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TRACK YOUR IMPACT
Remember when you showed up to class and the teacher served up a surprise quiz that day? Arriving at this chapter may bring back that feeling. But not to worry, it will be quick and painless, and this quiz is the beginning of the path to sugar freedom.
Take a couple of minutes to take the Sugar Impact Quiz. This quiz has you measure some of the most common symptoms of a high Sugar Impact (SI) diet. We’re going to use your score as a baseline to start the Sugar Impact Diet and for progressing through the cycles, so you’ll see improvement no matter where you start. We’ll also come back to it later for a reassessment to see how far you’ve come.
When your symptoms are right there in front of you, in black and white, it speaks volumes, doesn’t it? For a lot of people, this quiz is really a wake-up call. The good news is that wherever you’re starting from, the Sugar Impact Diet can help you heal and conquer sugar for good!
THE SUGAR IMPACT SCALES
I’ve created the Sugar Impact Scales to be your cheat sheets and take the thinking out of this for you. You can eat and shop with blissful abandon, knowing I’ve got your back.
The Sugar Impact Quiz no doubt made it very clear that now is the time for a change. You’re not feeling as good as you could, and you’re carrying around stubborn extra pounds you can’t hide, pounds that take their toll on your self-esteem every day. Without making a change, your situation won’t change, either, and it could very well get worse. Every journey begins with the first step. And the first step here is to figure out where the sugar in your diet is coming from.
The Sugar Impact Scale takes into account a food’s fructose (in grams), nutrient density, and fiber, as well as its glycemic load, a measurement of how the food affects your blood sugar levels (more on the glycemic index and glycemic load here). Fiber and nutrients are positives that can downshift the effects of high fructose and glycemic load. And, of course, dose matters—the glycemic load is also based on average serving size.
This scale is a simple and easy way of categorizing foods according to their overall impact on your blood sugar—high, medium, or low. Think of low-SI foods as “green.” You’re good to go on these foods; eat them regularly. Consider the medium-SI foods yellow, so proceed with caution and incorporate only the amount you can have and still feel great. (I’ll walk you through the best way to taper medium-SI foods out of your diet in Cycle 1, and then I’ll explain how to figure out the right amount for you to eat long term in Cycle 3.) When it comes to high-SI foods, you guessed it—stop! Think of them as red. Eat and drink them as a rare treat, and even when you do, you’re likely to feel it. And not in a good way.
Here’s the shorthand:
- High SI—stop!
- Medium SI—proceed with caution
- Low SI—go!
I’ve also pinpointed seven food groups where hidden sugars tend to be an issue. Some of these may surprise you:
- Grains
- Roots
- Packaged fruit
- Low and no-fat dairy and diet foods
- Sauces, dressings, and condiments
- Sweet drinks
- Sweeteners and added sugar
Within each of these seven categories, I’ve ranked foods according to the Sugar Impact Scales, so that you’ll know just which high-SI foods to trade for low-to medium-SI options. I go into more detail about the seven foods and provide Sugar Impact Scales for each food in Part II of the book. (They are also available online at http://sugarimpact.com/resources.)
HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS: UNDERSTANDING THE THREE CYCLES
The Sugar Impact Diet is designed to help you gradually shift from a high-SI diet to a low-SI diet. It’s essential that you transition your diet gradually to avoid withdrawal and cravings that can set you back, which is why there are three cycles in the program. Here’s how they work.
Cycle 1—Taper
The first step is to identify what’s sabotaging your weight and health. Where are the sugar landmines in your diet? You’ll figure that out by taking the Sneaky Sugar Inventory (here). Once you pinpoint the sneaky sugars that are sabotaging your health, this cycle will help you step away from them slowly, easing you from high-SI foods to medium-SI foods.
Be prepared: the Sneaky Sugar Inventory is an eye-opener. It even shocked me. And I thought I had my SI in check! But there it was… piling up in my diet in innocent-looking fruit, sundried tomatoes, and balsamic dressing.
What’s great is that it doesn’t matter where you start out—you can always improve. You’ll make a big jump or a lot of little ones, but any size step makes a difference, especially when it comes to everyday habits. And remember—you’re not going cold turkey! You’re going to trade and taper with swaps. Nothing is cut from your diet without being replaced. Don’t be surprised if you like the swaps better anyway—doesn’t a sauce made with fresh tomatoes, basil, and olive oil sound a heck of a lot better than a sugar-filled jar of boring marinara?
