Sugar Isn’t the Problem—Your Metabolism Is (Why Cutting Sugar Doesn’t Work If Your Engine Is Broken)

What's going on? What's going on, family? Let's have a conversation. All right, let me make sure I am on. Says I'm live. All right, why do I always do this? Let's go live. All right, um, let me add Instagram. Let's have a conversation. I'm about to actually edit out— let me add Instagram. Give me one second, y'all, and we're gonna get into this. Sugar is not the problem. That's what I want to talk about. You saw that, right? I know we always think that sugar is the issue, but it's really not, okay? And I want to talk about that a little bit. All right, so let me add in my Instagram family and then we're gonna get started. If you're listening to this and you're not on my YouTube channel, make sure that you subscribe because that is where I am doing my live trainings now. All right, let me— give me one second, y'all. I'm adding them in and we're gonna get started. Um, all right, let me, let me just bring this screen over here. All right, I hope y'all having a lovely day. I am. Every day is a lovely day, right? If you see it that way. All right, I think I just brought Instagram in. All right, they on. All right, y'all, we're gonna get started. Um, I want to talk to you about sugar, right? Um, I think people have a misconception about sugar. And I ran into this once I found out that, um, once I found out that sugar actually healed my, my body. This is me personally. I'm not the only person who talks about this. Um, I got into a place where I've tried all kind of diets. First of all, I've tried every kind of diet you can think of, and it worked. You know, some of the diets, they work until they don't, right? They work until they don't work anymore. And I found myself, myself having a, a huge lack of energy. And not what— I've been working out since I was 10 years old, and all of a sudden I just didn't want to work out anymore. Of course I'm pushing myself through it because it's part of my identity at this point, and I would feel more uncomfortable not working out. But I realized I started to take my, um, my blood sugar, and I wore a blood sugar monitor for quite some time, like a year, right? And what I noticed was that when I wasn't doing as much sugar, my, my fasted blood sugar started to go up. And, um, I, I— so there was a number of things that was happening. My mood, my focus, my energy. Um, yeah, there was a lot of things. My fasted blood sugar was going up, and then all of a sudden I added back in— uh, hey guys— I added back in sugar which is technically anti-inflammatory because they turn off stress hormones. And, uh, and most people don't realize that. And so basically when I added back sugar, it turned off my stress hormones that I was operating out of when I was doing my workouts, my, my, you know, weightlifting sessions. And, um, my fasted glucose started to go down. And I tested it out. I tested out a lot of different, um amounts of sugar. Now, when I do say sugar, I am talking about high-quality source sugar, okay? Fruit, honey, vegetables, maple syrup, even certain starches like, you know, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, sourdough bread. You know, it just depends on your gut and how much you can handle. But I tested out like 300 grams a day, 400 grams a day, 450 grams a day. I might even test it 500 grams a day, but more consistently, maybe about 250 to 300 a day. And my fasted blood glucose— blood sugar glucose went down. And the reason why, again, is because most people don't understand that sugar turns— high-quality sugar turns off stress hormones. Now, am I saying that other diets without sugar don't work? I'm not saying that. They actually do work until they don't work. And they can be great short-term for some people. And other people might find themselves being able to live, you know, long without doing a lot of sugar, and that's fine. They're running off of ketones. I don't like it. I don't like it as a performer, um, in the gym, as a, you know, as someone who is trying to boost performance. It's, it's all about your goals, but I like to lift weights with energy, and I don't, I don't want to run off of my body turning amino acids into energy. I don't want protein turned into energy. I want to feed myself the energy, right? To each his own. But let me just tell you how this works, because this is for everybody, right? This is for everybody, um, what I'm going to explain to you about why sugar really is not the problem. It doesn't matter, um, if you think it is. And I know it's a lot of people out there that'll say, you know, you don't need any sugar, and, and sugar is all bad. It's not. They've done countless studies of, you know, people who have eaten all kind of different— even start— even rice. They've done rice studies that has brought people out of diabetes. And, you know, studies on different fruit. And, um, it's not all created equal. It's not. I know people say it is, but it's not. Um, but more importantly, what I want you to understand is that sugar or carbs— I'm confused. Somebody said sugar or carbs, I'm confused. Carbs turn to sugar, so when we say sugar, I am talking about carbs, right? Um, I'm not talking about simple process— simple sugars. I'm not talking about processed sugars. I'm not talking about donuts, okay? I'm talking about real food sugar— fruit, vegetables, starches. Whole foods, honey, maple syrup, fruit juices, fresh-squeezed orange juice, stuff like that. Okay, just so it can— so I can be clear with that, right? So more importantly, you