The biggest reason people get fat is sugar. I work with overweight clients who tell me all the time, “I don’t really like sweets.” After surveying their diets, I see that they’re loaded with bread, yogurt, and cereals—all foods that are laced with hidden sugars. They don’t eat plain oatmeal, for example; they eat a bowl of apple cinnamon oatmeal containing eleven grams of sugar. If this sounds like your dietary habits, trust me, you’re addicted to sugar, whether you realize it or not. I know I was.
When I was younger, I was hooked on daily candy, Pop-Tarts, sugary cereal, and soda. Sugar became my number-one coping mechanism; eating it was part of my routine. I liked the instant high I felt, and I looked forward to all my processed goodies throughout the day. I especially loved anything that combined bread and sugar—you know, like doughnuts and cupcakes. Because of my addiction to sugar, I was hyperactive in school and had learning disabilities. But they all cleared up when I decreased sugar in my diet. I now know sugar for what it is: poison to your system.
I’ve said it to my clients a million times: Sugar is the devil. It has zero nutritional value and weakens your immune system. It throws off your metabolic functions and is highly addictive.
Years ago, I came across the book Sugar Blues, in which author William Dufty spelled out his theory that sugar is a drug, not a food. He called the sugar pick-me-up “mortgaged energy,” because “more and more nutrients are required from deep in the body in the attempt to rectify the imbalance” in your system. Once I read that book, I never thought about sugar the same way again. His book led me to design my five-days-on, two-days-off plan, in which you cut out sugar for five days in a row and let your brain and body start functioning normally. You’ll learn more about this in chapter 5.
But let me say this now: You will be so excited when you see how fast you lose weight on this plan—and how wonderful you’ll feel—after you kick your sugar habit. A lot of experts want you to believe that grazing on small amounts of sugar daily is fine. I’m here to tell you it’s not! Sugar is the most damaging ingredient in the American diet. It’s making you fat and sick!
Sugar is the leading food additive in the U.S. food supply and is making us a nation of sugar junkies. You’re fed sugar in almost every product from childbirth on. It’s in practically everything you eat now. In fact, the average American downs thirty teaspoons of added sugar daily! That’s 480 nutritionally empty calories of added sugar every day. As a nation, we’re pushing maximum density. Headlines call it “an epidemic of obesity.” It’s no coincidence that this epidemic has progressed in step with our sugar consumption.
Refined sugar is technically sucrose, or common table sugar. The other sugars you need to be aware of include dextrose (corn sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), maltose (malt sugar), and lactose (milk sugar).
Refined white sugar was once scarce and extremely expensive, a luxury only the wealthy could afford. Early devotees termed it “white gold,” using it only to sweeten the most costly of dishes. The earliest attempts at sugar refining began in the fourth century, in Persia and ancient Arabia, where it was extracted from sugarcane and made into large, golden-brown blocks. Early sugar was less refined—it actually had nutrients in it—and wasn’t made with the nasty chemicals found in today’s counterpart.
You hear sugar advertised as a “natural” food because it’s made from the natural ingredients in sugarcane and sugar beets. Unfortunately, many people have come to equate natural with healthy. There’s nothing natural about sucrose! Ninety percent of the original source (sugarcane or sugar beets) has been removed. The natural brownish color is lightened by chemical bleaching. What’s left is white sugar, stripped of all its minerals and vitamins. Cocaine, too, could be advertised as “made from natural ingredients.” The coca leaf from which it is made is as natural as sugarcane. Both leaf and cane yield similar products—a white crystalline powder with horrible effects.
Sugar isn’t just bad nutrition; it’s health-damaging nutrition. Here’s what I mean: When sugar is found in natural foods and plants (such as apples, berries, or even sugarcane), it comes in a package with the vitamins, minerals, and enzymes needed for its complete digestion. When it’s found in sugar packets or in candy or in the disaster known as high-fructose corn syrup, it contains nothing of any good. The body actually has to borrow from its stores of nutrients in order to process it. Sugar literally eats up the nutrients your body needs to stay healthy. This depresses your immune system, and that’s why sugar can make you so sick.