Depending on where you start on the Sugar Impact Quiz, you’ll spend 1 or 2 weeks in Cycle 1. This time is necessary to lay the groundwork for Cycle 2. As you swap high-SI foods for medium-SI foods, you’ll begin your shift from sugar burner to fat burner—and seeing the change in your energy levels and on the scale will be the motivation you need to stay on the plan until you’re ready to move to Cycle 2.
Cycle 2—Transition
These are the weeks you’ll see the weight fall off and you’ll truly reset your body and taste buds after years of eating the wrong way. During Cycle 2 you’ll swap medium-SI foods for low-SI foods, and your metabolism will shift from burning sugar to burning fat! And to keep your motivation high, you’ll be losing weight—specifically losing fat—quickly. The average person loses 10 pounds during these 2 weeks! As the weight melts off, you’re letting your taste buds come back to life and you’re retraining them to appreciate what natural sweetness really means.
Cycle 3—Transformed!
By the time you get to Cycle 3, you’ll feel like a new person—you’ll be lighter, more energetic, and more in tune with how your body is designed to eat. Many of my clients feel so great by the time they get to Cycle 3 that they don’t want to reintroduce any high-SI foods! But the last thing I want is for you to gradually slip back into your old high-SI habits over time, and that’s where Cycle 3 comes in. This cycle is all about customizing the program to your body and your long-term goals. Using the Sugar Impact Quiz, you’ll determine how much sugar you can handle on a daily basis without unraveling all your progress and without losing the great feeling that comes with low-SI living. Your quiz results will help you create a maintenance program that works specifically for you and builds on your success going forward.
SUGAR HIDE AND SEEK
To begin your Sugar Impact Diet journey, you’ll need to take stock of where you are. Your starting place will help map a path forward that’s tailored specifically to your needs. So go through this Sneaky Sugar Inventory and make a note of which foods you eat regularly. Once you’ve identified them, you’ll use the Sugar Impact Scales to swap them out. In just 2 weeks, you’ll see weight come off fast, and you’ll be on your way to reclaiming your health and life. Go!
HOW DID YOU DO?
Now that you’ve given it the once-over, tell me—how many foods on this list are you eating every week? Every day? Well, guess what? You’re far from alone.
After decades of a misguided information-assault and billions of dollars in advertising that seems to find us when we sleep, here’s a look at a day in the life of “healthy” eating as an average American:
Yawn, stretch. What’s for breakfast? Oh, look! It’s instant oatmeal or fruit yogurt with wheat toast and orange juice. Yum. Maybe a snack mid-morning, but just a protein bar. So far so good. And for lunch, it’s a salad. How about the one with raspberry vinaigrette, glazed walnuts, dried cranberries, and a pita wedge? And, of course, diet soda. Dinner? Everyone loves pasta! Thank goodness there are healthy pasta choices. Whole wheat pasta and canned marinara sauce it is.
During a day like that, this is what the average American body registers:
Breakfast—sugar
Lunch—sugar
Dinner—sugar
If there were a sugar seismograph in your body, it would be scratching out a catastrophic event at every meal. But how could you know? That’s the way we’ve all been taught to eat for most of our lives. It’s just one more reason it’s so important to understand where sugar hides, how it’s metabolized and, most important, that you can actually reset your sugar sensitivity. When that happens, you’ll be more attuned to subtler, naturally occurring sugars, and your cravings for sickeningly sweet sweets will be gone for good.
GAUGING SUGAR’S IMPACT
If anyone ever tries to tell you “sugar is sugar,” you can leave them where they stand, right there in 1999. All sugars are not created equal, especially when it comes to the major differences in how your body processes each one.
Unless you only eat meat (and I don’t recommend that, you’re not a jungle cat), you’re going to get some sugar in your diet. And not just from sweet things. Even green, non-starchy veggies and raw nuts contain a little sugar. Ideally, you should focus on eating whole foods, which means there are no added sugars. For processed foods, my rule is that food should have no more than 5 grams of added sugar per 100-calorie serving (and the less the better, of course). And, of course, it goes without saying (but I figured I might as well) that I mean the healthier, least-processed choices here.
As you learned in Chapter 1, food is information, and from here on out you’re going to look at carbohydrates differently. All carbs except straight fiber will end up as sugar. You’re going to evaluate them based on their overall impact on you: Do they create steady, sustained energy, or spike and crash it? Do they slowly raise blood sugar or send it on a ride? Do they keep you satisfied or make you hungrier?
