The Sugar Problem - Video 3 | Natalie Jill

Today we're going to talk about why you can't stop eating when you want to. I want to discuss cravings and willpower, why you get those dang cravings in the first place, and why you have no willpower to battle those cravings when they hit. And better yet, once we understand the why, I'm going to teach you how to overcome this, how to stop storing fat, and how to start burning it. But before we get right to it, I wanted to say thank you. Thank you for all of your awesome comments on video two of this free four part video series where I address why starchy carbs and insulin secretion are getting in the way of your fat loss goals. It's so great to interact with you and get real time feedback, so please keep the comments and questions coming. I absolutely love that these free videos are helping you understand how our bodies process food and how you can make small changes that will make a big impact. Okay, so today I want to keep adding on to what we've learned so far. There's a process to achieving long lasting fat loss. Just to quickly recap, in video one we talked about the biggest obstacle that people have reaching their fat loss and how to get and stay motivated. But now that you have your DCM and your short term and long term motivators identified, you have laid the foundation for your journey and you are well on your way. Now, if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you probably haven't watched video one. So please pause the video, open up a new window and go back and watch video one. Then in video two we talk about one of the second biggest obstacles to your fat loss goals, which was understanding how starchy carbs convert into glucose and the role insulin plays in whether you store it as fat or use it as energy. Again, if you didn't watch that video, you'll want to go back and do that. Now, this series should be watched in order so you get maximum benefits and to really understand the many reasons why we can't achieve lasting fat loss. Now, understanding this is going to transform your body. So GO Watch video 2 if you haven't watched that already. For those of you new, I'm Natalie Jill. I'm a licensed master sports nutritionist and functional fitness trainer. And what I do is I help simplify fat loss, nutrition and fitness for you to make it so you can achieve lasting results. Okay, so now that we're caught up, let's dive in. So over the years of helping people like you with your fat loss and Transformation goals. I've noticed that cravings seem to be a huge stumbling block on the road to fat loss. I mean, let's face it, when you make a decision to change your eating habits in hopes of losing weight, you end up cutting out of your diet a lot of foods that you love to eat. And because you have likely been eating that way for a while, immediately your body starts to crave all that stuff you had been eating. The challenge is that most of you probably try to willpower your way out of those cravings. And as you know, it doesn't matter how strong willed you are, if you have to fight that battle every single day at every single meal, it is easy to get discouraged and quickly give up. That is what makes sticking to a new meal plan so dang hard. Well, that is all totally normal. And in today's video, I'm going to share the science behind why those cravings happen and how you actually can overcome this. There's a lot of information to share when it comes to cravings and being able to stop our desire to eat when we aren't even hungry. Now, just even to share with you, someone like me, who knows nutrition, who studies nutrition, and who knows what I'm about to share with you, I still get triggered with things when I make slight wrong mistakes. For instance, recently I made a pie and I made it lower sugar. I made it in a healthier way. I used agave nectar in it. And I knew a lot of the stuff I'm about to share with you, but I ate one piece of this pie and I couldn't stop. I mean, I ate some, I put it away, I got back up and grabbed it again. I must have gotten up and gone to the refrigerator five times and I literally polished off this entire pie. And of course I felt like just absolutely terrible after and I was so mad at myself. But what was crazy is it was just some of those simple ingredients in this pie that was doing that to me. It would have been easier to not have had the pie altogether or to have swapped out some of these ingredients so that craving problem wouldn't have happened and I wouldn't have attacked that pie. You know, my goal is always to simplify fitness and nutrition. So for today, I'm going to zone in on only three specific things that we're eating in our diets that are giving cravings a winning edge over willpower. These three things are sugar, high fructose corn syrup and and artificial sweeteners. Now, first, I want to talk about sugar. Now sugar. No matter what form it is in, is by far one of the most dangerous substances that you can eat. When we consume the wrong carbohydrates, the processed carbs like crackers, cookies, pretzels, and the starchy carbs like rice and pasta, or when we eat foods that have added sugar, like box cereal or even healthy granolas and some trail mixed, we are absolutely making ourselves fatter and fatter. Now, to understand what sugar does to our body and cravings, we must first understand what the different sugars are, and then we need to understand