Happy {Half} Hour - Sugar 101 for Weight Loss

Hey y'all, what's up? Happy Friday, my luxe ladies. It is time for Happy Half Hour. So today I've got my It's Five O'Clock Somewhere wine glass, but there's no wine in it, no water, my usual Spindrift, nothing. Uh, just plain old water. My husband drank all of the Spindrift. I went downstairs and I was like, oh no. So I'm drinking plain old H2O, no fruit flavoring, no bubbly, no nothing. So grab your favorite Friday beverage and let's talk about sugar. I am live. Hey, Abundant Blooms. That would be Celine. I am live on Instagram and on my Facebook page. For those of you who don't know me, I am Jennifer Dent-Brown. And I am a life coach and I help women learn to stop dieting forever. So for those of you who have been around the block for a while and you've been at this weight game for a while and you've tried many a different diet— hey, Miss Dara, good to see you from California— um, and you've been at this weight game for a while, you know that diets don't work. So why you keep doing them? You need to talk to me. I will tell you how to stop dieting forever. Hello, my Instagram family. Good to see you all. Um, all right, so today we're talking about sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar for weight loss. So where do I begin? You know, I am so well-versed on sugar and how eating too much sugar will help us gain weight and what kinds of sugar we should be eating, what kinds of sugar we shouldn't be eating. Because I've been doing this for a while, I know I can spot a fake sugar from a mile away. I know what to look for when I am out grocery shopping and buying different foods. I know all the— over 60 different names for sugar that food companies add to labels. I know all of this stuff. And sometimes I'm so far removed that I forget that lots of times you all don't know all of this stuff. And so I feel like I talk about sugar a lot, but guess what? I'm going to talk about it some more today. And the reason why I wanted to revisit this topic of sugar and like, how do we lose the weight? How do we cut out sugar out of our diets? Is because I recently had a strategy call. So I do these Stop Dieting Forever strategy calls for women who are interested. In my 7-month weight loss program or becoming a one-on-one client. And I was talking to this woman and she told me she had over 100 pounds to lose. And I said, okay, so, you know, that's fine. I talk to women all the time who have 50, 60, 20, 30, 40 pounds to lose. And I was like, alright, so just tell me, like, what is a typical day for you? What are you eating like throughout the week? And so she was very, very detailed, meticulous about— she told me exactly what she was eating. And one thing that she mentioned that like struck out, stuck out to me was that she said, I drink a smoothie every day. I was like, okay, you know, cool. People like their smoothies. They drink smoothies every day. Um, so I asked her, I said, well, what do you put in your smoothie? Because I know smoothies can be a sugar trap. And lo and behold, for sure, the smoothie that she was drinking— and it was so big, she said it took her all day to drink it— this smoothie that she was drinking every day consisted of spinach, pineapple juice, mango, and water. Okay, so for those of you who know about liquid Calories and sugar grams hidden in smoothies, you know that what she was drinking was basically a sugar bomb. She was basically drinking a kale green-colored Frosty, right? She might as well have been. Hey, Carol Ann, good to see you. And so it just kind of like struck me like, wow. And I shared this with her and I was like, I think the habit of drinking a smoovie every day is great. However, I would encourage you to add in more vegetables and less fruit. And then I went on to tell her about the sugar content in tropical fruits such as bananas, pineapples, mango, everything she's putting into her smoothie, and the sugar con— what happens when sugar from fruit is concentrated into just solid straight sugar that goes into your bloodstream, it spikes your insulin levels, and when that happens, your fat storage hormones turn on, and it likes— your body will turn on or hold on to the fat. So she was like, well, well, I have the spinach in there, I thought the spinach was good. Now, like, the spinach is great. The ratio when you're creating a smoothie should be 2 cups of greens to 1/2 a cup to 1 cup of fruit. Ideally, we want to focus on the lower sugar fruits like strawberries, any of the berries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. It is berry season out here, people. So this is like a beautiful time to get down with the low sugar berries. But pineapple juice, mango, banana, there's 15 grams of sugar in one banana alone. So if you're not like up on sugar and you're like, yeah, so what does that mean, 15 grams of sugar in one banana? It doesn't really sound like a lot. Well, to put that into perspective, right, for you to be able to stabilize your blood sugar levels and continue or begin to lose weight or continue to lose weight, you want to keep your sugar grams at about— I'm just curious if anybody knows this question. Carol Ann, you may know, you're a health coach, you may know what a woman's maximum sugar consumption should be per day. Yes, I love the berries too, my