The SI of a food is determined by a variety of factors: its glycemic load (a measure of how much a serving of food changes your blood sugar levels—see here for more on this), fructose levels, nutrient density, and fiber. The Sugar Impact Scales take all of this into account. Your body’s response to a high-SI food, in turn, is governed by your metabolic health, which is directly a result of how high an SI diet you’ve been eating and for how long. That’s what influences your degree of sugar sensitivity.
And, by the way, no one is immune from sugar’s impact—given enough time and exposure, we’ll all become insensitive to it. You can take measures to protect yourself with quality sleep, good stress management, and regular exercise. But the single most effective thing you can do to reverse the damage sugar has already done and to increase your immunity to it going forward is to make sure you eat food that’s low on the SI Scales. When you do, you’ll reset your sugar sensitivity—in just 2 weeks!
THE GLYCEMIC INDEX
The foods you eat on the Sugar Impact Diet create a slow, steady rise in blood sugar. Among other things, they’ve been chosen based on the source of the sugar in them, which will give you some information about its impact. That brings me to the glycemic index (GI).
The GI is a rating system designed to measure how much the food you eat affects your blood sugar levels. Pure glucose is ranked highest, at 100, and all other foods are measured accordingly. The higher its glycemic rating, the greater the effect a food will have on your blood sugar. The best choice to keep your blood sugar levels balanced is to stick to lower glycemic foods.
Some fruits, most veggies, lentils, and hummus with raw vegetables are all low on the GI scale. Higher-glycemic fruits like bananas and grapes can raise blood sugar pretty quickly because they have more sugar and less fiber than other fruits, like berries.
So the glycemic index can be useful, within limits. The problem is that the GI makes fructose look like an angel. That’s because fructose doesn’t raise your blood sugar or insulin, so according to the GI it should be a great and healthy choice. But we know it’s anything but.
The glycemic index also doesn’t take quantity into account, which is an issue. All foods on the glycemic index are measured using the same amount—it doesn’t use realistic serving sizes. Potatoes, beets, and carrots are all high on the glycemic index. But it’s easier to eat a lot of potatoes in one sitting than a lot of carrots, right? That’s why the glycemic load is a better tool.
THE GLYCEMIC LOAD
The glycemic load (GL) uses the glycemic index as its foundation. Then it takes serving size—the amount you eat—into account. That makes perfect sense, right? The amount of a food you eat also matters.
GL, like the GI, uses a numerical ranking system to assess how much a food will raise your blood glucose level after eating it. It’s calculated by multiplying the GI of a food by the amount of carbohydrate being consumed, and dividing the total by 100.
Let’s say a carrot has a GI of 92 and 6 grams of carbohydrates. Its GL, then, is 92 × 6/100, or 5.52. Mashed potatoes, on the other hand, have a GI of 83 with 20 grams of carbohydrates, so the GL is 83 × 20/100, or 16.6. Just as with the GI, the lower the GL, the better.
Now, at least, we’re taking the dose of sugar into account. But we’re not there yet.
FRUCTOSE HAS US PEGGED
The amount of fructose in a food can have a big influence on its SI. When you eat fructose, you bypass every one of your body’s satiety safety nets, and your system functions in reverse. Your appetite switch is pegged in the on position, and it causes you to overeat. And worse yet, you’re storing that fructose as fat. So now you’re fat, overweight, and hungry! I assume you don’t want to be good at storing fat and being hungry, right? What a nightmare! Let’s put that thought right out of our minds.
The good news is that the less fructose you eat, the less fat you store! When you reduce fructose, you can restore your sugar sensitivity very quickly, which means you’ll get rid of your cravings, you’ll appreciate the natural sweetness of whole fruits, and you’ll naturally want to avoid foods that taste too sweet. Best of all, you’ll get those results fast.
FIBER AND NUTRIENTS
I’ll get more into the nutritional role of fiber in the next chapter, but let me touch on its role in SI here. Consider the difference between a carrot and carrot juice, an orange and orange juice. Don’t you think the sugar in the juices will have a slightly different impact on your system than the whole food? Of course it will!
A cup of blueberries has 15 grams of sugar, and that’s a lot (by comparison, a cup of raspberries has just over 5 grams and the same amount of strawberries has about 7 grams). But berries are low on the glycemic index, and provide a slow, steady rise in blood sugar that won’t trigger a dramatic insulin response. How’s that possible? The answer is fiber.
