The Top Signs You Are Eating Too Much Sugar

Learn some sure signs that you are taking too much sugar. Check out the article we found over at Living Traditionally.

Not all sugars are created equal, and they’re hidden in most of today’s processed foods. 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 pernicious ingredient that will decimate your health.

In The Sugar Impact Diet: Drop 7 Sugars to Lose Up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks, 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.

Not so. Agave, natural fruit juice, raw cane sugar, and any number of other natural sugars will still wreak havoc on your health.

“[S]ugar is really public enemy number one,” she says. “That’s why I chose to focus on it. I don’t think added sugar is really the problem; I think it’s what’s in a lot of our food that we don’t recognize [as sugar].

Whether it’s having apple juice (which is worse for you than a soda), or having a yogurt sweetened with fruit juice concentrate, or whether you’re just thinking that fruits are free for all, these are all creating problems.

I wanted to create a structured program that could help someone break free of those sugar cravings, drop the weight forever, and then let them go back and [do a food] challenge… in order to connect the dots between what happens when they drink one of those big fruit smoothies that are supposed to be so healthy.”

To End Sugar Cravings, Your Body Needs to Burn Fat as Its Primary Fuel

As JJ notes, whether the sugar comes in the form of a muffin, a fruit juice-sweetened yogurt, or a smoothie, it’s all the same thing to your body. “Food is information,” she says. And she’s right.

Once you break free from your body’s constant need for yet another sugar fix (remember, sugar is more addictive than cocaine!), you’ll experience great levels of newfound 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.

The Sugar Impact Scales: A New Way of Looking at Sugar

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 that jar of pickles, condiments, sauces, and marinades, and so on. JJ lists all the sneaky places sugars hide in your diet in her book, and by creating what she calls Sugar Impact Scales, she’s created a new way of looking at sugar.

“It looks at fructose grams, glycemic load, nutrient density, and fiber. Bad are fructose and glycemic load; good are nutrient density and fiber,” she explains.

“Depending on where the food falls, it can either be low, medium, or high-sugar impact. The reason this was so important to me is I keep looking at programs out there, and they either focus on fructose… glycemic index, or glycemic load.

That can be very confusing because it makes things like agave sweetener look great. It makes milk look great… People go, ‘We should have fructose because fructose is low on the glycemic index.’

Healthy Snack Alternatives

Nuts, which are one of my favorite snack foods, are also great for satisfying the occasional hunger pang. Typically, when I’m at home, I only have one meal a day, a very large salad. But I will snack on nuts, specifically macadamia nuts and occasionally pecans, because of two criteria:

1. They’re very high in fat – the good fat, oleic acid, which is similar to olive oil, and

2. They’re low in protein, so you won’t run the risk of eating a whole day’s worth of protein in a few handfuls of nuts (which could be the case if you eat a lot of almonds)

That said, as JJ warns, be aware of your food triggers, and if you cannot keep a jar of nuts in your house without polishing off the whole thing in one sitting, you just turned a good thing into something bad. While nuts do contain healthy fats, they also tend to be high in calories, so moderation is in order.

“If you know something’s your trigger, don’t bring it into the house. It doesn’t matter if it’s healthy or unhealthy. But I think if you put them into little serving baggies, that’s a perfect way to go with it. I also like that because most people aren’t home all day long, so I say, ‘Put one in your car. Put it in your purse. Put it in your office so that you have them scattered around if you ever get in trouble.’

Another healthy snack that is much harder to overdo is dehydrated kale chips. I’m in the process of planting six dozen kale plants on my property to create a surplus for this very reason. That way I can have kale chips year-round. Roasted Brussels sprouts are another alternative that you can’t really “overdose” on.

Next Article: Why We Should Immediately Detox Our Body From Sugar

Read full article: Alarming Signs You’re Eating Too Much Sugar