to save the day.
- Sugar removed from the blood, needs to go somewhere and is stored in the liver and muscles until they are filled up.
- Any additional sugar (which is typical) will be stored as Fat tissue in the body.
- Because the body removes the sugar from the blood, a significant portion of the energy from your last meal is not used up and we experience a “sugar crash”.
- This makes us hungry and oops, i just ate another piece of food full of sugar.
- The cycle continues…
You have got to control sugar intake to be healthy
Sugar is highly addictive and offers that sweet taste that most people love. Elimination is the ultimate goal, but a very difficult proposition in itself. I struggle like you, most days to control my sugar intake, but we’ve got to do this to maintain our health.
Sugar comes in many forms.
We are all familiar with white table sugar. It’s everywhere, and should be avoided. But what about all the other sugars that we are consuming? These need to be talked about because just avoiding chocolate bars and table sugar is not enough.
Processed Carbohydrates should be thought of as sugar
If you consume a slice of white bread, it will be processed by the body into Glucose (sugar) no different than a chocolate bar. This is the same with pastas, cereals, and most things that can be purchased in the aisles of major grocery stores. Check the labels of your favourite products, and see if sugar is listed. Also, ingredients are listed in order of amount. If sugar is in the top 3, there’s a lot of it in there.
If it comes in a box, can, sealed jar or bag, unless you know the person that put it in there, you should be cautious about the processed nature of the “food” and sugar content
Once again a very difficult proposition. Convenience is the killer here. We are so busy that we don’t have time to properly shop, cook and ultimately eat. We take the quick option which is typically processed, and full of sugar.
Getting back to nature includes switching up your lifestyle to make room for what it takes to avoid this pitfalls. Kale chips anyone?!
Like this? Got questions?