how to stay on a no sugar diet



almost everyone understand that sugar isn’tparticularly good for you and may feel guilty whenever having sweets or candy. this wasn’t always the case, sugar usedto be advertised as just a source of quick energy, and even as a means for losing weight. “mmm, another thing - the cold crisp tasteof coke is so satisfying it keeps me from

how to stay on a no sugar diet, eating something else that mght really addthose pounds.” with recent research on the health effectsas well as the sugar industry’s antics coming to light, the topic has gotten a lot of attention. the more you learn, the more you’ll wantto stop eating it.

as a recovering sugar addict myself, i’ve readand watched all kinds of great content on the subject, but the focus is rarely how toquit sugar. since i’ve already put out two videos onthe problems with sugar, i figure a solution is in order. the key point of this video is to explainwhy people become inclined to eat sugary foods, and how to undo this inclination. the other thing we’ll look at is the mindsetto have when approaching this, as well as how to react when you have a craving. several of the techniques in here can be appliedto eating less unhealthy foods in general

as well as quitting bad habits. there are five things that are working againstyou that need to be addressed. once those are out of the way, quitting sugarbecomes really easy. we’ll start with your brain. sugar keeps you consuming it regardless ofthe amount of food you have eaten for 2 reasons. the first is that it is actually biologicallyaddicting - sugar acts on your reward center in the brain to give you a sense of pleasurewhen you eat it. when you frequently consume sugar, you becometolerant to it and require more to get the same amount of pleasure.

then, you can suffer withdrawal symptoms likeheadaches, tremors, mood swings and irritability when you go without eating it. another way sugar keeps you eating more foodin general is by keeping you hungry. eating sugar causes an excess release of insulin,and when there is too much insulin present in the body, your hypothalamus cannot pickup on its leptin signal. leptin is a hormone released from the fat cellsthat is registered by your brain as a “satiety” signal so when your brain can’t pick up on thatsignal, it thinks you’re starving. ever had a soda or two before lunch and thought“man that really filled me up, i think i’ll have a light lunch.”

...me neither. your brain also interprets hunger as yourenvironment not having much food available so it says “we need to use less energy byreducing activity and we have to store whatever energy comes in”. anything that raises your energy expendituremakes you feel good - things like coffee, exercise or ephedra. anything like hunger that lowers your energyexpenditure makes you feel crappy. the sugar keeps you hungry and feeling lethargicand crappy. quitting cold turkey quickly breaks this cycleafter a week or two.

so here are the 10 most obese states in thenation. ten most obese states. here are the 10 laziest states in the nation,here are the 10 most unhappy states in the nation. here’s the adult diabetes rate, here’sthe adult heart disease rate and finally here’s soda per capita consumption. pretty significant overlap, wouldn’t yousay? yea? one thing i found really kept me going inspite of massive sugar cravings was knowing

that the longer i went without sugar the betteri would feel. this brings us to a key point which is: “reducingsugar doesn’t mean reducing happiness” the main premise of allen carr’s book “easyway to stop smoking,” is that you need to get it through your head that you’re notdepriving yourself of anything by quitting cigarettes. cigarettes don’t improve people’s livesin any way and the only reason smokers feel deprived while quitting is because of thedependency the cigarettes created. while sugar at least tastes good, the feelingof deprivation occurs for the same reason -extended use of sugar changes your brainso that you crave it.

a lot of people when faced with the idea ofquitting sugar will equate it to depriving themselves of pleasure. what they’re not realizing is that sugarisn’t raising overall happiness, it is simply creating a temporary contrast in happiness. if you’re constantly consuming sugar, youcan be making yourself unhappy, lethargic and fat without realizing it. so what is happening is your baseline happinessgets lowered, and you have a spike in pleasure when you eat sugar. however, when you’re not dependent on sugarfor that boost in pleasure, then your baseline

happiness is much higher and you’re morecontent all the time, not just when you get sugar. the other thing people will do when approachedwith the idea of quitting is that they will start to predict the agony they can expectand visualize it as a graph like this with time on the x axis and agony on the y axiswith agony extending out into eternity. the reality is that your body adapts to theabsence of sugar, so you will feel much more comfortable without it and worry about sugarless and less so that graph will look more like this: depending on what your diet looks like andfactors like whether or not you drink alcohol,

