05/09/2024
An example of the type of things we delve into into my members only coaching group...
This week we have been looking at the impact of the overconsumption of refined sugar...
Ladies,
As I promised we are going to do a deep dive into sugar today.
I have decided to do this as a written post (even though it is a lot) as I really feel that if you can get your head around the damage that refined sugar products do to our bodies if overconsumed, it will help you think twice about eating them.
Ladies who have done my 8 week summer plan will have heard a lot of this before, but, I would urge you to read it anyway as it’s so key and I have added additional insight since I did this as a talk for you.
Our human bodies haven’t really changed much at all since we came into existence.
If you try to imagine back to the earliest humans, any “sugar” that they ate was in the form of highly fibrous, fruits, roots, grains etc.
Eaten as nature intended with little to no human intervention before consumption.
In nature – sugar is always present in conjunction with fibre, and this is how our bodies are designed to consume it.
Fibre helps to slow down the absorption of glucose in our bodies.
The problem we have faced however for many decades now is that many of the foods we have become used to regularly consuming and that are in abundant supply on our supermarket shelves are carbohydrate (sugar) products that have been stripped of all of their fibre. Your white bread, ice cream, fruit juice, biscuits, crisps etc.
The thing is, the presence of fibre is problematic for the food industry if you are trying to create a product that can be preserved for a long time. So it is often removed from many processed and ultra processed foods so that they can be stored on our shelves for weeks, months, and sometimes years.
In addition to stripping out the fibre from a lot of these foods, often sweetness levels are artificially increased to encourage our desire to want to eat, and therefore buy more of these products.
Why does increasing the sweetness in our foods increase our desire to want more?
Sugar releases a dopamine hit. Dopamine is sometimes referred to as the “feel good” chemical. It’s a neurotransmitter that is also released in to the brain during s*x, whilst playing video games, scrolling social media, drinking alcohol, smoking etc.
We have refined sugar over the years to make it more and more concentrated to give us more of a dopamine hit. Therefore, it is increasingly hard for our bodies to curb the cravings that sugar creates.
Did you know that there are over a hundred different names for sugar that are used in our food ingredient lists, often in an attempt to disguise it’s inclusion, and the worst part is some of them sound quite healthy! (It’s a similar problem with salt)
It’s a trick used in food labelling. By using different types of sugar products (some with obscure names) we can be fooled into not realising how much of the processed product we are eating is made up of sugar elements.
So I guess the next question is…so what?
What is the problem with overconsuming added or refined sugars in our diet?
As I’ve said before, our bodies need carbohydrates. They convert to glucose in our bodies and are our preferred energy source.
Back in the days when we had to hunt for our food. We ate in more of a feast or famine way depending on food availability. So the body was designed to cleverly store away excess food in fat cells for when it was needed.
In very simply terms, when we consume carbs they get broken down into glucose molecules. As much as possible, is transported into the cells of our brain, liver and muscles for easily available on hand energy.
If we consume excess amounts and these areas run out of storage room then the rest is stored in fat cells for future use.
When we eat highly fibrous carbs, the fibre component is indigestible by us humans. It doesn’t turn into glucose and doesn’t provide us with any energy. It passes through our bodies aiding the digestive process, keeping our bowels healthy and providing “food” for our gut microbiome which greatly helps with increasing our gut biodiversity.
Now if we don’t eat enough glucose our bodies make it from within. From fats and proteins. By reducing our carbs a little over this fat loss phase but keeping up a healthy protein intake we are encouraging our bodies to use our stored fat cells for energy instead.
Obviously the opposite is then true. If we are not carrying a supply of stored fat, then it is important that we consume sufficient carbs in addition to healthy amounts of fat and proteins for our body to have sufficient energy to keep going.
Now it’s become very common in recent years (and there has been a lot of scientific research gone into this) to talk about “sugar spikes” and what they do to the body.
We kind of all understand the significance in relation to someone with diabetes but it has become a more common place topic.
Resent research suggests that our bodies can only tolerate a relatively small amount of sugar at a time – about a tsp! The mitochondria in our cells can only burn as much energy as each cell needs – no more. One of the problems of overconsuming sugar products is that it can lead to our bodies releasing free radicals.
When there are too many free radicals in our bodies to be neutralized our body is said to be in a state of oxidative stress. Which can be a driver for cognitive decline and general aging as well as many other diseases we experience as humans.
