There was a recent article in the news about how artificial sugars don’t work for as a diet aid. Forget that the artificial ones are deadly toxic and practically guaranteed to kill you, but now the thing they are designed for, reducing calories, doesn’t actually happen.
Here’s the story. When you taste sweet your body prepares for a fast influx of calories. When it doesn’t happen there is a deficit in expected calories. The body’s chemistry got to producing the necessary hormones to deal with something sweet. When it doesn’t come a deficit occurs.
Thousands of years ago our ancestors survival depended on the craving for sweets. They had to eat plenty of calories in the form of fruit at the end of the growing season to survive the winter. If they didn’t crave sweets they didn’t survive. We all crave sweets.
Furthermore, once you start eating sweet things your body’s chemistry changes radically. This has been shown to happen to all animals that produce insulin, which is most of them. It takes many months of not eating sugar for this to slowly start to reverse.
To continue, your body thinks it’s going to get a lot of calories really fast. When that doesn’t happen, the various chemicals that were released to deal with the sugar are still waiting for the sugar. Consequently, you will feel hungry later and consume about the same amount of calories that the sugar substitute promised.
The best thing to do in this modern world is to quit sugar all together. The cravings do go away after awhile, usually within a month to six weeks. In this modern world with plenty of food we no longer need to fatten up.
Stopping sugar isn’t very easy as most people know. It takes iron discipline and perhaps a little biochemical help.
Plenty of animal protein helps. This can be eggs, animal flesh or dairy (I don’t recommend dairy for most people, but a high quality whey protein works fine). B vitamins particularly inosotol, and the herb gymnea also help with the cravings.
I also avoid all grains, but that isn’t necessary for most people. Simply limiting grains is fine for most people thought our ancient ancestors (100,000 thousand plus years ago) didn’t eat them at all.
The best diet is obviously the one we were eating while evolving, the Paleolithic diet. The modern world makes the things we crave available at a rate that is way beyond need. In fact, we don’t need any of the modern packaged foods, we just enjoy them. Enjoyment is fine, but with moderation for our health.
Natural sugars in whole fruits like our ancient ancestors ate are the best. Again balance is important, They didn’t sit around eating dried fruit all the time, otherwise obesity would have been the norm rather than becoming the norm.
Great post, sugar has also been know as the “white death” around here. By and large sugar and refined carbs are the reason we are a sick people.
You are so right! I can do anything I want…as long as I keep away from “white death.” Even a little cheat and I need supplements to bring me back to balance. Now it seems that artificial sweeteners are “white death” too, in their own way. I haven’t figured out if that is the case with Agave nectar, xylotol or stevia yet though. From the biochemistry though I’m not hopeful.