Sugar Is Making You Fat and Sick

For many years now, fat has been demonised for making people fat. What if I was to tell you that it wasnt? What if I was to tell you that fructose was the thing that was making you fat?

We are all addicted to sugar even before we come out of the womb. Everything your mother ate, you ate, that also includes sugar. Don't believe me? Try quitting it, then you will see. You will have cravings, you will be tired and hungry all of the time, you might get cold sweats, you might feel dizzy and sick. That 10 o'clock chocolate bar you have to get you through till lunch will have to be substituted for something else.

But after 6 weeks of being fructose free, you will feel so much better. You will refuse to have that chocolate bar or that piece of cake because your body wont want it. You will be free from the grip of fructose, to the point where you may be able to smell the sugar in the cereal aisle, from the other side of the supermarket.

"Everything in moderation"

I hate that term. Everyone's opinion on moderation is different. Eating a piece of fruit a day to me may seem moderate, yet for someone else, eating 3 pieces of fruit is moderate. Nutritionists need to stop promoting "everything in moderation" because it doesn't work.
Our bodies naturally moderate our eating for us. They tell us when we've had too much to eat, so there is no need to moderate how much you eat. When our bodies have had too much fat, it tells us to stop eating because it wants to metabolise it. The same goes for complex carbohydrates, fibre and glucose.

And do you know why? Because our bodies recognise those things. When they enter the body, it knows what to do with it all.

It isn't the same for fructose.
Fructose isn't recognised inside the body, so when it enters it, the liver turns it straight into fat. Fructose also blocks your leptin signals that tell you when you are full, so you end up overeating.
Fructose also makes your insulin not do it's job of regulating fat and carbohydrates, so it ends up making your pancreas go into overdrive to metabolise what you eat, which raises your blood pressure, which then contributes to Type-2 Diabetes.

Whenever you eat fructose, your body cannot control how much you eat.
Back in caveman days, whenever you came across a berry bush, or hit the goldmine and found a honey bee nest, you would gorge on them, because you didn't know when you would stumble across another one. You cannot moderate fructose, it is impossible, because your body isn't designed to do so.

Fructose is found in many things;
Fruit - only eat one or two pieces of fruit a day. Even though fruit has fructose, it has twice as much fibre which stops some of the sugar from blocking the leptin signals. But not a lot, so only a few pieces of fruit a day is advised.
Fruit Juice - which is pure sugar, I don't recommend drinking them
Dried fruit - also pure sugar, don't eat them
High-fructose corn syrup
Sugar - any kind, even the 'healthy' sugars like coconut palm.
Honey
Agave syrup
Maple syrup
Molasses
Lucuma Powder
etc.

Fructose is in everything you buy from the shop, except from meat and vegetables. Walk into a supermarket and check the back of any packet, and you will see, 10 times out of 10, that it will have sugar in it.

That 'low-fat' yoghurt you bought? Full of sugar. Do you know why? When the fat is taken out, all of the flavour is taken out too, it would taste like cardboard. In order to bring flavour back, they add sugar to make it palatable. Never buy 'low-fat' or 'no-fat'. Always consume whole foods, so whole milk, whole nuts, wholegrain, etc. Apart from the whole milk, those foods have lots of fibre in them too. Fibre is taken out of a lot of packaged food to give it a longer shelf life and to make it cook quicker. All fast food restaurants take the fibre out of all their food to make it cook quicker and to be able to ship it around the globe. Never eat fast food, apart from a salad, even the so-called 'healthy' fast food chains.

Everyone tries to defend fructose consumption by saying;
"It's natural; so it's good for you" - Tobacco is natural, and that isn't good for you. So is petroleum, but you wouldn't eat that.
Or, "But sugar is in our blood, so you can eat it" - Yes, sugar is in our blood, but that sugar is glucose, not fructose.

A can of Coco-cola has 9 teaspoons of sugar in it. A glass of apple juice has 10 teaspoons of sugar in it.