you can expect to start feeling much betterin as little as a week to two weeks. this brings us to the next thing that is workingagainst you: advertising & ...almost any store selling foodfood companies have found that virtually every food product they sell, they can add at leasta little bit of sugar to a product to make it tastier. the “bliss point” is a term used for thepoint at which the product is the sweetest and therefore tastiest it can be, before addingany more sugar would make it too sweet. this is why sugar is in 80% of foods on themarket, and it’s mostly in foods you wouldn’t expect to have any sweetness to them.

so you have to put in some effort to ensurewhat you’re buying doesn’t have added sugar and avoid all the tempting advertisementsand colorful packages. we’re bombarded with advertisements forcrappy and especially sweet food everywhere we go. you can try to ignore them, but having tosee these food pictures all the time is a bit confusing for your brain. your brain will release dopamine in responseto expecting to get that food. a car speeding towards you can immediatelyjack your heart rate up even if it stops 10 feet in front of you.

mothers will start to lactate when they heartheir baby crying even if it’s in another room. your brain has a lot of ways to prepare youfor what it expects to happen, and this is the same with food. when we think about, see or smell foods ourbrains trigger what is called the cephalic phase insulin release to prepare you for digestingthat food. the sweeter the brain thinks the food willbe, the more insulin it stimulates the pancreas to release. this extra insulin can make you feel evenhungrier as it will block your leptin signal,

like we discussed before. so, just the sight of sweet food can makeyou hungry even though the contents of your stomach have not changed at all. the good news is that you can deconstructthis programmed response the brain has created. if your normal programming is: see pictureof food, buy food, take food out of the package, eat food then advertisements or food labelsin the store can have a real strong effect on you. however if you change your programming to:see real food, check if food is fresh or ripe, cook food, and then eat food, your brain willstop associating colorful packages with eating

and it will become much easier to resist wellmarketed foods. the next thing you have working against youis your habits. in the “power of habit,” charles duhiggtalks about the basal ganglia, a primitive part of the brain that takes long series ofactions and packages them into a single “chunk”. so a task like unlocking your door, sittingdown, putting your seatbelt on, adjusting your mirror, putting the key in the ignitionand so on becomes just “backing out of the driveway.” duhigg says that habits “...emerge becausethe brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort.”

try and remember your commute to work in themorning yesterday. what do you remember about it? not much or maybe even none of it at all-this is because your basal ganglia takes over and you run on “autopilot”. the thing is is you can autopilot your mealstoo, this is something mcdonald’s is of course familiar with: “every mcdonald’s,for instance, looks the same—the company deliberately tries to standardize stores’architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to triggereating routines.” as you repeat an action, a fatty tissue calledmyelin covers the axons of your neurons.

myelin speeds up and strengthens nerve impulses,allowing actions associated with certain neurons to be performed with much less mental energy. this is where “practice makes perfect”comes from, but this also explains why people can get stuck into certain routines. you can get “good” at anything you do. “...but i’m pretty good at drinkin’beerðÿž¶ ” you can get “good” at deciding you’re better off going for the packagedfood since you’re too tired to cook. you can also get “good” at resisting cravingsfor junk food, buying some proper food, taking it home and cooking it.

the other side to this is familiarity andnostalgia. alan hirsch describes nostalgia as not relatingto “a specific memory, but rather to an emotional state. in robert lustig’s book “fat chance,”he says that food is one of the true enjoyments of life. “yet familiarity breeds greater cravings. ask philadelphians about their cheese-steaks,new orlean denizens about their po-boys and beignets or memphians about their barbecue. surprise!

