This is a must read book!
Dr Richard Jacoby explains the effects of sugar and reasoning for diabetes and other serious illnesses a very matter of fact way.
I understand that many of you find it hard to give up sugar. But as I have been working with clients I know that once you are educated on why and how sugar can damage you – this is when the a-ha moment comes.
We read so much conflicting blogs, articles, diet strategies that are spread across the internet and social media, you don’t get a true picture like you do when you read a book full of factual information.
Being told that you need to eat certain foods, or eliminate certain foods, or to implement the new fad way to eat etc is not as simple as reading it is.
If you take it a step before this, and understand why you need to introduce or eliminate foods – this is the information you need to understand first and foremost.
Then once you can visualise how this is affecting your body from the inside, I guarantee you will be more successful on executing the next steps – the elimination and introduction process.
Following a nutrition plan needs the foundation work first, you need to collate the reasons why and how first. I see this as a huge reason why these “diets’ don’t work. You are to focused on the end goal.
Just think of it like building a house, you follow a process, so think about it as drawing up the floor plans of a house, you put in the time to make sure the rooms are where you like them, how big the rooms are and how it will fit on the block of land.
Now think of this part as the research to your new healthy eating. This is finding out what sugar can do to your nervous system, how it contributes to headaches, tingling feet, restless legs, knee pain, weight gain, depression, diabetes, cancer and the list goes on.
The next process of building a house is selecting the tapware, colour schemes, carpet, tiles or floorboards. This in relation to your health is selecting what type of eating plan suits you – paleo, high protein, ketogenic, fasting, metabolic etc
This is the part where once you have chosen tapware/eating style you need to follow through, you need to commit and if you don’t like the colour of the room/eating plan you’ve chosen, then yes you can repaint/alter your eating plan.
However you must put it in place to see how it looks and operates/how you cope with the new eating style.
Nothing in life is set forever, however by understanding how bad sugar is for your body and being backed by hundreds of studies, you need to make the decision how important is your health to you and your family.
You need to be more accountable for your health decisions and by having the foundations of this information I believe you will be able to transition easier and it won’t be so hard as it has been.
If you take the focus off “weight loss” and put it into “healthy body” the pressure is removed, you are not looking at the scales and being frustrated – you are taking note of how much better you are feeling, how your headaches have decreased and the pain in your stomach, or in your knees or hips etc are no longer there.
In this book Dr Jacoby gives you research information and his knowledge alone as a surgeon on the implementations of what sugar is doing to your body.
You may say I don’t have sugar in my coffee or I don’t eat chocolate that much, but sugar is in everything – it’s hidden in so many ways.
Savoury snacks like chips has sugar in it, bread has sugar, milk, cheese, pasta, pizza, and artificial sweeteners are just as bad!
Here is a few quotations from his book that I think will open your eyes:
- Sugar enters our body, simple carbohydrates are quickly dismantled into glucose (which passes directly from your intestines into the bloodstream to be used for quick energy) and fructose (which moves through your liver to generally store as fat.)
So we were designed to have sugar, but that was meant to be from fruit and vegetables, but the onslaught of sugar these days our bodies cannot handle.
We have pushed so much into our bodies everyday that now our pancreas is in overdrive, causing it to release excess insulin – the hormone that transports glucose into your cells to be burned as fuel.
A squirt becomes a spew as insulin struggles to escort glucose into your cells by brute force.
So after years of a poor diet, and being overweight and sedentary, your cells become more and more resistant to the mission of insulin.
Therefore if you are still packing in the sugar, your blood glucose continues to rise as your overworked pancreas simply wears out.
You make less and less insulin as your cells become more and more resistant to it.
That’s called insulin resistance.
So before your pancreas gives up completely, all of that excess insulin and blood glucose lead to inflammation.
- Sugar causes scarring and inflammation to your nerves.
-Too much sugar triggers inflammation in your blood vessels and causes a reaction.
– It processes into sorbitol and then enters your nerves through the polyo pathways and gets stuck there.
– The sorbitol causes your nerves to absorb water and swell.
– When there’s no room for them to expand further, the nerve gets compressed against the surrounding bone and tissue. The pressure causes pain and numbness.– In addition, the swollen nerve gets less oxygen and nutrients as it gradually stops conducting effectively.
So think about when you get pain in your hip, knee, foot, wrist, headaches and migraines.
The nerves are inflamed from sugar; the pathways through the nerves are being squashed and therefore this pushes pain to different parts of your body
– please this is a signal to let you know the body has had enough.
- The nerves that control the large intestine, for example, can become damaged, and lead to the alternating diarrhea and constipation that are the most common symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Headaches are similar in that the nerves controlling the muscles in the head can become irritated and entrapped, just as the nerves controlling the gallbladder.