When you eat refined sugar, it goes straight to your intestines, bypassing any chemical breakdown in your body. From the intestines, it’s absorbed right into the bloodstream. Your blood glucose level spikes fast. Your brain registers this sugar hit with a drug-like reaction. Sugar triggers the release of the same natural brain opioids released when shooting heroin, which are associated with positive feelings such as pleasure, energy, and euphoria. That release makes most people feel good, but it makes sugar-addicted people feel absolutely high. And when sugar is taken away, you get the same withdrawal signs, including “the shakes” and changes in brain chemistry, as those caused by withdrawal from heroin, nicotine, or booze. As drugs do, sugar stimulates the reward pathways of the brain.
When you’re addicted to sugar, you need more to feel better. Your life starts being focused on getting a sugar fix. And by the way, when I talk about sugar, I don’t just mean candy and cookies. I’m also talking about carbohydrates that are quickly converted to sugar, such as bagels, breads, croutons, rolls, crackers, and more. Their rapid conversion to sugar causes a corresponding hike in insulin. High insulin prevents the breakdown of body fat.
When you’re on sugar, the brain signals insulin to rush in and hold down the sugar. Glucose levels then plummet. The adrenal glands have to step in to release fat-producing cortisol to get them back up again. Blood sugar levels crash. You feel tired, irritable, jumpy, and mentally sluggish. The body’s specially balanced mechanisms are just not designed to cope with these sudden, rapid changes in sugar levels.
There is a built-in biological reason that we crave sugary foods. Back when we were foraging through the forest for any little nut or berry as cave dwellers, we developed a genetic predisposition for certain foods. Generally, the fruits and vegetables that tasted sweet were healthy, so we ate them. Foods that tasted bitter were often poisonous. Our instinct for sweetness ensured that we got the nutrients necessary to survive. Of course, our caveman ancestors never ate sugar as pure white sugar. The sweetness of nature for them came embedded in fruits and other plants. In today’s world, processed foods loaded with sugar are a common staple. So if you want to get thin, repeat after me: Eat like a cave woman.
Sure, I’ll admit that alcohol and drug addictions seem like worse threats—but are they? When you find out how sugar is linked to disease and depression, you will think again. If you think you’re sick now, here are the horrifying facts of what’s to come if you keep eating sugar.
Excess sugar wreaks havoc on every organ in the body. Initially, it’s stored in the liver in the form of glycogen. But the liver can hold only so much before it inflates like a balloon. When the liver’s storage capacity gets maxed out, glycogen is expelled in the form of fatty acids. These travel to every part of the body and lodge themselves in our fatty areas: the belly, hips and butt, breasts, and thighs. After these areas are filled, the remaining fatty acids get dealt out to the major organs, including the heart and kidneys. Fat nestles there, releasing toxic chemicals that damage arteries, blood vessels, and organs. Sugar also causes a sluggish metabolism—not to mention the worthless calories it adds. When calories go up, so does your weight.
Not only does ordinary sugar make you fat, so does another common additive in processed foods: high-fructose corn syrup. Made from cornstarch, high-fructose corn syrup is found in everything from cereals to protein bars to breads. The big problem with this crap is that it’s quickly metabolized as fat and prevents the body from knowing it’s full. This is why you can sit down with a box of cookies or chips and eat them until they’re gone.
Fructose as a naturally occurring fruit sugar—found, for example, in an apple—is absolutely fine because it’s surrounded with healthful nutrients, phytochemicals, and fiber. But when fructose is extracted, refined, and made into a liquid sweetener, it’s a poison. Sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup are nightmares, and people eat too much of both.