those are among the three most obese citiesin the country.” all this information i’ve been throwingat you about how your brain reacts to food and develops habits et cetera is designedto be ammo for when you have a craving. understanding what causes the craving makesit much easier to control. in his ted talk, judson brewer describes atechnique that several smokers have used to kick their smoking habit. they just needed to analyze their smokingcravings and be mindful about what the craving felt like when it came up. they’d crave a cigarette and then noticetheir body was a little tense, heart rate

maybe sped up a little bit, and some noticedthey were fidgeting in their chair. by simply being mindful about these aspects,subjects were able to step out of the craving and realize what exactly it was and let itpass. next time you feel the urge to buy some processedfood or sugary snacks, think about why you’re doing this. are you just reacting to some advertisementyou saw? maybe you have a headache from the withdrawalperiod? maybe you have a habit of turning to sweetswhen you are stressed. by analyzing and understanding what it isthat’s creating the craving makes it really

easy to get in control, and let it pass. the fourth thing that has been set up to workagainst you is your gut. sugar contributes to the breakdown of theintestinal barrier, resulting in a “leaky gut,” which increases your body’s exposureto inflammation and creates several problems like worsening insulin resistance. were you to insert a gastroscope into someone’sstomach so that you could see their stomach lining, you could actually see the mucousmembrane turn red with irritation upon drinking coffee sweetened with sugar. john yudkin said in his 1972 book “purewhite and deadly” that sugar may alter “the

numbers and proportions of huge numbers ofdifferent microbes that inhabit the intestine. ... the sorts of food that have been eatenwill ... affect the proportion and numbers of the intestinal microbes.” recent evidence is showing that an unhealthygut microbiome could be to blame for adhd and autism in children as well as alzheimer’sand general “brain fog” in people of all ages. one way in which sugar affects your gut microbiomespecifically is by facilitating the growth of the problematic candida. candida is a type of fungi, a single celledmember of the yeast family.

an overgrowth of candida can lead to problemslike fatigue, weight gain, bloating and gas, irritable bowel syndrome, and constipation. like other types of yeast, the preferred foodfor candida is sugar. as the numbers of candida increase, it issuspected that they can directly cause sugar cravings as this is their preferred sourceof energy. this doesn’t sound so far fetched when youconsider the fact that we have a network of 100 million neurons lining our guts. this network is so extensive that it’s nicknamedthe “second brain” this second brain is thought to have a significant impact on yourmood and overall health.

one thing you can do to speed up the restorationof a healthy gut, as well as quitting sugar of course, is to eat fermented foods and takeprebiotics and probiotics. the last problem, which for some people maybe the easiest or hardest to address, is your family and friends. pediatric endocrinologist robert lustig noticedthat “a sugar addicted parent, similar to one who is drug addicted, will act as an “enabler,”“codependent,” or “apologist” for her child.” by the same token, your friends and familywho frequently consume sugar will most likely prefer that you continue to eat what theyeat.

they might accuse you of having become a healthnut or tease you and claim that sugar isn’t “that big of a deal.” ever tried to hang out with your friends atthe bar when you were cutting back on alcohol? you immediately have to offer up a good reasonfor not drinking, otherwise be constantly badgered about getting a drink. i’m guilty of doing this to friends in thepast myself. this doesn’t need much advice as most friendsare kind enough to leave you be after you’ve politely refused sweets long enough. where this can get tricky is when your friendsor family bring up certain points about sugar

to justify why it’s ok. the most common argument i’ve heard is “sugarcan’t be that bad because it’s in fruit.” this is where one of the most effective actionscomes in: simply read as much as you can about the topic of sugar. this not only allows you to respond to anyquestions and concerns you’re presented with, but will further strengthen your resolvetowards quitting. whatever reasons you had for quitting sugarinitially, you’ll have much more reasons to quit the more you read about what it doesin your body. (oh and by the way it’s the fiber that makesfruit ok.)

a properly done atkins diet works and a properlydone plant based vegan diet works, but one is high carb low fat and another is high fatlow carb. the traditional japanese diet, the mediterraneandiet, the ornish diet and the paleo diet all work, but the first three are high carb andthe paleo diet is low carb. what all of these have in common is that theyrestrict processed foods and refined sugars. all the data points to restricting processedfoods and especially restricting refined sugars being conducive to good health and properweight management.

this is the fight that is worth fighting andhigh carb versus low carb can take a backseat for now.

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