Sugar and Corn Syrup Make Us Fat; Fat Helps Us Lose Weight

Last week, I suffered from chronic headaches.  They felt like caffeine withdrawl headaches, but I hadn't been drinking caffeine. After an internet search, I realized they were from too much sugar.  I had been eating massive amounts of sugar for a week.

During my search about sugar addiction, I found this video.

And it blew my mind.

First of all, the speaker is a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco.  His name is Robert Lustig M.D.  He isn't a health guru or natural foodist or wanna be nutritionist; he is a expert, a medical doctor at a recognized research hospital.

I learned a lot. 

In case you don't want to watch the full 90 min. video  or you just want a recap, I'm going to summarize key points during January.  I hope it will help you achieve better health and lose weight (if that is your goal).

I started following these principles over the past few days and I have already lost 3 lbs.

Fructose makes us fat.  Specifically, corn syrup makes us fat. Fat does not make us fat.

The myth that fat makes us fat has been around for about 30 years.  In the mid 1980s, the government came out with recommendations that we eat less fat.  The low-fat diet was born.  Americans stopped eating so much fat and corn syrup was substituted into our foods.  Lowfat snacks were introduced, like Snackwells.  Americans should have become thinner, but the opposite happened.

Instead, Americans became fatter.

Why?

Fructose prevents us from becoming satitated.  The more corn syrup we eat or drink, the hungrier we are.  When we consume fructose, it doesn't stop our hunger hormone, ghrelin from being produced.  Fructose also keeps our bodies from making leptin, the hormone which tells us we have had enough to eat.

Fructose stops our bodies' ability to tell us when we are full and lets our brains tell us we are still hungry.

Even worse, the more fructose we eat or drink, the more likely we are to develop type 2 diabetes, a metabolic syndrome.  Fructose increases blood pressure and creates fat deposits in the liver and the rest of the body.  Watch the entire video for more information.

Is sugar healthier than fructose?  No.  Sugar (sucrose) is made up of glucose and fructose. 

(Whole fruits are healthy, but contain fructose. They work differently in the body and  I will tell you how next week.)

Healthy fats, on the other hand, can actually help you lose weight. 

You read that correctly.  Healthy fats can help you lose weight.

Of course, I'm not talking about saturated fats (fat in meat) or transfats (hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated fats).  Transfats are especially dangerous to health and promote weight gain.

Monounsaturated fats found in nuts, avocados, flaxseed, and olive oil have a fatty acid which decreases appetite. 

Oleic acid is transformed into OEA by cells in the upper region of the small intestine. OEA then finds its way to nerve endings that carry the hunger-curbing message to the brain. There, it activates a brain circuit that increases feelings of fullness. In previous studies, Piomelli found that increasing OEA levels can reduce appetite, produce weight loss and lower blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels. --Science Daily

One of the most important things you can do to improve your health and lose weight is to eliminate sugar and high fructose corn syrup from your diet.

The second is to replace saturated and hydrogenated fats with healthy fats.


Later this week, I will share how to lose 15 lbs. this year by removing one item from your diet and reveal how companies hide the amount of sugar in a product.