Does it feel like everywhere you turn, someone else is getting cancer? Or maybe that someone is you. One in three people will get cancer in their lifetime. I don’t like those odds! My mother fought it with chemotherapy, and I promise you, it is one of the nastiest diseases that you can deal with. We all have cells in our bodies that, under favorable conditions, could mutate into cancer anytime. One of those conditions is a high-sugar diet.
Cancer cells multiply rapidly. This process requires a lot of energy. To get enough energy, cancer cells supercharge themselves with glucose. Cancer cells love sugar. Sugar makes tumors grow. You can help stop cells from mutating into cancer through diet and exercise. The most important dietary change you can make will be to greatly decrease the toxin sugar in your diet.
Sugar, of course, jacks up insulin levels. Insulin problems—too much or too little—go far, far beyond diabetes. Insulin stimulates cell growth. Unfortunately, cancer cells have six to ten times the number of insulin receptors—molecules that grab on to the hormone—as normal cells. So if extra insulin hits a preexisting cancer cell, it makes a bad thing deadly. For cancer, insulin is like pouring gasoline on a fire. All this contributes to a greater risk of cancer, because cancer cells thrive when sugar is available.
Here’s a partial list of cancers you may be at greater risk of because of sugar:
* Breast cancer. The chance of a woman having breast cancer at some point during her life is about one in eight. It is the second leading cause of cancer death in women, after lung cancer. A study conducted in Italy and published in 2006 in Annals of Oncology found that breast cancer rates coincided with high sugar consumption in thousands of women. The more sugar women ate, the higher their risk. Another study showed that women who are overweight and have high blood sugar tend to develop a very aggressive type of breast cancer that usually kills. This research was published in 2003 in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. Is eating too much sugar worth losing your breasts, or your life?
* Pancreatic cancer. This is the most lethal of cancers, killing about thirty thousand Americans each year. It usually spreads rapidly and is seldom detected in the early stages. High insulin levels are thought to trigger this horrible cancer.
* Colon cancer. This is the third most common cancer among men and women, and has a higher death rate than both breast and prostate cancers. In a study from Harvard, people who ate sugar-infused junk like breads, cereals, cookies, cakes, and other sweets made with white flour were nearly three times more likely to get colon cancer than those who rarely ate those foods. The link between diet and colon cancer is just too strong to ignore.
* Stomach cancer. Pure white sugar without fiber, minerals, and vitamins irritates the lining of the stomach and intestinal walls. This increases the risk of stomach cancer, a deadly cancer that kills six out of ten patients.
* Endometrial cancer. This is the most common female gynecological cancer in the United States. A risk factor is estrogen. We talked about how estrogen dominance makes you fat, but it may also increase the risk of getting this cancer. Look at your diet: If it’s high in processed foods, you’re in trouble.
This is just the short list of cancers that may be caused in part by sugar. Cancer is a painful disease, and chemo is something you should want to avoid in life at all costs. It harms your body, and you may never fully recover. If this information doesn’t make you want to give up sugar, I don’t know what will!
Sugar makes you fat and may increase your risk of cancer. Guess what else? It ages your skin and causes wrinkles.
In a process called glycation, eating sugar attacks collagen and elastin, both key proteins that make your skin look young. Glycation makes them less elastic and more brittle so they break. Your skin can’t snap back. That’s when fine lines and wrinkles appear, and they don’t go away. You’re stuck with them.
But it gets worse. Collagen and elastin start to mutate, creating harmful new molecules called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). These build up and cause further inflammation and damage to your collagen and elastin. Sugar actively ages you.
Ditching sugar will make you look and feel ten years younger. Save your money on expensive plastic surgery remedies to look more youthful, and put it into healthier, whole foods and treats.
Sugar wrecks your immune system. Eating just a few teaspoons of sugar can cripple the capacity of certain white blood cells called neutrophils to engulf and destroy bacteria. Neutrophils make up 65 percent of the total white blood cells in circulation. With neutrophils out of commission, you’re vulnerable to developing colds, flu, infections—even chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). With CFS, you feel inexplicably run-down and unrefreshed by sleep. You will not have the energy for intense workouts. And you will want to eat more. You’re as healthy as your immune system. Give up sugar!