don't have a sugar problem, you have a metabolism problem. Often you have a nervous system problem, even an identity problem. All right. Um, and I know that you may think, oh, it's, it's about the sugar, I need to stop sugar, uh, sugar in order to get healthy. Sometimes you may have to if you have a bad relationship with sugar, but sugar is still not the issue. And that's what I want you to understand, it is not the enemy. And people make it become the enemy, and then that's why we go on these starvation diets. We're trying to fight the cravings when A lot of times it's not even about the fact that you have cravings. You just don't— you don't have enough energy in your body right now. Sometimes this stuff will work for a moment, so I'm not against it. I actually encourage it often, but I'm just still saying it's not the problem. If it was, then why do people relapse after eating clean? Okay, um, or they still, uh, gain weight, feel tired, get brain fog even after cutting sugar. Right? Here's, here's what you need to know. Sugar is not the problem. It's the body's inability to utilize sugar. That is the real issue. And that leaves you often— a lot of times, if your body can't process glucose, then you're going to be without energy. What we're dealing with right now is your engine, your mitochondria, is weak. Your metabolism is sluggish. Your nervous system might be dysregulated. Um, and so even the cleanest fuel can break you down if inwardly you got some issues going on. Think of it like this: imagine a high luxury car, right? You fill it up with premium fuel, high quality, organic, top shelf, whatever you want to say. All right, but let's say in the luxury car, uh, the engine is blown. Right? The wiring is damaged. The car's broke inside. So if you take it to a gas station, that good fuel that we're talking about is not going to help. The car is still going to break down because the inside of the engine is broke. And so that's what's happening inside your body often. And this is, this is why the sugar is not really, really the issue, because It's more about your body's inability to process that sugar. That's the part that gets compromised. And I'll also add this, it's your, um, body's inability to be metabolically flexible. That means you don't know how to go back and forth between burning fat and burning sugar, right? And so I'm not trying to say, oh, you should be in sugar. No. And when I say sugar, I'm talking about high quality sugar. High-quality whole food carbs, right? But what I am telling you is that cutting out sugar without healing your system is like putting a Band-Aid over a bullet wound. It really is. So we, we have to get a little bit more into the real culprit, which is your system, right? It's your system. Okay, somebody said that makes sense. I'm hoping it does make sense. So if you've been trying to fix, um internal dysfunction with external strategies, it never works. So if you're like, okay, let me budget my calories, let me restrict my carbs, let me fast my way to get thin, um, in the same way, think about this. Everybody's always trying to fix internal dysfunction with external strategies. Like if you are, um, trying to fix your financial crisis by cutting back or, or getting extra money, right? Y'all know that when people sometimes get extra money, if they haven't fixed their ability to manage, their management skills, y'all know just giving them more money is just gonna make them more monstrous. It's going to make them reveal themselves even more. It's not going to fix the problem. Listen, external solutions don't fix internal limitations. It just doesn't. You can budget your money, but if your money mindset is rooted in fear, you're gonna stay broke. You can fast from food, but if your metabolism is still sluggish, you're gonna still be tired. And you can keep cutting sugar all you want, but if your mitochondria are weak, inflammation is still going to show up. And the real truth is that everyone always defaults back into the limits of their identity. You cannot outperform the version of you that you've programmed to be normal, okay? You programmed it to be normal, right? And so you're not going to outperform that, especially, especially from the outside in. Everybody's trying to fix things outside. It doesn't work that way. Life doesn't work that way, right? And so this is why a lot of people rebound. I know you know what I'm talking about. In cycles. Round and round you go, round and round, merry-go-round, right? Start off strong, uh, the beginning of the year, the new diet, new rules, new plans. I'm doing a new me. Oh no, it's not gonna work if you don't change your mindset, right? You have to change yourself internally. Um, if you're not healing your nervous system, for example, if you're not restoring your metabolism, if you're not shifting your internal thermostat, you will rebound every single time. How many people have actually cemented a real framework into their life that's been working for like decades? That takes real work. And everybody wants a quick fix. Everybody want to get it, uh, fixed real quick. Anybody you know with success who has managed and sustained success will tell you this did not come overnight. I know it's appealing. You got the shiny object syndrome. You're chasing this and that, and you think it's gonna— it does not work that way. And if you learn how to slow down for a moment and get what you really need to get, which is a process— you need to be processed. Can y'all imagine people just— well, that's happened before. Imagine people