Nature packed blueberries and other fruits with nutrients, fiber, antioxidants, and all kinds of other goodness that cumulatively lower the SI on your body. The fiber and nutrients in blueberries are the reason they’re relatively low on the glycemic index, despite their sugar content. In fact, studies show blueberries can actually help normalize blood sugar levels and reduce your risk for diabetes. In 2006, a study in the journal Phytomedicine demonstrated that extracts of the Canadian blueberry have promise as a complementary anti-diabetic therapy. Vitamin C in fruit acts as an antioxidant that specifically improves insulin sensitivity and insulin’s ability to get glucose out of the bloodstream.
The phytonutrients and fiber in nature’s foods change the way your body deals with sugar. Even high-GI fruits like dates and watermelon and higher-sugar tubers and starchy carbs like sweet potatoes and beets have phytonutrients and fiber, so you don’t want to cut them out of your diet completely. I’ll arm you with all the info you need on how much of them you can eat, and how often, in Part II with my at-a-glance Sugar Impact Scale lists.
SUGAR HIDES IN PLAIN SIGHT
Sugar is right under our noses, popping up on labels with more than 55 “fake IDs.” That hardly seems fair! Here’s a look at some of the masqueraders.
The Many Names for Sugar
Barley malt
Beet sugar
Brown sugar
Buttered syrup
Cane juice crystals
Cane sugar
Caramel
Carob syrup
Castor sugar
Confectioners’ sugar
Corn syrup
Corn syrup solids
Date sugar
Demerara sugar
Dextran
Dextrose
Diastatic malt
Diatase
Ethyl maltol
Fructose
Fruit juice
Fruit juice concentrate
Galactose
Glucose
Glucose solids
Golden sugar
Golden syrup
Grape sugar
High-fructose corn syrup
Honey
Icing sugar
Invert sugar
Lactose
Malt syrup
Maltodextrin
Maltose
Maple syrup
Molasses
Muscovado sugar
Panocha
Raw sugar
Refiner’s syrup
Rice syrup
Sorbitol
Sorghum syrup
Sucrose
Sugar
Treacle
Turbinado sugar
Yellow sugar
The Many Names for Artificial Sweeteners
Acesulfame potassium
Alitame
Aspartame
Aspartame-acesulfame salt
Cyclamate
Isomalt
Neohesperidin dihydrochalcone
NutraSweet
Saccharin
Splenda
Sucralose
You can make huge gains toward your health and weight-loss goals just by identifying added sugar in the food you’re currently eating and beginning to cut those foods—and that sugar—out. When you also manage the amount of naturally occurring sugar you’re eating, mostly in fruits, juices, roots, and grains, you’re going to shoot your energy and weight loss to the next level, fast. On my plan, you’ll notice a visible difference in the way you look and feel in just 2 weeks!
NO-SUGAR-ADDED AND SUGAR-FREE FOODS
Let’s be honest. You get excited when you see that sparkly starburst on the box telling you there’s been no sugar added to those fruit roll-ups. Well, I’ll be delicate here. They’re taking some poetic license—with your health. Manufacturers give you some credit, and they know that if you saw a box that read “21 teaspoons of added sugar for your metabolic upheaval!” you might think twice. So they’ve spent a lot of time and money testing ways to get around your sensible objections so they can manipulate you into buying as much of what they’re selling as possible, guilt and worry-free. They’ve made all your favorite treats “without added sugar,” so you could have your cake and eat it, too. It’s a little like the magician’s equivalent of “Look over here at this shiny object!”
And just because a manufacturer labels a food or drink “no added sugar,” that in no way means that it doesn’t contain sugar. No added sugar does not mean sugar-free. It can also mean they’ve used fruit juice concentrate as their sweetener. That’s essentially fructose without the fiber. And remember, white flour will end up as sugar anyway, so many of the ingredients in your no-sugar-added cookie will turn into sugar as soon as you start munching.
Labels can be misleading. You don’t see labels on fruits and vegetables or nuts and seeds, do you?
MY IMPACT!
Pia Civiletti
Starting Weight: 143 lbs.
Current Weight: 130 lbs.
Total Lost: 13 lbs.