Our brains are very sensitive and react to quick chemical changes within the body, including those caused by too much sugar. Researchers now report that people who have even slightly elevated blood sugar concentrations also have short-term memory impairment. Researchers at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York, tested thirty people without any history of memory problems. They found that when volunteers were given an infusion of pure sugar, they couldn’t recall the details of a brief story that had been read to them. Recall was worse if a person didn’t metabolize sugar well—which is usually the case if you eat too much sugar.
What was going on? Scientists think that high-sugar diets disturb blood sugar metabolism. When blood sugar is out of whack, or you have trouble metabolizing sugar, this shrinks memory areas in the brain.
You can change the course at any time by eating differently. Don’t be stupid; don’t get stupid. Get off sugar!
Okay, you understand that sugar is a major weight gainer, disease causer, and chronic fatiguer. Now let’s talk about how it’s cleverly hidden in virtually everything we eat, especially packaged and processed foods, from breads and crackers to soups, sauces, and entrées—and even diet foods and low-fat foods. But first, here’s my guideline for sugar: Choose foods with five grams of sugar per serving or less. The body doesn’t register anything five grams and under, so that is optimal.
Popular breakfast cereals are among the worst offenders. For example, start your day with a supposedly good-for-you cup of raisin bran, and you’ve ingested twenty grams of sugar—about the same as gobbling nine Hershey’s Kisses. Special K’s Fruit and Yogurt cereal, another product disguised as healthy, contains eleven grams of sugar. As for hot cereals, a packet of Quaker sweetened instant oatmeal—like Maple & Brown Sugar or Apples & Cinnamon—includes some thirteen grams of sugar, almost all of it table sugar. Then, when you add a cup of nonfat milk, you are adding fourteen more grams of sugar in the form of lactose. Don’t eat this crap! Only get the plain oats that have no sugar. You can add cinnamon, blueberries, and Truvia (a stevia-based sweetener) for sweetening.
Of course, children’s cereals are nothing more than candy. A 2008 analysis by Consumer Reports found that eleven popular breakfast cereals contain at least 40 percent sugar by weight. That’s at least as much sugar as you’d get in a glazed doughnut at the doughnut shop. The analysis was based on a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetics Association.
As for the bagel you grab every morning, unless you get whole wheat or multigrain, your bagel is essentially three to five 1-ounce slices of nutritionally dead white bread. Some specialty bagels, such as Dutch apple & raisin bagels, contain thirty-three grams of sugar. That’s the same amount you get in a piece of chocolate cake!
Sugar hides in foods under clever names like beet sugar, brown sugar, cane sugar, confectioners’ sugar, corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, invert sugar, lactose, maltodextrin, maltitol (a sugar alcohol), mannitol (a sugar alcohol), sorbitol (a sugar alcohol), sucrose, and turbinado sugar. These sugars are in everything from protein bars and shakes to breads and dairy. Don’t waste your time looking at the ingredients on the label. You’re just going to be overwhelmed. Eat only the foods that have five grams or under per serving, and you will be fine.
One of the biggest places sugar hides is in fat-free foods like cakes, cookies, ice cream, salad dressings, and snacks. These foods often contain more sugar (and sometimes more calories!) than the regular versions. Why? Manufacturers took the fat out of food and boosted the sugar to give it flavor. A SnackWell devil’s food cookie has fifty calories and no fat. A Keebler Soft Batch cookie has eighty calories and 3.5 grams of fat. Which cookie has more sugar? The SnackWell with seven grams, compared with five grams in the Keebler. Remember, fat doesn’t make you fat, sugar does.
One of the cruelest hoaxes played on us involves “diet” products. If you want to lose weight, you could enjoy a healthy, low-calorie meal like a grilled chicken salad with low-cal dressing. Or you could chow down on high-fructose corn syrup, yogurt-flavored coating, partially defatted peanut flour, honey, corn syrup, and the other ingredients in some of the popular nutrition bars out there. Everything in these products blocks fat-burning hormones!
