4 Ways Sugar Can Make You Gain Weight & How to Overcome Them!
Do your sugar cravings make you feel guilty?
Do you have a hard time resisting dessert even though you're not hungry?
Do you always order your morning coffee with sugar... and maybe also a donut?
Do you regularly pick up a chocolate bar at the check-out?
Are you feeling a bit more fluffy than you would like?
Do you want to lose weight?
Here is how sugar is the most powerful saboteur of your weight loss efforts and how to overcome it in as little as 10 days with a Sugar Detox!
There are two main types of sugar: glucose and fructose (famously in high fructose corn syrup).
Glucose is vital to life and our metabolism. Our bodies produce it and we have constant levels.
Every cell in the body uses glucose for energy. If we don't get glucose from the diet, our bodies produce what we need out of proteins and fats.
Fructose - found in a lot of products with added sugars - however, is not a natural part of metabolism and we do not produce it. Very few cells in the body can make use of it.
Mechanism #1 of sugar-induced fat gain: Eating a lot of sugar chronically raises insulin levels in the blood, which selectively deposits energy from foods into fat cells.
Insulin is one of the key hormones that regulate metabolism and energy use.
When we eat a high carb meal, glucose levels go up. Excess glucose is toxic, so insulin rapidly goes up in order to get the sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cells.
In many people, this mechanism works very well. However, this mechanism tends to break – hello Insulin Resistance and Diabetes.
One of the other functions of insulin is to tell fat cells to avoid burning the fat that they carry.
Excess fructose consumption is a known cause of insulin resistance and elevated insulin levels in the blood.
When this happens, the body has a hard time accessing the stored fat and the brain starts to think that it is hungry. Then we eat more.
Mechanism #2: Fructose makes the brain leptin resistant, which means that the brain doesn't "see" all the stored fat in the body and thinks that it is starving. This causes a powerful leptin-induced biochemical drive to keep eating even when we don't need to.
Fructose also causes weight gain by its effects on a hormone called leptin.
Leptin is secreted by fat cells. The bigger the fat cells get, the more leptin they secrete. This is the signal your brain uses to determine how much fat it has stored.
When we eat food, some of it gets stored in the fat cells. This makes the fat cells get bigger and secrete more leptin.
When the brain senses the increased leptin, it knows that we have enough fat stored and that we don't need to eat.
This is the elegant mechanism to make us stop being hungry and eat less when there is plenty of fat in the our fat cells, which is supposed to prevent us from becoming obese.
More fat = more leptin = we have enough energy = don't need to eat. Simple.
Increased leptin also makes us release more fat from our fat stores and raises the metabolic rate.
This is how it's supposed to work, however we can also become resistant to leptin which causes us to feel hungry and lowers our metabolism. This is how leptin resistance makes us fat.
Mechanism #3: Fructose does not make you feel full after a meal in the same way as glucose, which leads to an increase in overall calorie intake.
The way the body and brain regulate food intake is extremely complex and involves multiple hormones and neural circuits.
There is a region in the brain called the hypothalamus, where all of these signals are interpreted.
This is where leptin (discussed above) functions in the brain, along with various neurons and other hormones. Glucose and fructose change the way that blood flows through the brain in different ways.
Despite having the same number of calories glucose tends to signal the brain to feel satisfied, while fructose does not have as strong of a signal.
Mechanism #4: Sugar, due to its powerful effects on the reward system in the brain, leads to classic signs of addiction comparable to cocaine. This activates powerful reward-seeking behaviour that can drive overeating.
Sugar causes opiate and dopamine activity in the reward centers of the brain, just like drugs of abuse like cocaine.
The evidence is very strong for sugar being downright addictive. It makes perfect sense given that it affects the same neural pathways as drugs of abuse.
Eating sugar gives us "pleasure" and releases opiates and dopamine in the reward system of the brain in the same areas stimulated by drugs of abuse like nicotine and cocaine.
For certain individuals with a certain predisposition, this can lead to full blown addiction.
Individuals that get strong cravings for sugar and are unable to quit or reduce their consumption despite negative physical consequences (such as weight gain) are sugar addicts.
The Perfect Recipe for Fat Gain
Fructose causes insulin resistance and raises insulin levels in the body, which increases the deposition of fat in the fat cells.
Fructose causes resistance to a hormone called leptin, which makes the brain not "see" that the fat cells are full of fat. This leads to increased food intake and decreased fat burning.
Fructose does not make you feel full after meals. It does not lower levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin and it doesn't reduce blood flow in the centers of the brain that control appetite. This increases overall food intake.
Sugar, with its powerful effect on the reward system, causes addiction in certain individuals. This activates powerful reward-seeking behavior that also increases food intake.
The more sugar you eat and the longer this process is allowed to continue, the more powerful it becomes. Insulin and leptin resistance increase over time and the reward-seeking behavior becomes stronger.
I'd like to point out that this does not apply to whole fruits, which are real foods with fiber and a low energy density. Fruits are a relatively minor source of fructose in the d.
The Answer!
Unless there is some medical condition getting in the way, it is within any individual's power to control their own weight. It can be done and we’ve seen examples of people overcoming obesity and reversing type 2 diabetes over and over!
It often takes hard work and a drastic lifestyle change, but many people do succeed in the long run despite having the odds stacked up against them.
It's easier to conquer any task in small chunks!
Are you ready to take charge of your eating habits?
You can do anything for 10 days!
Download my Sugar Detox Guide take the 10-Day Sugar Detox Challenge!