not being processed before they You ever been to another country and you go through customs? You're processed. That keeps the environment, that keeps the culture better when you're processed. Imagine like just being able to just go to any country and just walk straight through the gates. Like, that, that doesn't work. That's going to create defilement somewhere, and you're gonna wind up having enemies in your midst, right? You have to be processed. Okay, it takes time, right? And you have to have— you will prosper as your soul prospers. People are trying to prosper outside of the prosper— the prosperity of their soul. That, that's not gonna work. We trying to do the shortcut. It doesn't work. You're gonna find yourself losing time over and over again, going in a cycle, repeating yesterday today, right? Waking up, same thing, same habits, same dysfunction, same cycle, same up and down. It's not gonna last. And then you're gonna have yourself experience more regret, more grief, more guilt. All of that stuff is going to come with it. Why? Because time is moving on and you're doing the same thing. There's nothing more devastating in life than to wake up 10 years later and you're doing the same thing over and over. Even to wake up a year later and you're doing the same thing over and over, it's insanity. Because the soul has to be addressed. You have to release trauma, deal with the trauma. Your engine, your biology, your emotions, your mindset, they are still running the old script, right? Still running the old script, same results. Okay, that— this means no matter how disciplined you are, if your operating system isn't updated, you're going to return to the same cycles. Tactical disciplines, habits, they only work when you have a framework for them to work and be sustainable. If you come outside the boundaries of your heart, the limitations of your heart, you're going to be there for a moment, but you're going to rebound right back into those limitations, right back into those confinements. And so this is, this is the way we treat our body, you know. We get on all of this strict stuff instead of living a life of prosperity from the inside out, taking it one day at a time, one step at a time, learning how to really, uh, hone— like, hone in on one aim, how to focus. Okay, let me focus on my sleep. Let me establish that as a framework for my life, because if I'm not rested, I'm not going to have any energy. If anybody know me, they know I don't manage my time, I manage my energy. Because you can have all the time in the world, but what does it mean if you're sitting somewhere hurting? Knees is giving out, back is in pain, can't focus, feel rested, wired but tired, you know what I mean? Like, your mind is not functioning, your brain is— you're losing memory, you're gaining weight that you don't need to gain, and it's causing you— I don't, I don't I don't think anything is wrong with gaining weight as long as it's, it's, it's in alignment with your body composition, okay? But I'm talking about like these problems internally— inflammation, out of breath, HRV is low, pulse is too high when you're sleeping at night, blood pressure high, insulin resistant. Who, who wants this kind of life? It doesn't matter how much time you can have, double time, you could be living 300 years. Who wants This is why people, when they're on their deathbed, they don't want to live. They're like, I'm in pain, I don't want more time, I want less time, I need to check out of here because I don't want to deal with the pain anymore, right? So you have to heal from the inside out. It looks like you strengthening things that you need to strengthen, like your mitochondria, so your, your cells can actually make more energy. You need more energy. It looks like Uh, you building more muscle so your, your body can become a sugar-burning machine. I say this all the time, the more muscle mass you have, the more you can actually hold sugar and it doesn't affect your, your, um, your blood sugar numbers because muscles are— is like a buffer for sugar, for carbs. You can store it there, right? And then when you go to your next workout, your body will convert that glucose and you'll wind up— the body will convert the stored glucose, right, into sugar, and then you can use it and you can burn it off. That's why some people can use 300 and 400 and 500 grams of, uh, of carbs if they burning it off. They're just using it for fuel. It's not affecting them the same way it would affect somebody else whose body cannot burn glucose, right? So you need to strengthen your mitochondria. You need to build muscle. You need to, uh, restore safety to your nervous system so you're not always craving, uh, dopamine from sugar. You need to settle your nervous system. That's what that looks like. These are inward workings that you need to do. And then of course you need to rewire your mind so you're no longer self-sabotaging in secret. Ah, y'all didn't know I was gonna say that— in secret. Because I see you reaching for one cookie, two cookie, three cookie, four Okay, another, you know, bowl of ice cream when you only need one. You eat the whole tub, you eat the whole bag of potato chips. It's in secret, and then you feel guilty about it. That— and then you— then the next day you want to restrict. It's not— that's not gonna work. You gotta fix this, and you got to heal from the inside out. And then, and only then, can you enjoy food again. Can you eat sugar the right way, and it fuels your body. You don't have to be binging and all of this other stuff.. And it's not