Cut Sugar and Eat Saturated Fat to Fight Obesity – Part 12
Give up sugar, eat more fat and be slimmer and healthier.
Eating a “low carb, healthy fat” diet helps with weight loss and improves overall health. Banishes sugar addiction, lowers blood sugar levels and high blood pressure. It minimizes the risk of insulin resistance and greatly reduces the chances of getting type 2 diabetes and obesity.
More and more health experts, doctors, and academics are ditching sugar and reducing carbohydrate intake as studies highlight the negative health impact of high blood sugar levels.
Being sugar-free is now part of “clean eating.” Unfortunately, without ongoing motivation and daily exposure to unhealthy sugary products at virtually every food outlet, it’s hard to contemplate living sugar-free and seriously reducing the amount of carbohydrates consumed.
With all the junk food and addictive sweet things on display when you go shopping, it’s all too easy to succumb to temptation. In fact, once you start a low-carb, low-fat diet and feel the benefits, it’s too soon to let your guard down.
Relaxing the grip too soon can easily allow sugar and refined carbohydrates to creep back into your diet before your metabolism has settled. Then you run the risk of undoing all the good work already done.
But at least now you know that this diet is a good starting point. When your weight or cravings have stabilized, you can think about developing this long-term diet plan.
After a few weeks without addictive sugar, your body should start telling you what it needs to stay healthy. These will be signs that will no longer be masked by sugar cravings and unexplained hunger.
When you get these signals, you can increase your carb intake with a few more starchy vegetables until you find a cutoff point that works for you. You can also treat yourself to chocolate that contains a minimum of 70 percent cocoa.
You can also enjoy a glass of red wine every day because of the compound called resveratrol that it contains. Resveratrol is believed to have antioxidant properties that protect the body against cancer and heart disease.
Be very careful not to succumb to sugar temptations later on, especially if you had a major sugar addiction in the past. Former sugar addicts just need to try a little something sweet to start eating sweet things again. But if that happens, luckily there is a way out.
Simply eliminate all sugars from your diet for the next two days and avoid dense vegetables to bring your blood sugar levels back down. Drink plenty of water and herbal teas.
One puzzling thing about fruits and vegetables that many dieters find difficult to understand is the amount of natural sugar they contain. Health experts recommend five, six, seven or more servings of fruits and vegetables every day. But which ones really contain the most sugars?
All fruits and vegetables contain sugar in varying amounts. There are low and high carbohydrates. The trick is to tell them apart.
They all have lots of nutrients and dietary fiber. They’re all good for you and they’re much, much healthier than any processed food. When choosing between an apple, a piece of celery, a bowl of spinach or a handful of berries, the key factor is the availability of sugars.
Leafy green vegetables and salads are at the lower end of the low-sugar scale. They have great nutritional value, they have a lot of fiber, but very little sugar. So these are the vegetables that you will love.
Starchy vegetables, such as peas and carrots, have a greater impact on the body’s blood sugar level and insulin response. They are still healthy foods, but when you go without sugar you have to be careful with them.
However, the sugar impact of even butternut squash or sweet potatoes is negligible compared to plain white potatoes, which are metabolized very quickly by the body.
It is the same with fruit. Berries are packed with minerals and vitamins, but are low in sugar and tend to be stringy. Because the body takes time to break down fiber, sugar is released slowly. Now you know why fruit juices cause high blood sugar levels and consequently insulin spikes.
Arguably the healthiest fruit is probably the humble tomato due to the high amount of carotenoid lycopene it contains. This compound is beneficially related to the treatment of many diseases.
Grapes are packed with sugar and therefore should be avoided, although red grapes do contain resveratrol.