Here is how you calculate how much sugar is in a product.
Look at the chart on the back of the label which says 'Nutrition Typical Values', go down to ''Carbohydrates, of which are sugar'' and the value will be written in grams. To turn that value into teaspoons, you divide that value by 4 to get the total teaspoons.
Why teaspoons you ask? Because it's easier to visualise how much sugar there is via teaspoons.

Here are two low-fat yoghurts;
Activia Zero-fat Raspberry Yoghurt 165g
and
Yeo Valley Organic Zero-fat Vanilla Yoghurt 450g

The Activia yoghurt has 13g of sugar in it. That equates to 3.25 teaspoons of sugar per 165g.

Now, the Yeo Valley yoghurt has 23.7g of sugar per 150g, which equates to 5.9 teaspoons of sugar. If you were to eat that whole pot (which I could have done easily), that equates to 106.65g(estimate) of sugar or 26 teaspoons. That is a lot.

Commercial bread also has sugar in it, so I recommend making your own or going to a real bakery and asking if they have any without sugar in it.

Here is the estimated total sugar for cereals per 100g;
Dorset Cereals Oat Granola, 31.25g per 100g or 7.8 teaspoons
Kelloggs All-Bran, 32.5g per 100g or 8 teaspoons
Kelloggs Special K, 27.5g per 100g or 6.8 teaspoons
Nestle Cheerios, 21.4 per 100g or 5.3 teaspoons

You are only supposed to have 6 teaspoons of sugar for a woman and 8 teaspoons for a man. That seems like quite a lot if you look at it, and hard to reach, but you will be shocked by how much you eat in a day.

So, if you were to have a glass of apple juice and a bowl of Nestle Cheerios, you would have already blown your sugar intake for the day at just breakfast time.
Then you may have a chocolate bar or an apple as a snack before lunch. For lunch you may have a pre-packed sandwich from a supermarket, another piece of fruit with some more fruit juice and maybe a packet of crisps. Calculate how much sugar you are eating in a day, and you will be astonished by how much there is.

I, myself, was eating at least 35 teaspoons of sugar a day. It made me feel a bit sick, actually. I was convinced that I was eating healthy sugar like fruits, dried fruits and honey, yet couldn't pin point why I was gaining so much weight. I've now quit sugar for 2 weeks and I've already lost 3lbs, without doing anything.

I honestly don't blame fat people for being fat. No one chooses or wants to be fat. The amount of gripe that fat people get is disgusting. It's all well and great if you can eat whatever you want and don't gain a pound due to a high metabolism, but not everyone is like that.
I thought I was eating healthy, a lot healthier than a lot of high-metabolised people I knew, but couldn't shift a pound. It got me very upset, confused and my self-esteem shrunk, because I was eating ''healthy'' and doing exercise too, yet I was still fat.

The amount of sugar that is in our food is scary. Sugar makes you eat more because that leptin signal is blocked, so your body can't tell when you are full up. It is also very addictive, and whenever you think you're eating healthy, if you look at the back of the packet, it will be laden with sugar. It's a landmine of sugar in the supermarket.
You will have to start making things from scratch, which wont take too long.

I have to admit, it has been hard, especially at breakfast. We've been hardwired by the breakfast industry to think the only things you can eat for breakfast are cereal or toast. Well, there are other things out there, you just need to experiment.
If you come to quit sugar, your best friends will be eggs, bacon and cheese. Protein and fat are going to keep you full.

Here is a video on sugar and what it does to you, it is very insightful;
Sugar: The Bitter Truth by Robert Lustig

Here are some books to read about the subject too;
Pure, White and Deadly by John Yudkin, published in 1972 but was side-lined due to the growing demand in low-fat food.
Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth about Sugar, Obesity and Disease by Robert Lustig.
Sweet Poison by David Gillespie, a more recent look at sugar and what it does to the body.
I Quit Sugar by Sarah Wilson, has recipes in there to help with the detox of ridding sugar from your life. You may think that the recipes are impractical or expensive due to the ingredients, but you wont be buying cakes, bread, pre-packaged food anymore, so it wont be as expensive.