Sugar is found not only in things that are sweet, which we know have sugar, but also in other processed foods that don’t taste particularly sweet. That includes ketchup, canned beans, barbecue sauce, and spaghetti sauce. I could go on and on—but I think you get the picture. Sugar is hidden everywhere.
Trust me, sugar is affecting your body in a very bad way, and you’ve got to kick the habit. Indulging in sugar-laden foods sets you up for getting fat and not feeling well. Remember, blood sugar spikes, followed by blood sugar drops, lead to tiredness, irritability, sugar cravings, weight gain, and eventually all sorts of terrible health problems. Here’s how to be sugar-free:
* Get rid of sugar-free juices, sodas, and treats. They cause sugar cravings. A diet soda actually triggers your brain to grab for chips or other junk foods.
* Don’t allow sugar in your clean products like water, tea, or coffee. These are necessities in many of our lives and should remain completely sugar-free. Many people lose weight by not adding sugar to foods.
* Go to the fridge and pantry and rid your life of simple sugar items including (but not limited to): candy, cookies, cakes, sodas, fat-free products, and products made from these products. It’s impossible to keep unhealthy foods in the house without indulging. If you try to keep them, you will fail and hate yourself for it. Treat meals should be bought, indulged in, and any leftovers thrown away immediately. Be strong. You won’t crave sugar as much once the cycle is broken, and you can use treat meals to indulge. Just don’t keep sugary stuff in the house.
* Buy apples, pears, berries, and citrus foods instead. They’re lower in simple sugars and calories, and provide vitamins you won’t find in items like candy and sodas. Citrus fruits and apples, in particular, help your body burn fat. The more whole fruit you eat, the less processed sugar you will crave. It won’t send your blood sugar levels on a roller-coaster ride, and the fiber in the fruit will fill you up.
* Buy Truvia, a low-cal natural sweetener sold in grocery stores, drugstores, and online.
* Exercise regularly. Exercise kills cravings for junk, as well as making you a fat-burning machine throughout the day. Just twenty minutes a day of rigorous physical activity brings the rush of endorphins your brain wants to replace a sugar rush. In fact, when you feel a craving coming on, immediately step outside for a walk, take the stairs, or hop on the treadmill. Lunch workouts are a great midday way to kill the cravings. Pretty soon, you’ll want the endorphins from the workout more than the cheesecake.
* Graze on healthy snacks throughout the day. The traditional three-meal-aday diet hasn’t done much for sugar addicts. The full feeling after a meal turns to hunger in a matter of three or four hours, leaving you susceptible to sugar cravings. Make healthy snacks accessible all throughout the day and use them to keep your stomach full.
* Drink lots of water. A craving is often a sign of plain dehydration, not a cry for food. So carry a bottle of water or iced herbal tea to combat those sugar attacks. Drinking two to three liters of water a day burns fifty to seventy-five additional calories, and speeds up your metabolism.
* Cut back on caffeine. Plain and simple, caffeine can cause a drop in blood sugar levels that leads to fat storing. Switch to herbal tea, if possible, or have no more than two cups of coffee a day.
* Stick to my eating plan. It will help you kick your sugar addiction. Here’s a preview of what’s in store: Monday through Friday, do not eat refined sugar or products that contain over five grams per serving. On my plan, you’ll do this for five days—the time it takes to break the chemical addiction in your brain. On the weekend, you’ll get to indulge in two treat meals. This schedule of eating will help you naturally need less sugar to feel satisfied. In two weeks’ time, you’ll notice that the quantities you used to consume are now too rich for you. This is your body’s natural response mechanism and a sign that it’s starting to balance itself.
By following just three of the above tips, you will lose weight without even walking into a gym. Choose what you can live with and start losing for longer and start living stronger.