what happens to our bodies when we eat these different types of sugar. Glucose, which is found in fruit and is also found in starch. After it's broken down, our bodies produce glucose, and actually every cell on earth has glucose in it. Lactose is a sugar found in dairy products like cow's milk. Sucrose is what we see most commonly. It's table sugar and is made up of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Now, fructose is fruit and corn syrup, so it's the sugar in that. Now, not to overwhelm you, I want to focus on only two of these. Glucose and fructose. Now, with glucose, any cell in our body can process this glucose into energy. Now, remember in the last video we talked about glucose and how the liver, muscle and fat cells takes glucose from your bloodstream to use it for energy. But with fructose, the liver is the only organ that can metabolize it. Fructose can't just be absorbed by all cells like glucose can. So when people eat a diet that is high in fructose, the liver, our liver gets overloaded and starts turning fructose into fat. Our bodies like to use glucose as energy. This is why our bodies first send fructose to our liver, because it needs to be converted into glucose through our liver. But here's the problem. If your body already has enough glucose, which in most of our diets, it likely does, the body is converting it straight to fat. So in addition to adding to the problem of fat loss, there's other major health consequences. Not only does this fat end up in our thighs and our belly, the back of our arms and our hips, but this fat also builds up in our liver. Now, without getting too technical, when we force our liver to synthesize fats, it causes fat around the organs and and also is a huge cause of heart disease. Eating a lot of fructose in the form of added sugars can cause insulin resistance, which leads to obesity and type 2 diabetes. What is Even more scary and more concerning than fructose. High fructose corn syrup. You'll see it on packages as HFCs. And this is found in just about every single process. Food manufacturers use this. It's a food that they created that is cheap and easy to produce and easy to transport. And it lasts for an unrealistic amount of time on grocery store shelves. So they love it for processed foods because it makes it last longer. Now, while this is a lifesaver for manufacturers, it is true poison to our bodies. Molecularly high fructose corn syrup is not much different from sucrose. HFCS is 55% fructose and 45% glucose. And that 5%, though it makes a big difference because it's a syrup, it metabolizes very, very quickly. So it hits our liver a lot faster than an equal amount of fruit sugar. And high fructose corn syrup directly interferes with the metabolic process of leptin secretion in our body. Why does this matter? Leptin is a critical hormone directly involved in sending signals to your body to indicate that you are full. So high fructose corn syrup slows leptin secretion significantly, which leads to overeating. Are you seeing a theme here? This becomes a downward spiral. Cheap food that tastes good leads to over consumption, which leads to increased chances for weight gain, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, high triglyceride levels, and heart disease. Yikes. Now I know what you're thinking. Fructose is in fruit. So is fruit making me fat. Should I not be having fruit? Well, before you put your fruit down, fruit is different. Fruit in its original form is not bad for us. And the reason is fruit has a built in mechanism, fiber. And the fiber is a big reason it's so different. And it doesn't overload our livers because it slows down the time time frame which it hits our liver. Simple sugars from whole fruit actually support our health because it contains vital nutrients such as minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants. And it has that fiber to help slow down the rate it's hitting our liver. However, the extracted refined sugars, they do not. Okay, so hopefully you get this. No added sugar and for sure no high fructose corn syrup. But you're saying you don't eat a lot of sugar. Maybe. Or maybe you buy sugar free or you drink diet soda or chew sugar free gum. Or maybe you're just wondering, hey, can I have these things? And if you do have them, maybe you're wondering why you still get cravings why is this? Well, here is what's happening when we eat artificial sweeteners. When you eat them, your body senses the sweetness of the food and expects it's going to be getting those calories. So, so basically, your body still craves the calories, and so you end up eating even more calories elsewhere to make up for this. Now, most artificial sweeteners, they're anywhere from 200 to 600 times sweeter than sugar. So this really starts to mess with your taste buds. Then, when you have a naturally sweet food like fruit, it no longer tastes sweet because your taste buds are so accustomed to food being so much sweet, sweeter. So an apple doesn't taste sweet anymore. Now, although the sugar substitutes have little to no calories, this is why they increase cravings. And to top it off, there are side effects from artificial sweeteners that range from bloating. Bloating is a huge one to even worse. Saccharin, for example, the original sugar substitute that has been used as a food additive since the early 1900s and is 300 to 500 times strong. Sweeter than sugar is the