2015 is a great time to get healthier by cutting down on your sugar intake. Our knowledge about sugar has changed dramatically in the last 30 years. 30 years ago, it was generally believed that you could not get type 2 diabetes from eating too much sugar. Today, we know that is not true. Excess sugar consumption is related to increased insulin resistance that can lead to type 2 diabetes. Weight gain and chronic inflammation are both also associated with excess sugar intake and are both significant risk factors for chronic disease and early death. Plenty of sugars are in most of today’s processed foods. Sugar is one of the big three ingredients that dramatically improve the taste and also addictive allure of these foods. The other two ingredients are fat and salt. Nutritionist, fitness trainer, and author JJ Virgin has written a new book that helps open your eyes to the way sugars are hidden. The book also provides practical tips on how to wean yourself from this ingredient that will decimate your health. The book is The Sugar Impact Diet, in which she tackles the confusion surrounding sugar. Many health-conscious people are still under the mistaken belief that as long as the sugar is all-natural, it’s fine to eat. This is simply not so. Agave, natural fruit juice, raw cane sugar and any number of other natural sugars will still wreak havoc on your health. To End Sugar Cravings, Your Body Needs to Burn Fat as Its Primary Fuel: Once you break free from your body’s constant need for yet another sugar fix, you will experience new found energy and clarity of mind. But in order to get there, you need to retrain your body to burn fat as its primary form of fuel instead of sugar. Primitive man burned fat for fuel. Modern man burns sugar. The best way to do this is a gradual process. As an initial step, you’ll want to weigh yourself and measure your waist-to-hip ratio, to determine your starting point. Next, you do an initial inventory of all the hidden sugars in your diet. This means reading the labels on all the foods you eat, including items you might never expect to contain sugar, such as pickles, condiments, sauces and marinades, and so on. JJ looks at many factors, including sugar intake, glycemic load, nutrient density and fiber intake. The basic symptoms of having high-sugar impact are gas and bloating. This occurs because sugar feeds yeast, fungi and detrimental bacteria in your gut. Other symptoms include joint pain, headaches, fatigue, inability to lose weight or weight loss resistance and sugar cravings. By grading yourself on those and other symptoms, while tracking your waist, hip and weight, you’ll get a clearer picture of how sugar impacts your body, and your progress in terms of retraining your body to burn fat instead of sugar as its primary fuel. The Three Cycles of JJs Sugar Impact Diet: The first cycle is a one to two-week long taper cycle, in which you switch from high sugar impact foods to medium sugar impact foods. As an example, if you typically eat regular pasta, you’d switch over to quinoa pasta. She also recommends scheduling your meals to where you’re not eating every two hours; rather you stretch the time between meals to prevent insulin spikes. This is one form of intermittent fasting. At the end of this taper-down period of one or two weeks, you retest yourself on the sugar impact quiz, to see how you’ve done. Most people can make the shift from burning sugar to burning fat as primary fuel in this second cycle of the program in a couple of weeks, although it may take longer if you’re seriously insulin/leptin resistant. In the third cycle of the program, you start to challenge yourself by reintroducing some of the medium or even high sugar impact foods. Most people will now find that they’re overwhelmed by the sweetness, or they’ll feel bloated or downright ill by the high-sugar food. As a result, the psychological grip of sweet foods lessen, as you simply do not want to go back to feeling horrible once you’re feeling really great. Interestingly, sour taste, such as that from cultured vegetables, helps to reduce sweet cravings, too. It’s quite rare to find someone who’s not burning sugar as their primary fuel these days. To check yourself, simply observe how frequently you feel hungry. If you’re hungry every two hours or so, you’re burning sugar. You’re craving food because sugar is fast burning, and your hunger is an indication that your body wants to be refueled. Once you’re burning fat as your primary fuel, you can easily go five to six hours or longer without feeling hungry, as fat is a far slower-burning fuel. Sugar cravings are also virtually eliminated once you’re burning fat rather than sugar. There is a lot more to it than this brief summary. If you want more information, I have provided a link and for the full program, you can buy JJs book. amazon/JJ-Virgins-Sugar-Impact-Diet/dp/1455577847/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419895385&sr=1-1&keywords=jj+virgin+sugar+impact+diet
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 12:04:47 +0000
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