The Skinny on Sugar - How to Break that Sweet Addiction.

In the last 40-50 years, food companies have increasingly added sugar to help satisfy those taste buds.  From cereal, to candies, to soda, sugar has become a common place.  In that same time period, the obesity rate has increased from <10% Obesity to >40%.  Moreover, obesity and obesity related illness has become the number one cause of death.  

How much should I be consuming a day?  According to the American Heart Association, the recommended daily allowance for adults is 25g for women and 36g for men.  

For reference, a can of mountain dew has 46 grams of sugar.  But before you say, “That’s why I drink diet soda”, note there are studies that have shown artificial sweeteners may not be any better than regular sugar. It’s important to understand how the body responds to different stimuli.  Why might we crave sugar or sweetened things so much?

 Understanding Sugar and the Sugar cycle

Sugar is a “short burst” energy source and causes the glucose levels, a primary source of energy in the body, to spike.  This then also causes the body to release insulin to drop blood sugar levels.  The burst of energy can also give the body a sense of pleasure, releasing a dopamine rush.  And if we are in a stress state and give our body that sweet pleasure, we will start to form a habit of re-seeking that feeling.  In essence, when we seek sweet things, we aren’t necessarily seeking the sweetness, we may be seeking the dopamine release.  But then the energy drops quickly, and so the cycle repeats itself.  

This can be especially hard when we try to lose weight and cut back on needed nutrients. We often hear from prospects that they don't eat anything and still gain weight, but ultimately the body MUST have energy to do what it's designed to do.  Therefore, your body often craves some fast-acting energy, and we give it with a sweet treat, then feel guilty, and avoid eating the foods we should be eating.   

 The Sugar Cycle

 Let's look at the sugar cycle.  It first starts with an external or internal stimulus, which could be stress, not eating enough or lack of nourishment, or simply we have time and fill that with a snack.    That then kicks off the cycle, where our one "treat" becomes a reinforcement to our body that releases dopamine, that wants us to seek it out again.   Repeated over time, this becomes a habit.   

How does resistance training fit in to all this?

Resistance training is essential to helping the body maintain proper blood sugar levels.  When you perform resistance training exercises you exhaust the energy stores in your body, and boost levels of a protein called APPL1 (a key regulator of insulin sensitivity). When this protein rises, as it does with resistance training, cells can more easily take up glucose. This means the pancreas doesn’t have to pump out as much insulin to get glucose into cells. Multiple studies have shown positive improvement in lowering A1C glucose levels from resistance training.  Whereas diabetes is where your body starts to reject the insulin, Resistance training does the opposite, it creates positive potential to pull from your blood and fat stores and improve overall health.  

 But as we say at Northstar, we can’t out-train poor nutrition. 

 What you can do to break the sugar cycle:

It's important to note that it's not actually the sugar we are craving, but rather the dopamine rush after consuming the sugar.  So, we need to focus on the stimulus that causes us to crave it in the first place.  

First, we must understand that if we go long periods without eating, our body first craves sweets or carbs to give it energy.  We’ve talked to countless people who don’t eat, but then struggle with a sweet snack.  It’s also why you should not go grocery shopping on an empty stomach!  In our EAT! Program we teach how we should stay between a hunger scale of 3-7, which means we don’t let our hunger consume us and make us gravitate towards sweet foods, but also don’t overeat.

 Next, we need to replace the trigger and reward mechanisms that we give to the body.  

• We do this by giving your body an ample supply of protein.  They not only are slower reacting and last longer, but they are essential fuels for regenerating muscle tissue and brain function. We’ll cover more next week.  

• Have a Craving? Grab a fresh fruit or veggie, slice of cheese, and a couple crackers.  You are giving your body the basic balance of protein, starchy carbs, and fibrous carbs (fruits/veggies).  Your body needs 10-20 min to register, so before you make a whole meal out of it, start small, and have a glass of water with it as well. YES, fruits and vegetables do have smaller amounts of different forms of sugar in them. However, the natural sugars without the processing make a much smaller impact on your body. Along with that, the numerous benefits of consuming natural foods such as fruits and vegetables outweigh the amounts of sugar they contain.
• Don’t fear fats.  Fats have the most energy, but they also react slowly and sustain you much longer (as some say, it sticks to the ribs 🙂).  The yogurt and even chocolate industry realized that if they take out the fat, they lose the taste and flavor, but when they replace it with sugar or artificial sweeteners to compensate and make it cheaper, it keeps one in the sugar addiction cycle, and therefore they consume more as well.  Having some healthy fats in your diet will sustain you longer.  

Lastly, it’s important to understand that if you are stressed or dealing with an emotional situation, that trigger is often a cue that can start the sugar cycle.  To reduce that stress, it’s important that you work towards consistent regular exercise, combined with other activities to help lower your stress state.  Even when it may seem most challenging, that’s when you need to exercise the most.  Taking light walks, prayer and meditation, gratitude, and other items on the board help give ideas on how to replace the stress trigger with activity instead of rewarding it with sweets.  

Having accountability and assistance along the way are important factors in helping one achieve this.  If you or someone you know might need help with implementing what we've shared, have them reach out to us and request a complimentary introductory session and consultation.