from, you know, it's not from a place of escape. That's where people are living from. But it's from a place of balance and capacity. That's where we want to get. Okay, here's what I always say, um, God plus biology will equal breakthrough for you. And I say this over and over again: God made your body to heal. He made your system to work. But it's your disconnection from your body, from your identity, from your design that's breaking you. That's what's breaking you, right? And it's not just about, again, the tactics. Let me do this, let me do this, here's the how-to, here's the— you know, you got to heal your metabolism, you got to rebuild your engine, you got to restore your nervous system, you got to confront emotional trauma. That trauma is there and it makes you make the decisions that you make. And then you got to align your body, your soul, and your spirit. Because when you heal from the inside out, then you can start really living again. You can start the thriving that you want to do, okay? So you got to address these soulless— soulish issues. And I know people don't see it that way when they're thinking about a diet or a plan, or let me cut back, let me restrict, let me do— that's all great, but there's a psychology to you that has to be addressed. And if it's If it's filled with trauma and emotional pain and grief and depression and anxiety, and your body cannot heal unless your nervous system is regulated. It's just that simple. And so that's an inward working that you have to do. Okay, I'm looking at the questions. All right, so I want you to know that it's not the sugar, it's not the, you know, again, restriction is good. I love the idea of people, um, fasting. And I, I love fasting, um, but for the right reasons, not because you're trying to get skinny overnight. That's not going to work, okay? That's going— actually, when people start to cut calories and restrict themselves, they become malnourished, and then that becomes a problem because now you don't have energy, and now you're running off of stress hormones, and then now you're going to enter into chronic stress, and then you can't sleep at night and you add it on top of that, then you're gonna wake up and your cortisol levels are going to be overly high for extended amounts of, or extended periods of time. And you're going to have cortisol levels that's high, then you wind up having belly fat. I mean, it's, uh, just a tunnel of just, yeah, devastation after devastation after devastation. And then guess what? It starts creeping into other areas of your life because how you do one thing is how you do everything, right? So If you want to stop the cycles that is, uh, perpetuating, that you see, you identify these cycles are there, and if you're ready to build a life, a body that can utilize energy instead of store it, um, and you want to build a life of prosperity even in your finances, then it's time to make different choices make changes. I always say you don't need another chance, you need another choice, right? That's how— that's it. Make better choices. Go through a healing journey, not just for your health but also for your wealth. And these are, these are things that are going to affect your life, right? Because the same patterns that keeps you inflamed are also likely the same patterns that keep you broke. That's why I combine a lot of times health and wealth, because these same disciplines, they work for both areas, right? Your nervous system and your money habits, they are connected, and you may not see that, but they really are. Anyway, so, um, I have a 90-day challenge that we're doing. We're knocking it out the park. Uh, we don't just focus on nutrition and energy, even though we do. We also walk you through financial alignment, building wealth from Listen, a healed state. You got to do things from a healed state, okay? So you learn how to build wealth from a healed state and learn how to invest from clarity and not like survival, okay? Got to get your body, your mind, your life, your finances, your relationship— you got to get all of that together and you got to prosper in your soul, okay? Because you know what? And this is why I love dealing with the body and healing the body for as a, as a foundational place, because when your body heals, your decisions change, your confidence rises, and your ability to manage money expands. It's just that way. All right, so if you want to join our 90-day, um, challenge, health and wealth challenge, go to breakbigbarriers.com. All right, breakbigbarriers.com. I see you, Breezy Bree. I got my, my Instagram family over here. Hey, I love you. How do you restore the nervous system? Any books? Oh, there's tons of books I recommend, um, for— there's tons of books I recommend, but there's certain things that you can do to heal the nervous system. You have to— one of the things I can say is that, and I'll, I'll do a— maybe I'll do a video on that, like my favorite books for, um, healing the nervous system. Um, one of the things you need to do is activate the vagus nerve, and you have to strengthen your vagal tone. Okay, the vagal tone is the nerve that runs all the way down into your gut, and when you activate this, this, uh, nerve, you turn on your parasympathetic system. The parasympathetic system is the rest and digest system. We are used to activating our sympathetic system, which is the um, the fight or flight system. That's where we get a lot of anxiety. And the more you activate it, the more easily your body continues to activate it, right? And that system doesn't have an off switch. It