Anyone else have a sweet tooth?? Anyone else like sweet stuff?? 

If you are like me and grew up on ice cream (preferably Dairy Queen blizzards right here) along with fast food, boxed foods, snacks, soda, crackers, chips, lots of condiments…. Then chances are you have a habit of liking sugar.

Even if you are not right there with me on the blizzards, you may like your sweet things. Which is why I am diving into sugar today- what it does to our body when we ingest it, where it hides, and what to do/avoid to help combat the negative side of it.

What is sugar? How does it affect us?

Sugar is something we all DO need, just not a huge amount of it. We need it because it helps provide our cells energy when we break it down. The problem arises when we have too much (even when we think we are being smart) and it leads to inflammation, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and weight gain among many other things.

The process of sugar leading to harm-

When we eat something that contains sugar (so many things contain it but lets pretend white bread for this example), the bread is eaten and the sugar within it is broken down into glucose and fructose. The glucose signals the pancreas to release insulin so the insulin can carry the glucose to the cells for energy.

We only need so much though, when we release too much insulin we can become resistant overtime which leads to weight gain, and things like PCOS, as well as diabetes. The glucose never gets used as it should as a result and just floats around in our blood stream – this can cause our blood sugar to rise hence, diabetes. It can also cause our digestive system to not work properly, it can lead to inflammation all over our body and inflammation as we know is the starter of almost all disease.

The fructose side of sugar is metabolized in the liver. Too much there can lead to what is known as “fatty liver” which none of us want. Our liver is our body’s filter- we need it to work. And when it is clogged/ congested and have fatty deposits on it then we have problems and bad stuff stays in our bodies vs. getting excreted.

Food for thought ALL of these things are not considered SWEET yet contain well over a days amount of sugar –

• A small wendys frosty (yes it is supposed to be sweet) but has 49g of sugar
• California Pizza Chicken Waldorf Salad has 55g
• Buffalo Wild Wings Boneless 15 ct Asian Zing Wings have 57g
• Sesame Chicken from PF Changs has 58g
• Spicy Chicken from PF Changs 66g
• O’Charleys Balsamic Chicken Salad has 68g!
• Ocharleys Baby Back Ribs Carolina Gold has 86g
• Jamba Juice Strawberry Large Surf Rider Drink has 92g
• Smoothie King the “hulk” large strawberry has 227g of sugar!!!!!

These ALL have too much even if it is supposed to be “healthy” sugar is sugar and too much healthy sugar can cause problems especially if you already have something off within you.

Steps to improve your sugar intake –

1 – First you want to do your best to remove as much fast food from your diet as possible.

2- Aim to only eat processed foods for 1-2 meals a day (starting point) then reduce that every week or so until it is only a few times a week if any.

3- Slow down your shopping and read labels. This is seriously the game changer.

4- Shop the outside aisles of the grocery store as much as possible.

5- Follow recipes and buy only what you need. Keeping extra stuff in the house only leads to temptation.

6- After trying a few of these things try a sugar detox for 2 weeks- it sounds hard but I promise the results are worth it. You will see weight go down, your brain fog to clear, and energy to go up. The first few days are the hardest but if you are already instilling some of these things you should be good to go!