Another process that too much sugar consumption leads to is glycation. Simply it’s when we have too many glucose molecules floating about bumping into each other. Glycation naturally occurs within our bodies and is responsible amongst other things for our aging process but surplus glucose and fructose hugely speed up the process.
This combination of too many free radicals, oxidative stress and glycation leads to a generalized state of inflammation in our bodies.
Inflammation is a protective measure that our bodies use to defend against invaders. But chronic inflammation can be harmful as it can cause our own body to turn against itself.
I’m not suggesting that sugar consumption is the only cause of inflammation, it’s triggered by many things including overly consuming alcohol, smoking, stress etc. but we want to avoid this as chronic inflammation can be attributed as the cause of chronic illness.
The WHO (World Health Organization) have referred to inflammation-based diseases as the greatest threat to human health.
So some good news.
If we can reduce our glucose spikes we can help to reduce our inflammation.
Because of all of the damage that excess glucose can cause, we cleverly try to get the excess glucose out of our blood stream asap.
Our pancreas releases a hormone called insulin whose job it is to stash the excess glucose into storage units to keep it out of circulation and protect us from damage.
Without insulin we would basically die. That’s why people with type 1 diabetes have to inject it, as their bodies don’t produce it naturally.
So, our body begins a process similar to a game of Tetris. Moving the glucose molecules to where our body needs it for energy and when all of the obvious places are full – moving the rest to fat cells for storage.
Long term elevated levels of Insulin can cause problems of their own. So it makes sense to flatten our glucose curve which in turn will flatten our insulin curve too.
When insulin is present in our system our bodies cannot enter fat burning mode. It is a one-way street. Whilst insulin is actively filling our fat cells we cannot at the same time burn fat from those fat cells. Research suggests that we are unable to burn fat for up to 2 hours after a sugar spike. So if we keep our glucose and therefore our Insulin levels down, we can enter into fat burning mode more often and shed those unwanted pounds.
This is not a reason to put off exercising after a meal. Going for a walk whilst this game of cell Tetris is taking place would be a great thing to do as we are using energy from our muscles, therefore creating more space for some of the glucose to be deposited rather than being sent to our fat cells.
Other problems that can be caused by excess sugar consumption.
Constant hunger and cravings for unhealthy foods.
When our insulin levels are constantly high our other hormones get confused. So Leptin the hormone that tells us that we are full gets blocked and ghrelin the hormone that makes us feel hungry takes over, and these 2 hormones are already being messed up by the falling oestrogen in our bodies for those of us entering perimenopause, or post-menopausal so we certainly don’t want to aggravate the problem further.
Sugar spikes and dips can be the cause of dizziness, nausea, heart palpitations, night sweats, brain fog, poor mood and anxiety as well as much more serious conditions.
Are low calorie sweeteners the answer to all the above problems then?
Unfortunately not, these come with problems of their own.
There has been a lot of research into these artificial sweeteners in recent years, a lot of which is ongoing, so the jury is still out.
However, early findings indicate that the presence of artificial sweeteners in our blood stream can trigger the same insulin response as actual sugar. The body is unable to tell the difference between them and as we’ve learned above, insulin in our bodies for any length of time is not ideal when we want to lose weight.
The second problem is that if we purely switch to drinking lots of low-calorie drinks such as diet sodas, or eating low sugar biscuits/cakes etc. we are still training our bodies to crave the sweet stuff.
Remember – the more sugar we consume, the more we crave. It is addictive in real terms.
Lastly – artificial sweeteners have been shown in recent studies to massively mess with our gut microbiome. Encouraging the production of harmful bacteria and killing off our healthy cultures.
So, if the odd diet coke or low sugar squash stops you from drinking the full sugar version (adding lots of empty calories) my advice would be to just be mindful of how often you are doing this. It might be something that you need to slowly adapt over time with a reducing plan.
I think therefore it’s fair to say that as much as we all enjoy a sweet treat or a processed snack from time to time. It is most certainly better to keep these foods to the exception rather than the norm and make the majority of our carbohydrate intake foods full of healthy fibrous fruits, vegetables and complex grains.
If you have enjoyed this article you can enjoy more of the same, plus group coaching and accountability by joining my monthly subscription group.
I also have a group starting on Monday 14th October for ladies wanting to join my 14 Days to Fat loss - suitable for ladies both wanting to lose weight and also ladies wanting to eat well during peri-menopause and beyond.
Early-bird price of £30 to register ends at midnight Friday 6th Sept
Email: [email protected] to enquire.