doesn't— it's not like an on and off. It just turns on. And the only way to turn it off is to turn on your parasympathetic system, which a lot of people are just not good at doing. And that's when you calm down, you know, you go through meditation, walks in nature, Epsom salt baths, um, getting toxic people out of your life, you know, cleaning out, decluttering yourself from the environment to people in your life to creating a place of safety. Um, that is something that has to be intentional, and most people only do it— I always say people try to learn how to escape from the fire while the fire is happening. So now all of a sudden when you stress, you go, let me do some deep breathing, I'm getting angry. You can't— it just don't work that way. I mean, in real lifetime, yeah, you can calm yourself down, but, but you have an overworked nervous system and it's going to take more than in that moment you doing it while the fire is happening, why you're angry. It'll help you for a moment temporarily, but if you, if you're talking about healing and restoring your nervous system, and this has to be a practice that you do all the time, right? There is a, there's a, a sympathetic-parasympathetic design that happens in every breath you take. When you inhale, that's the sympathetic system at work. You'll notice that if you inhale, your heartbeat starts to increase, it starts to go faster. But then when you exhale, that's the parasympathetic system. When you breathe out real slow, you'll— if you check your pulse, you'll notice that your heartbeat starts to slow down. So in every breath we take, it was designed to activate the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. But in our personal lives, we're not finding time to do that. How many people sit down and say, hey, I'm feeling great, I'm full of energy today, but I just need to initiate the practice of being in the present, meditating, getting a scripture, putting it in my heart, being in a quiet place? Let me put my phone in the other room and just sit. In peace. Let me, let me go take a walk in nature and just be and speak with God. Whatever calms you down, right? How many people are initiating that? Not a lot of people are initiating that until they think they need it. Like, oh my God, I'm going through trauma, I'm going through— let me call my account. Like, but at that point, you, you, you overdue. You need a whole detox, okay? So that is one of the things. I don't want to go into too much detail with that because I don't want to make the video too long, but it's all about activating the vagus nerve. And the vagal tone is how strong is your ability to activate basically the vagal nerve, the vagus nerve, the vagal tone and the vagus nerve. They're two different things. The vagus nerve is the nerve that runs down into your gut that when it's activated, it turns on the parasympathetic system. But the vagal tone is how likely— how— what's the strength of you being able to activate that place of rest? Most people can't turn that on. Most people can't calm themselves down. Most people can't lay down and fall asleep in 5 minutes. So that means that their vagal tone is not strengthened.— it's almost like a muscle tone, okay? So when I say vagal tone, that's what I meant, um, is that the strength of which you can calm your body down and regulate your nervous system. How, how good are you at that? Most people are not good at that, okay? But they are good with turning on anxiety. And the more you turn on anxiety, the more your body is likely to respond like that, okay? The more you do it, the more your body aligns with it. Okay, so that's why we want to put in the practices, um, that regulate our nervous system, the deep breathing stuff. Okay, all right. So, um, and by the way, turning on stress or turning on stress hormones, turning on the sympathetic system, that's not a bad thing. It's just the fact that it's— it's— there's no balance a lot of times, right? You— when you wake up in the morning, you want sympathetic, you want to get up, you want cortisol to increase, you want that energy. Okay, exercising, you often turning on the sympathetic system, you need that. But it's— the problem is people can't turn it off. People can't regulate it and balance it by turning on the parasympathetic system. All right, I don't want to over, uh, confuse you with this, but we'll get into more of this a little bit later. Again, if you want to join the challenge, go to breakbigbarriers.com. I just wanted to go through that to answer that one question. We'll answer some more questions later. All right, I love you guys, and I will see you next time. Again, breakbigbarriers.com. And if you are not on my YouTube page, please make sure you go and subscribe because I'll be doing all my live trainings there. I'll be putting more detailed videos there. And I love the YouTube community. I am open to serving and making sure that your questions are answered. And also, these videos are not saved on any other platform. I think maybe Facebook it might be, but I'll be storing them on my YouTube. So make sure you go and subscribe. Hello, Kimberly Beasley. I see you in the place. You are so faithful. I just want to point you out and say Way to go, you are crushing it. I see you growing, um, I see you doing amazing things. She's in our community, um, and she's always so supportive. So I want to give you that shout out. Um, thank you always for putting in, uh, the, the notes from the comments. You are a superwoman, you are awesome. All right, I'll see you guys later. Love you guys.