favorite season, summer. Um, 25 grams, 25 grams of sugar a day is what women should be aiming to max out at when it comes to sugar. No more than 25 grams a day. And so when you're eating one banana and one banana has 15 grams of sugar in it, you're like, oh, or two bananas, whatever you're putting into your smoothie. Pineapple juice— I should have looked up the sugar grams, sugar content in concentrated pineapple juice. So instead of using water for her smoothie or using almond milk or some other type of lower sugar Beverages using pineapple juice. So yes, she was drinking a smoothie, great habit to have. However, you gotta be careful what goes in it. And so because of this conversation with her, and because I felt like, wow, she just really doesn't know this, I was like, you know what? There are a lot of people who don't know this about smoothies and liquid calories and sugar and how it hides in so many different places. It might be time to just revisit sugar, okay? So yeah, when you think about Smoothie King, yeah, there are places, Smoothie Kings, I don't know, you may not have them in your city, but yeah, there are people who are keeping Smoothie King open, who are going to get their healthy smoothies every day and don't understand how much sugar they are consuming just from a liquid beverage, okay? Remember this, 25 grams a day, ladies, It should be your max for sugar. You may be thinking, okay, how do I even begin to calculate how much sugar I'm consuming? Great question, so glad you asked. So this is a challenge I have for you guys, and you know I like to give these Friday challenges. This weekend, I want you to, actually maybe for the next 5 days, just start tracking how much sugar you're eating. And how do you do that? You do it in MyFitnessPal. This is how I realized how much sugar I was eating. When I learned a couple years ago about the amount of sugar in processed foods, the amount of sugar in beverages, the amount of sugar that it's so easy to consume, and I'm like, whoa, how do I know how much sugar I'm consuming? I started tracking it in MyFitnessPal. Now, I'm not asking you to track calories. I'm not asking you to like weigh or measure anything. Simply log in what you're eating, and MyFitnessPal is fancy now, y'all, so you can actually use your phone camera to scan the barcode of whatever food you're eating. It will pull it up in its database and automatically populate. So that way you can get a high-level view every day of how much sugar you're consuming. And just, you know, do it normally. Don't try to like edit your food because you're like, oh, I'm tracking sugar. Just go ahead and like, if you're used to eating ice cream at night, you can go ahead and track track that. If you're used to, you know, going out to brunch and having mimosas on the weekends, go ahead and track that as is. And just be curious, right? Don't judge yourself, don't, um, hold back, don't think anything negative about yourself. You are in this learning and observation period, right? You are becoming aware of what you're putting into your body, and awareness is always the first step to transformation. Yes, Carol Ann, I knew you would know. 6— 25 grams is literally 6 teaspoons. That's it. So awareness again is the, the beginning of transformation. As soon as you're aware of the bad habits, as soon as you're aware of the things that you're doing that don't serve you, including actions and thoughts, then you can make a conscious decision to change. But what I'm challenging you to do for the next 3 to 5 days is just become aware of the foods that you're consuming and the amount of sugar that is in them. So this is literally what I did when I first started getting up to speed and figuring out how much sugar I was consuming. I just started putting it in MyFitnessPal and I realized how easy and quickly you get to 25 grams, like just like that. With breakfast alone, right? So then as I became more aware of like the different foods that I'm normally eating and how much sugar is in them, I was able to start making better decisions and different decisions. That's how I started to reduce the amount of sugar I consumed every day. Now that's the easy part, right? The easy part is becoming aware. The easy part is tracking Oh, my wine glass matches my shirt. Thank you, Carol Ann. The easy part is, you know, doing the do. I call it the action, the A. Now the more difficult part is getting your mind right. So once you've done the exercise, you've done the challenge, and you understand how much sugar you're consuming, now it's like, oh man, how do I stop eating sugar? Or how do I cut back on eating sugar? If you're used to eating these foods normally, right? How do I stop eating sugar? And let me tell you, once you can get your mind wrapped around how to do that and you can get over the obstacle, like, oh my God, I can't have any more sugar. Then it really is easy and your body begins to get used to not eating a lot of sugar and then it's smooth sailing from there, right? But your mindset has got to be right. And so what I like to teach my clients and what I like to coach them on is not thinking about like, oh, I can't have this, I can't eat this. Oh, I can't have cupcakes. Oh my God, I can't have wine anymore. It has sugar in it. I can't, I can't, I can't. The more you think what you