Wow, I used to eat so much sugar, and food in general, and I did not even realize it. I was diagnosed with hypoglycemia in 1996 and have struggled with the daily ups and downs of how my body processed sugar. If I ate a heavy lunch, my head would practically be on my desk by 3 p.m. I typically would eat constantly, but even if I was eating healthy foods, it was way too much food for my body, leaving me chubby and lethargic. I had frequent gas and bloating, and I had trouble digesting some vegetables. My endocrine system was burning out. I just felt big, fat, and tired.
Eating very low amounts of sugar has allowed my body to go back to doing what it needs to: get rid of extra weight and digest foods better. I don’t really miss the sugar either—that includes the bread, pasta, and fruit. I am not craving anything, so I don’t feel deprived. Losing weight has been easy and pretty effortless, and I’ve really enjoyed it. I feel light, sexy, and younger. I am wearing clothes that I would never even pull out of the closet. I am wearing my skinny jeans and can see my hip bones!
I was tickled pink the other day when my son said he noticed how skinny I was getting. Friends are noticing that I am losing weight and saying how great I look. My energy and ambition has increased and I just want to go, go, go… make some changes and get moving. Sitting on my big butt really had me sitting on my proverbial butt as well.
Sugar really had a hold on me, but now I am the boss, and my body knows it. I don’t feel fat anymore, nor do I feel like an aging woman having to accept the extra weight and Rubenesque look I was sporting. I have done a lot of diets and detoxes and also hold a certification in health coaching, but this program holds a crucial piece of the puzzle. There is something about the Sugar Impact Diet that just makes it so easy to lose the weight. The other diets make you dread having to give something up. On this program, I don’t feel like I’m giving anything up—except the unwanted pounds!
VOLUME AND IMPACT
No doubt you’re dying to know: How much sugar am I really eating? And you’re probably wondering how much you should be eating.
Well, to really make the about-face in your weight, your energy, and the symptoms of inflammation and depression you battle every day, you’re probably catching on that it’s not only the amount of sugar you’re eating that should concern you. You also need to make the kinds of sugars you consume and their impact a priority.
The American Heart Association says added sugars should only be 5% of your daily discretionary calories. In a measurement that’s a bit easier to understand, in 2009 a paper published in the journal Circulation established the limit as 5 teaspoons of added sugar for women and 9 teaspoons for men. The important distinction here is added sugar, which means they aren’t including refined grains, fruit juice, and other foods that have a high SI.
The reality is that, according to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data published in JAMA, any given one of us is averaging 21.4 teaspoons of added sugar a day (and the 2009 Circulation paper cites a survey that put it at 22.2 teaspoons a day). Sadly, the highest consumption is among 14-to 18-year-olds, who average a yikes -inducing 34 teaspoons every day. Not so coincidentally, children are now being diagnosed with diabetes at an astronomical rate. It’s jumped more than 20% since 2001. A SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that of almost 3.5 million people under 20 years old in 2009, just over 7,500 had diabetes, including 6,668 with type 1 diabetes and 837 with type 2 diabetes.
The good news is that symptoms of type 2 diabetes can be (totally!) turned around. Those children—and you—can avoid a miserable lifetime battle with weight, debilitating conditions, and medications with just a few simple changes to what you eat.
According to Dr. Robert Lustig, the pioneer in fructose research we introduced in Chapter 1, 50 grams of sugar (10 teaspoons), with 25 grams being fructose from fruits and vegetables, is a reasonable daily amount. Ideally that comes from whole foods. Remember, you have to count all the sugar you’re consuming, not just the extra table sugar you’re sprinkling on your cereal!
Even if you’re a vegetarian, which is regarded by most measures as a pretty healthy way of eating, you’re often consuming exponentially more sugar than you know, especially if you’re also trying to follow a low-fat diet. You’re probably opting for high-carb options in the absence of meat, and high-carb is high sugar. (Don’t stress if you’re a vegetarian—you can get great results from this program, too!)
CHANGE YOUR IMPACT!
You’ve tracked your impact—now it’s time to change it. Don’t panic! Remember, this program isn’t about deprivation, and you’ll be gradually decreasing your SI to avoid feelings of withdrawal and cravings. You’ll begin by simply trading high-SI foods for medium-SI choices, and then medium-SI for low-SI foods. You’ll make the most sizeable impact when you switch away from the foods with added sugar or sweeteners, but I’ll also be here to help ensure you don’t fall prey to the trap of believing all whole foods are created equal, either. I’ll guide you to the best choices, keep you away from the worst, and let you know how much you can have of each, so you see a big difference—fast!