Video | Cravings | Mental Focus | Weight Gain | Hunger | Energy | Skin

Science has made it clear that eating sugar leads to poor health. But sugar tastes good, is in seemingly everything, and is pretty cheap. On top of that, poor health is a future thing, making it hard to come up with a reason to put down the cookie or avoid grabbing the candy bar. Here are six less-scientific, but highly motivating reasons you don’t want to ruin your day by eating sugar.

If You’re About to Eat Sugar… [Video]

In this video, you’ll learn…

• Six reasons why you shouldn’t eat sugar.
• The science behind how your body interacts with sugar.
• A strategy for successfully overcoming your sugar cravings!

#1 Sugar Makes You Want More Sugar

Reason number one is that eating sugar just makes you want more sugar. When I am faced with a bowl of chocolate candy, the thought that comes to mind is that all chocolate does is make me want to keep eating it.

Sugar gives you a 10-second feeling of satisfaction, followed by an hour or more of heightened cravings. Therefore, it’s not worth starting to eat it because if you do, it leads to the second way sugar ruins your day. 

#2 Sugar Hijacks Your Thoughts

Eating sugar hijacks your thoughts. Take a bite of a cookie, hold it in your mouth, and within seconds, it becomes a pile of mush. That’s because it takes very little effort for your body to break down sugary and refined foods like cookies, cakes, and candies. 

Almost instantaneously, that sugar gets into your system, releasing a firestorm of hormones in your brain that hijack your thoughts. It’s like having a little kid inside your head screaming, “more please, more please, more please, more please, more please,” to the point where you cannot focus on anything else. It is not fun.

However, the reality is that you invited that annoying little kid into your brain by taking that first sugary bite. Next time, skip the sugar and keep your sanity.

#3 Sugar Makes You Fat

Sugar is a quick digesting substance that dumps a ton of energy into your bloodstream, causing a dramatic rise in the fat-storing hormone called insulin. Unless you are in the middle of running a race, you do not need all of the energy contained in a piece of chocolate cake. 

To maintain balance, your body shuttles excess energy out of your blood and into storage, with your main storage closet being body fat. In plain terms, sugar makes us fat.

On top of that, refined carbs that are quick to enter your bloodstream are quick to leave, leaving you with a low blood sugar level that drives your desire for more sugar. So, from this, we see that sugar holds a couple of promises that it doesn’t keep. 

#4 Sugar Makes You Hungry

The first thing that sugar lies to us about is hunger satisfaction. An Oreo cookie might seem like a harmless snack to take the edge off of hunger. However, it takes a lot of willpower to eat just one Oreo cookie. We already discussed the firestorm of brain hormones that instantaneously spike your craving for more.

But even if you manage to gather enough willpower to move away from the bag of cookies, the blood sugar boost you got from that treat is quickly followed by a blood sugar drop. Low blood sugar is not a desirable state for your body, so it triggers hunger hormones to encourage you to eat more. 

#5 Sugar Steals Your Energy

The other thing that sugar lies to us about is energy. All of your cells can take in sugar or glucose and use it, so sugar is an easy energy source for your body. Because of this, there is no denying the fact that drinking a sugary soda or eating a candy bar provides an energy boost.

However, these types of massive energy dumps are quickly cleared away, causing a sleep-inducing blood sugar crash. This energy-dumping-and-clearing cycle leaves you feeling exhausted. 

#6 Sugar Messes Up Your Skin

If none of the reasons so far have felt compelling, consider what sugar does to your skin. From acne to early aging, sugar is a problem. 

A high-glycemic diet is one that is focused on foods that continually spike blood sugar levels throughout the day. It’s what we typically refer to as a junk food diet. Eating this way leads to high insulin levels, which stimulate the secretion of androgens and cause an increase in the production of the oils involved with acne (1).

If acne issues are behind you, you may want to consider how sugar contributes to wrinkles and premature aging of the skin. Wrinkles are an inevitable part of aging. However, consuming a diet high in sugar and refined foods increases their appearance by increasing the production of advanced glycation end products.

These skin-aging compounds are appropriately referred to by their initials AGEs. They form when sugar from your diet combines with protein inside your body. They damage collagen, which causes your skin to lose its elasticity, leading to wrinkled and saggy skin (2). 

Takeaway

Sugary foods and drinks taste good and can make you feel good in the short term, but you will not outrun the unpleasant effects of a diet high in sugar and refined carbs. It will increase your cravings, hijack your thinking, make you gain weight, keep you hungry, drain your energy, and ruin your skin.

The good news is that you can live without sugar, and you don’t need to become someone you’re not or rely on silly, overpriced foods to do so. But, you do need to have alternatives at your fingertips. I have a starter kit for you that shares my 0,1,2,3 strategy along with four videos to help you get started.

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful week!

References:

(1) Kucharska, Alicja, Agnieszka Szmurło, and Beata Sińska. “Significance of diet in treated and untreated acne vulgaris.” Advances in Dermatology and Allergology/Postȩpy Dermatologii i Alergologii 33.2 (2016): 81.

(2) Gkogkolou, Paraskevi, and Markus Böhm. “Advanced glycation end products: key players in skin aging?.” Dermato-endocrinology 4.3 (2012): 259-270.

About the Author

Becky Gillaspy, DC, is the author of The Intermittent Fasting Guide and Cookbook. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with research honors from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1991.