most studied. Its popularity peaked in the 70s during the diet craze. Its low came in the 1970s when it gained a warning label for the potential to cause cancer. Yup, cancer. And then there's aspartame. Do you remember receiving that little gumball in the meal years ago? This was the launch of aspartame. It is 200 times sweeter than sugar. Some of the reported dangers associated with aspartame are very serious, including death, nausea, migraines, muscle spasms, depression, even weight gain. There are even more rumors of a link to brain tumors, birth defects, Ms. and fibromyalgia. The list goes on. My own mom 10 years ago had severe migraines until she stopped her diet soda routine, which was sweetened with, guess what? Aspartame. Now, sucralose is newer. That is Splenda. It's a British import. And unlike its competitors, saccharin and aspartame, Splenda can withstand heat, which made it ideal for baking. It's made from sugar, but it's not considered a natural food product. And it's not used for energy by the body like sugar. Now, this one is 600 times sweeter than sugar. And 85% of sucralose is not digested and leaves the body as it came in. However, sucralose also has its own dangers. Headaches, including migraines, stomach bloating, gas constipation, diarrhea, all of these are common with sucralose, sorbitol and mannitol. Those are basically sugar alcohols. So sorbitol and mannitol are the sweeteners that can be found naturally. But sorbitol can be created by the reduction of glucose and mannitol by the hydrogenation of fructose. For this reason, I'm including sugar alcohols with the artificial sweeteners. Sorbitol is naturally occurring sugar in fruit and is used as a sugar substitute, food additive and preservative. It's most commonly used in sugar free gums and mints. But listen, beware. Sugar alcohols have a laxative effect. If you eat too much, they act as slow digesting carbs. And many learn this the hard way after eating a bag of sugar free candy which is typically made with sorbitol. Now, okay, so I know that this is a lot of information, but I hope you found it helpful and you figured out how bad these artificial sweeteners are and how they're linked to your cravings. So what is next? Well, I hope it is pretty clear by now since you have a better understanding of what happens when we include added sugars and artificial sweeteners into our diet, especially that high fructose corn syrup. It is seriously detrimental to fat loss and the biggest reason for fat storage, not to mention all those other side effects that I just mentioned. So you're probably wondering what can I eat and what are the right foods to eat and where does exercise tie into everything and what do I do to satisfy those sweet cravings? And what about sleep? Does that affect our fat loss? There is so much more I want to share with you and if you've watched all three of my videos so far, you know that your mind plays a huge role and it really is a big critical part. Beginning any transformation and understanding your goals and knowing why you're doing certain things will always help to keep you accountable. Getting our mind right is important, but we cannot forget our bodies. We have to get to know the right nutrition to feed it, the right movement and exercise to do for it. And we need to know how to take this information and apply it individually so that you can have your own formula for your fat loss transformation. Well, I've got some good news for you. I've been working on a full body reset and this is where I'm going to show you everything. In this small community, we get deep into the goals and the mindset and then I teach you everything about nutrition in a way that will not feel like information overload. You will understand why foods react the way they do in your body, why movement and certain exercises are critical for your fat loss and which ones. And I promise you, this information is critical. Critical for lasting fat loss and your own personal transformation. This community is going to help you with all of these goals. And in the next video, I'm going to share with you exactly how you can be part of this community. I'm going to teach you how this academy can truly change your life once and for all and keep you moving in that right direction. And because you've made it this far, you might actually be a great candidate for this. However, there's one caveat. It's only going to be open for a limited time and only for a certain amount of you. I've got to keep this community small so I can work with all of you. If you're interested, I want to hear from you. Let me know below. Comment. Tell me that you're interested, that you feel you're a candidate, and that you want more. And then do me a favor. Check your emails, check your spam box, because if you don't see me coming to your email, you can't get in. So treat this like a lifeline for you because it's so important that you watch this and if this is something that you want to be part of, you've got to do it early on while I have the space for you. I'd love to have all of you in this academy, but I only am going to have it open for a certain amount of you, the ones that take action quickly. Now, before you sign off, if you found this video helpful, I would love to hear from you and I would love for you to share this with others. So don't forget to leave me a comment below and I cannot wait to see you on this next video.