Sugar, Sugar
Ah sugar. Friend or foe? Nemesis? Pleasure provider? It’s such a tricky one.
In the diet world, sugar is definitely a foe. It’s a nemesis that provides empty calories. You can’t benefit from sugar, right? Well, if I was starving and Jolly Ranchers were the only food available, I think I would eat them rather than die. I remember back in the early 90s. I was talking to a friend who started her workday at 4 AM. She had small children at home, and as soon as her office workday ended she was in the second-shift, caring for her children. So for her, sugar kept her going. It was a tool or a crutch, depending on how you looked at it.
When I look at dieting (as I have done so many times before on this medium), I see a deprivation landscape. We deprive ourselves of calories. Less calories in, the body needs to fuel with the energy left inside us, and we lose weight. At the same time, other things are going on in the body. Our bodies are amazing! They have so many functions and systems to keep us going. I mean, there’s even a function for making us blink and another one to lubricate the eyeballs. On the diet side, our bodies know nothing about diets. They don’t know that society has told us we need to look smaller; we need to not have what we’ve titled “pot bellies.” Our bodies just are. So when our bodies are faced with less calories than they are used to, they slow down the metabolism process to keep us from literally starving to death. Our bodies are so smart! Though a dieter would argue that this slowdown sucks, because we don’t keep losing weight.
Here’s how things work with diets. 95% of all diets fail. I’ve said that many times on many blog posts. Yet the diet industry is a $78 billion industry. So what happens? Diet companies tell you to follow their plan and you will lose weight - permanently. So you go on a diet. Maybe you lose a few pounds. Maybe you lose lots of pounds! Within the next 2 to 5 years, you gain all the weight back - and more. Who does the diet industry blame for this normal process of body biology? YOU! That’s right, the diet industry gets all the credit for the weight loss, and you get all the shame for the weight gain. It’s no wonder that the diet industry keeps growing. They thrive on the fact that you fail.
Another cool thing about our bodies and our minds: They tend to crave what they can’t have. Don’t believe me? Check out the starvation experiment that was performed back in the 1940s: Minnesota Starvation Experiment. You might be thinking, “Hey, when I go on a diet, I’m not starving myself!” But you are. Just a small change in calorie intake (think 500 calories), sets your mind and body into starvation mode. So, you start to crave more.
Getting back to sugar.... When we put food into a moral category, such as saying “sugar is bad,” we shame ourselves for eating. Trust me, there is NO SHAME in eating! Eating a donut does not send one to court. There is no law against having chocolate for dinner. Now you might not get many macronutrients from chocolate, and you may end up hungry sooner. If you eat a lot of chocolate, you may end up with a tummy ache. But that’s it!
Sugar is actually necessary for your body to function. That doesn’t mean that Cocoa Crisp Cereal is necessary for a balanced breakfast. What it does mean is that the sugar naturally occurring in fruits, milk, and even vegetables is necessary for your survival. We all need insulin to keep our bodies running. If fruits, vegetables, and milk products are where you want to get your sugar, that’s great! As you probably already know, sugar is also found in many processed foods (bread, cake, cookies, candy, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, sodas, fruit drinks, etc.). What if you’re eating those?
Well for me, that’s where the slippery slope comes in. If I start denying myself, I know I will want something even more. Back in the days when I was working, I kept a jar of chocolates on my desk. They were Dove chocolates, the good stuff. My reasoning was that if I always had chocolate on my desk, I wouldn’t be desperate for it. I ended up keeping pretty well satisfied with that reasoning. Most days, I had one chocolate. Some days, I had four. Some days, I had none. Just the satisfaction of knowing they were on my desk kept my cravings in check.
That said, I’ve heard a lot about sugar being addictive. I’ve heard that the more sugar I have, the more sugar I will want. I’ve read studies about sugar addiction, including this one from the National Institute of Health (NIH): Sugar Addiction. Beware, this is a pretty heady article; it’s 26 pages long (with another 26 pages of footnotes). What I appreciate about this article is that it studies sugar addiction in rats. Rats don’t concern themselves with how they look or how much they weigh. Rats don’t get on social media and try to look like the latest influencer. So essentially, rats don’t diet. Their only concern is to eat food. When sugar was added to the rats’ diets, they seemed to want more of the sugar-containing food. When the sugar was removed, they seemed to exhibit signs of cravings and withdrawal. When sugar was returned to their diets, the rats seemed to binge on it.
So what about humans? Do they exhibit the same behaviors? Well, it’s a little more nuanced with humans. As I mentioned earlier, when I deprive myself of food, I tend to crave it more. As was demonstrated in the Minnesota Starvation Study, when we restrict calories, we create a starvation response. Our bodies recognize we have less food, so our metabolism slows down. When normal or unrestricted amounts of food return, we tend to eat more and eat beyond fullness. Interestingly enough, the study of the rats concluded that no conclusive evidence was discovered to say that humans have addiction issues with food, including sugar. They claimed that these conclusions were created by the diet industry, and there wasn’t enough evidence to substantiate the idea that humans become addicted to food.
After 40+ years of food deprivation through dieting, I stay away from denying myself food. I am fortunate enough to always have enough food in my refrigerator (unlike toilet paper in my closet during early Covid), and so I am not ever in starvation mode. I eat to both nourish myself and experience joy. I eat a wide variety of foods I enjoy. I make sure I have the macronutrients that will keep me satiated and keep my body functioning. So I work to include produce, protein, and carbs in every meal. I drink 6-8 glasses of water every day. I have found that these simple rules keep my body going, keep my vitals in check, and keep my bloodwork happy. If I want to eat chocolate cake, I eat it. There is always dark chocolate in my cabinets, ice cream in my freezer, and cheese in my refrigerator. Sometimes the ice cream gets frosty because it hasn’t been touched in weeks. But I would rather have that situation than be hunting for ice cream and eating everything else in my freezer because I can’t find it.
One note: I’m not speaking of people with health issues such as diabetes or hypoglycemia. These are health issues that need to be discussed with your doctor to get a better handle on how you should be consuming sugar. I do know that if I consume my sugar in conjunction with fiber and protein, my sugar levels tend to stay lower, and I am more satiated than if I just eat chocolate bars 3 meals a day.
I also want to say, if you don’t want to eat sugar then don’t eat it! There is no rule that anyone has to eat added sugar. But let’s not shame sugar or those who eat it. Let’s just live and let live, and eat and let eat.