can't have, the more you think about what you can't consume, the more you're going to want it, right? So think about it. The more you think about all of the forbidden foods now that you can't eat anymore because of, you know, trying to get off sugar, I'm trying to stop eating sugar, and you're walking around and telling all these people like, oh, I can't eat that. Getting off sugar, right? The more you think about it that way, the more you're going to want it because you're constantly still thinking about it. So you are literally causing your own feelings of deprivation. And as soon as an episode or an experience or a circumstance happens that throws you off of your game and you're feeling a little out of sorts and you're like, or you're tempted with something and your willpower is like at a 2, guess what's gonna happen? You're gonna go back and eat the sugar because all this time you've been thinking, I can't eat the sugar, oh, I can't eat this, I'm not eating this, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't. And so you're just literally replaying and reinforcing the feelings of deprivation. And so what do we do when we feel deprived? We treat ourselves, right? And so the first thing you're gonna do is eat the cookie, eat the cupcake, give me the wine, give me the chocolate, right? Give me that sugar. And all of a sudden all the work that you've done to try to keep, you know, stop eating sugar, cut back on your sugar, it's all going down the drain. And all of a sudden you've got sugar back in your belly, right? So one way to think about giving up sugar is one, I really encourage you to just think about the reasons why you want to give up sugar. Like really, just write it down, just bullet them out. Why do you want to give up sugar? Hello, Estelle! What are the reasons you think you need to be giving up sugar? For most of us, it's probably going to be, I need to lose weight. But some of us feel like we are literally addicted to sugar. I can't tell you how many women I have these strategy calls with And they all say— not all of them, but a lot of them think they are addicted to sugar and they can't stop eating it. You keep telling yourself that I'm addicted to sugar and I can't stop eating it. Guess what's going to happen? You're going to keep eating it because, hey, you're addicted to sugar. Funny how that happens, right? So that is just a bad habit loop that we need to replace with a healthier habit. Healthier thought. So instead of saying and telling yourself, wow, you know, I'm addicted to sugar, I want you to look at your list that you just wrote out of all the reasons why you think you should give up sugar and create a new thought based off of that, right? So for example, instead of saying I'm addicted to sugar, you can say, you can tell yourself and repeat to yourself over and over and over in your head, like, I'm giving up sugar because I'm choosing choosing my goal weight more than I'm choosing to eat sugar, right? I'm choosing my goal of weight loss more than I want to eat this cupcake, more than I want to eat this— drink this glass of wine, more than I want to drink this SugarPak smoothie, right? I'm choosing my goal weight, and I know if I say no to this sugar right now, I'm going to get one step closer to my goal weight. Right. And that feels so much better than saying, I can't have sugar, I can't do it, I can't eat sugar, right? Or I'm addicted to sugar. And telling yourself that over and over and over again. So look at your list, 5, 10 items, all the reasons why you want to stop eating sugar or reduce the amount of sugar. Remember, 25 grams or less a day, ladies, will guarantee weight loss. Scout's honor or whatever it is. I'm not a Boy Scout. I don't know, but I'm telling you the truth. If you can consistently cut your sugar consumption down to 25 grams or less, you will see the scale move, right? You've got to be consistent with it and don't do it as a diet. Don't do it like, ooh, I'm gonna give up sugar for 10 days because I got to go on this cruise. No, no, no, no, no. That is the wrong— that's another diet, right? We talked about, we're learning how to stop dieting forever here. We don't want to lose weight that way. We want our weight loss to be sustainable and to be something that we can actually continue to do once we get to our goal weight. And one thing that you can continue to do once you get to your goal weight is continue to believe, I choose my health over this piece of chocolate cake. I choose my health over this bag of Starburst, right? I choose my health, my goal weight. I choose a size 6 over the cake pops or the soda, right? Lots of y'all still drinking soda, right? So just know, once you become aware— and if you guys have any questions either on Instagram or Facebook, go ahead and type them in. If you're watching the replay, go ahead and type replay in the comments. Type your question in, I will come back later and answer it. Um, but it is so easy to consume a ton of sugar. So just, I want you to become aware. The reason why I'm giving you this challenge of tracking your sugar for 5 days is because I want you to become aware of all the places where there is excess sugar. Right, so think about all the times that you eat out, even if you're eating a salad, right, a harmless green salad with some grilled chicken