The Sugar Solution
Are You Hungry All the Time?
If you are, you know what I mean. You feel vaguely hungry all the time, as if you “could eat something,” although not necessarily a whole meal. You snack and graze, and it just doesn’t seem to stop that vague hunger. In my experience, the hunger culprit is sugar. It temporarily fulfills our hunger so we don’t eat good food, but it disappoints our body by not giving it the nutrients it needs. Once your poor body has rummaged through the latest deposit of sugar and not found anything to meet its nutritional needs, it sends another hunger signal! So we eat more sugar. It’s a vicious circle. We also have to eat in order to balance the after-sugar energy drop, thus eating more times a day than we ordinarily would. Sugar is a hard habit to break, but nothing can change your energy, your mood and your body like going off sugar.
But let’s just say you give me sad puppy eyes, and say you’re willing to eat better and exercise, but you just can’t give up sugar. I would tell you I know a secret about sugar and insulin. And if you knew this secret, it might change your body and your life. Ready? When you stop eating sugar, your body receives a message that it’s okay to release stored fat. When you stop eating sugar, you lose weight you never thought you’d lose, and it feels effortless because all you did was stop eating sugar! You don’t feel as if you’re working very hard to lose weight.
When you eat sugar, your body responds with insulin to digest it. Insulin sends the message, “Keep the stored fat, folks. We’ve got plenty of energy coming in.” So what happens when you stop eating sugar? Insulin sends this glorious, wonderful message: “It’s okay to release those fat resources now! We need them.” The weight begins to melt away. Even those last stubborn stuck-on-your-thighs pounds melt away! When I went off sugar, I proceeded to drop five pounds below my high school weight! I kid you not.
Processed sugar is not good. It does things you don’t want done. It keeps you hungry. It makes your body hold onto fat, in spite of your efforts to diet and exercise. We should put up a poster of a sugar packet, with a sub-head: “Wanted - for Crimes Against the Body.” Do you want to look seriously fantastic? Seriously get off of sugar.
The Serious Side of Sugar
For some of us, sugar isn’t a cute little temptation we should resist more often than we do. For some of us, sugar is addictive. Some people can almost marinate themselves in alcohol and never become addicted to it. Others can’t. If you hesitate or quibble or dodge the subject of getting off sugar, consider that it is actually addictive, and your faithfulness to it may mean you have a problem only solvable by complete avoidance of sugar. Sorry. No, I really am! I have gone completely off sugar a few times now and always relapsed. I’m here to tell you that it’s just like they say in Alcoholics Anonymous (substituting “cookie” for “drink”): "One cookie is too much and a thousand aren’t enough." People who mincingly munch a cookie and then stop, have no idea how the rest of us can eat our way, slice by slice, through an entire pie or tray of brownies in one sitting. But we can. We don’t have a satiety signal; nothing says, “stop.” Everything says, “go.” We build up a high tolerance. It can lead to diabetes just as surely as alcohol can cause cirrhosis of the liver.
In addressing the roller coaster ride of insulin rushes, sugar is the driver. In addressing the worrisome ability to consume vast amounts of sweet stuff, sugar is the drug. In either case, I recommend we pause, reconsider, and perhaps cross sugar off our grocery list.