ALL nerves are irritated by the effect of sugar and ultimately damage important muscles that control the functioning of your organs.
- Chronic inflammation –
-damages your immune system
-can be painful
-raises triglycerides (tiny fat particles in the blood that store energy and transport it to your muscles), cholesterol, and blood pressure, thus contributing to diabetes and heart disease
-it is implicated in conditions ranging from allergies, asthma, and inflammatory bowel disease to fatigue, depression, wrinkles and dry skin.
- Artificial sweeteners cause blood sugar problems, possibly because their super sweet taste stimulates your body to prepare for calories that never arrive. This disrupts all of the hormonal and neurological signals that tell you you’re full.
The drink doesn’t fill you up – in fact it make you feel hungrier, so you eat more, which adds more calories.
So eating pizza or burgers with a low calorie drink doesn’t make sense in any way due to the pizza breaking down into sugar, plus the sweetness in the drink will not suppress your appetite by providing the calories your body needs.
- Fat doesn’t make you fat; carbohydrates make you fat.
No study has proved that saturated fat increases cholesterol and in turn causes heart disease. Studies have been conducted and no link has been found to eating saturated fat from animal foods to raises blood cholesterol.
What made us fat was the bogus “fat-free” phase, fat was replaced with sugar, and as we know sugar is addictive more so than cocaine. And because of addiction, you eat as much as you possibly can.
So the high cholesterol issue is when it is combined with other factors, your heart attack rate does jump statistically, when you are overweight; have diabetes or a metabolic syndrome; eat a low quality carbohydrate diet (pasta, bread, biscuits as opposed to green leafy vegetables) leading to insulin resistance and high blood sugar, you are sedentary, have high blood pressure, and are exposed to environmental toxins.
So eating a diet high in good fats, some protein and fresh vegetables will not elevate your cholesterol – it’s your refined carbohydrates and sugar that’s the enemy.
- Cholesterol is a waxy substance manufactured by your body.
It’s not fat and it has no calories – your body doesn’t burn cholesterol for energy. Instead it uses cholesterol for a wide range of vital functions, including making cell membranes and the fatty sheaths that wrap around your nerves; manufacturing the hormones such as cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and producing vitamin D.
It also helps aid digestion of your food and helps to send messages back and forth along your nerves.
So we need cholesterol in our bodies, and again we have starved our bodies from good fats that help with bile and cholesterol to help protect organs and send messages.
- Sugar – feeding cancer is whole other chapter as I would like to explain this as best I can.
I hope that I have given you some good explanations of what sugar can do to your body, why refined carbs are just as dangerous and the importance of introducing good fats back into your diet.
Educate yourself by purchasing books and reading more in depth the research involved so that you get a big picture full of detail. Sometimes reading small blogs only outline some key paragraphs that can be misleading.
Talking to a naturopath, nutritionist or health coach would be a great way to understand how the body can become optimal by eliminating certain foods, and replacing them with some powerful foods or supplements that can help your transition and keep cravings at a minimum.
CALL TO ACTION:
Please your biggest take home message today is:
– “low-fat” is a scam, eating good fats will not make you fat. Carbohydrates in the way of white bread, white pasta, white flour all break down into sugar and leave you empty.
– Sugar is hidden in everything – you need to know what to look for, be more mindful.
– Research is proving you need fat in your diet, however – McDonald’s chips is not what they mean, these will make you fat because they’re cooked in trans-fats (canola oil, vegetable oil, sunflower oil) they use sugar in their recipes to sweeten the buns, and cheese should not be bright yellow!
– Eat avocado, coconut milk, olives, grass fed butter, grass fed beef, chicken thighs, eggs, goats cheese.
These foods are loaded with good fats that will
: sustain your hunger
: feed your brain and nervous system
: burn stubborn fat
: therefore, you will not need to have sugar in your diet as these foods will give you great taste and great benefits.
There is plenty of great books out there but to name a few are:
Sugar Crush – Dr Richard Jacoby
Keto Clarity – Jimmy Moore
The Calorie Myth – Jonathon Bailor
The Big Fat Surprise – Nina Teicholz
Grain Brain – David Perlmutter
So grab a book or download an audio version and listen to some true facts about sugar and please start to have a good think as to how you can implement this – and really you need to do this now, not later.
I guarantee you more and more people are learning about good health and making the adjustments in their diets, so you’re not alone and you can become a leader in healthy choices
– I hope you live a healthier life for longer.
For more information on some of my programs click here
Here’s to your health and happiness
Kerrie