on top of it. Looks probably completely harmless. Don't you know that these places inject their protein, their chicken, with sugar to make it taste a little bit better and keep it nice and juicy? The salad dressing that they may give you on the side, yes, it's on the side, but if you're still pouring it all on your salad, you're still consuming a crapload of sugar. I just sent out an email to my list today about sugar. In the Starbucks strawberry smoothie, even if you get it with almond milk, 16 ounces strawberry smoothie and the protein powder, right? It still has 40 grams of sugar in it. 40, 4-0. Remember, I told you your limit per day should be no more than 25 grams of sugar. So think about it, if you're hitting up Starbucks in the afternoon on a Saturday afternoon while you're running your errands, oh, and then you grab a cake pop or you get something else from Starbucks that may contain sugar, you're way above your limit for the day. Think about, You know, what do you guys normally eat for breakfast? What are you normally eating at dinner time? Ooh, the witching hour, right? The witching hour, which is the time, the hours after everybody goes to bed and house is quiet and you've already eaten dinner and now it's like my time to relax. What are you going in the pantry to find? What are you snacking on at night before you go to bed? What are you hunting for in the freezer? I know for me, my thing used to be, well, I had many things that I used to eat at night, but for a long time I would eat chocolate chips. I would eat dark chocolate. Here's, here's the thinking, right? Here's how our brains can like justify anything. So I used to eat this chocolate, like just give myself bars of chocolate and eat a square or two of chocolate every night. And then I was like, well, maybe that's too much. So I'm going to start eating chocolate chips. So I used to buy the bag of chocolate chips because, well, you know, chocolate chip is smaller than a bar of chocolate. Go figure. I was probably consuming more chocolate chips because, oh, they're smaller than I was when I was going like eating 1 or 2 squares of a chocolate bar. We can justify anything, y'all. So this is what I'm talking about, becoming aware. So when I became aware that chocolate chips, even the mini ones, still had as much sugar in it as a regular old chocolate bar, guess what? I was like, duh, let's stop eating the chocolate chips. Okay, so just because the challenge for you guys, and I want you to tell me how you do, right? I want you to start today, tonight, with your next meal. With your next glass of wine, whatever you want to have, I want you to start tracking in MyFitnessPal just the sugar. So put in, oh, 8-ounce glass of red wine, just see how much sugar is in there. Or for those of you who like to drink a Moscato, which is nice and sweet, Riesling, nice and sweet, right? It's not sweet because it doesn't have sugar in it, it's sweet because it has sugar in it. Go ahead and track that in MyFitnessPal. What are you eating with your wine, right? Are you having a little bit extra because it's Friday? Are you going out to eat and like, oh girl, give me a bite of your dessert, or let's split this, right? Because, oh, I have salad for my entree, but then you put all the dressing on top of it. So just become aware, and I'm just so curious to know what your reaction is. And then once you understand, you know, how much sugar you're consuming, again, you can begin to start to make small incremental changes, right? So just like I went from the chocolate bar to the chocolate chips to the no chocolate at all, chocolate in the evening, right? You can begin to make small incremental changes. If you see that your favorite glass of Moscato has— and I don't know how many grams of sugar is in Moscato, I'm sure I can Google it— but just say for instance, for example, it has 5 grams of sugar in your favorite brand of Moscato, and you drink 3 glasses of Moscato at a time, 15 grams of sugar right there. So you may decide, you know what, I'm going to swap out my Moscato with a dry red wine, which has less sugar in it. I know it's a stretch going from— if you really like Moscato, to go to a dry red, But if you're choosing your health and you're choosing your goal weight over the sugar, it might be a lot easier for you, right? So I would love to hear what your new thoughts are of why you're not going to eat the sugar. Okay, so what is going to keep you on track, right? What is your new thought going to be? I gave the example of I choose my goal weight. Over this cupcake. I choose my goal weight over this donut. I choose my goal weight over this bag of cookies. Okay, so happy half hour, another one in the books. I'm so excited, y'all. It's so nice outside. I really wish I could do the happy half hours outside, but when I tried it the last time, I lost my connection. And it was a big old mess. So thank you for joining. Again, if you're watching the replay, go ahead and type replay. If you're interested in doing a strategy call with me, just send me a private message and send me 3 times that are good for you and we'll connect on the phone and I will help you get your mindset right so you can say no to sugar forever. All right ladies, have a great weekend and I will see you next week for Happy Half Hour. Bye, Instagram family!