Are you sick of hearing about sugar and what it does to you? Honestly, I don’t think it’s talked about enough. I’m not going to bore you with the gory details of how sugar is the root of many illnesses that people either put up with or die from. What I will tell you is how quickly added sugar sneaks its way into our diets. Did you know that the average person consumes about 22 teaspoons of added sugar daily? Wowza! I actually measured 22 teaspoons of sugar for myself. Then I left the measuring cup on my counter to see if my kids would comment. Besides the curious question, of “what’s this for,” I told them why I did it. They were surprised and a little nervous about how much sugar they might be consuming. Best use of 22 teaspoons of sugar!
Look closely. Those 22 teaspoons of sugar added up to a little more than ½ a cup of refined, white, damaging, fat-storing, blood sugar disturbing, intoxicating and cancer provoking addicting crap! Where is all the sugar coming from? Here’s the rabbit hole most people go down in a day’s time to quickly consume 22 teaspoons of sugar or more.
If you start your day with a Starbucks Mocha Frappuccino, you’ve already consumed 12 teaspoons of added sugar. Maybe you decide on a falsely nutritious 8-ounce serving of Minute Maid OJ. You just drank 6 teaspoons of added sugar. (Just for the record, most fruit juices are equivalent to soda.) After the OJ or Frappuccino, you may notice brain fog and hunger. What do you do? Typically, one might grab yogurt because it’s supposed to be a “healthy” snack or maybe a granola bar? Either way, both add another 3 teaspoons of added sugar to your body. You’re still hungry an hour later. Now, you start to feel sleepy, usually around 10:00 am and you’re wondering how you’re going to make it through to lunch because you’re half asleep. You wander to the kitchen and slug a Diet Coke in hopes of waking up. But what you don’t realize is that the artificial sweetener in the Diet Coke has actually increased your blood sugar enough to keep you in the hunger zone. What??? It’s a trick. Because you can’t fool Mother Nature (the body) with artificial sweeteners (fake sugar), you’re body sends just the right amount of insulin (fat-storing hormone) into your blood stream to take care of business, leaving you hungry still. You might be a little more alert due to the caffeine and the blood sugar spike but you’re far from satisfied. If you traded the Diet Coke for something sweeter like a chocolate chip cookie, just one, then you welcomed another 4-5 teaspoons of added sugar. It’s not even lunch yet. At this point, you have potentially consumed about 20 teaspoons of sugar before lunch. No wonder, you can’t focus, you crave sugar and you’re still hungry.
Let me be frank: Your body is critically dependent on nutrients, from food, not Frappuccino’s, granola bars or any other junk food. When those nutrients are either unavailable or diluted with junk food, your body is barely getting by. Once you eat sugar, which has zero nutrients, you feel good at first then the sugar hangover sets in and you’re tired, cranky, unmotivated, foggy and hungry. Sounds like a drug to me. Your body is dependent on insulin to correct the damage you’ve done. This repeats every time you eat added sugar. Having insulin do your damage control not only causes you to get fat, but also sets the stage for bigger problems like Type 2 diabetes. But don’t worry, if you develop Type 2 diabetes, then help is on the way: a plethora of medications to choose from with a laundry list of pleasant side effects like, thirst, constipation, nausea, urinary incontinence, UTI’s, dry mouth, kidney failure….
You can avoid this entire scenario. It’s easy.
First, eat a real breakfast like eggs. I’m talking the whole egg, not just the whites. Trust me, no one is obese or dying from eating eggs every day. The incredible, edible egg is quite possibly nature’s perfect food. Eggs have been around since who knows when and nutritionally, they’re the biggest bang for your buck. They’re packed with protein to build muscle, vitamin D for immunities and bone health, lutein and vitamin A for eyes, B vitamins for energy, mood and memory, and other important nutrients our bodies recognizes and needs like potassium, iron, calcium and phosphorus, Show me a granola bar, yogurt or any fruit juice that has all of that. Mic drop, boom!
Second, eat 90% of your foods from protein, fruits, vegetables, raw nuts and water. Again, you can’t go wrong. Food, good or bad, wins every time. If you’re over weight, it’s food. If you’re under weight, it’s food. If you’re working out and not seeing results, it’s food. If you’re gut has gas every day, its food.
Third, there’s no such thing as “everything in moderation.” Look around you. Everybody eats/drinks junk “in moderation” but we’re fatter and sicker than we, as a nation have ever been. I’m not saying to never eat junk food, but definitely infrequently at most. The cleaner you eat more often than not, the less you crave and enjoy junk food.
And, finally, if you’re overwhelmed and inundated with false nutritional claims and you’re having a hard time making sense of everything, then you need my help, because you’re probably suffering from brain fog…
Now go eat some eggs!
Lisa
info@eat2succeed.xyz
Please ignore the typos – get the message.