Whatever is bothering you, don’t feel bad about it, you’re not alone, and we are here to help you out.

In the past, I have really struggled with binging on candy and high sugar food. I was addicted. But, today, I have managed to quit most of the added sugar that used to be in my diet, but my journey is not over yet.

Food temptations are always around, and every day I have to remind myself to choose the long-term happiness of eating healthily instead of the few moments of instant pleasure you get from junk food.

What we eat greatly defines our mood, weight, and energy levels.

So, if you are looking to lose some weight, improve your mood, or wake up with more energy, you’ve landed in the right place.

Invest a few minutes of your time and, by the end of this article, you’ll know exactly what, when and how much you should eat.

Note: At the end of this article I will also share my current nutrition and exercise formula. 

Let’s start!

The three most important rules to lose weight, improve your mood, and get more energy are:

• 1st – At all costs, avoid high-sugar processed foods and drinks (candy, breakfast cereals, sport energy drinks, soft drinks, packaged fruit juices)
• 2nd – Eat real food
• 3rd – Eat less than you’re currently eating

1st – Avoid Junk and Processed Food

Very high in sugar, and contains no fiber and no nutrition value, processed food is designed to give you instant pleasure and create addiction. 

Processed and junk foods are very fattening due to their high levels of added sugar. Added sugar makes you fat (I explain how in this video) and makes you addicted. I explain all of this in my video Why added sugar is everywhere.

High sugar drinks are one of the worst things that the food industry makes, delivering the biggest profits for them and the biggest problems for those who drink them every day. Avoid soft drinks, packaged fruit juices, sports drinks, and soda at all costs.

This is by far the most important step in order to lose weight, increase energy and improve your mood: avoid or greatly reduce your consumption of junk, processed, and high sugar foods and drinks. 

Before moving on to the next step, start by eliminating as much junk food as you can from your diet.

2nd – Eat Real Food

Real food is what grows on trees, in the ground, runs on the land, swims in the seas, or flies in the air. Fruit, vegetables, legumes, meat, poultry, and fish.

Buy fresh organic food whenever you can and prepare your own meals so that you know exactly what you are eating.

It’s easier and faster to buy ready-made food but you’ll feel and look much better if you invest a little extra time in making your own meals.  

I’ve shared a ton of healthy recipes in the recipes section here, but don’t worry; I’ll help you choose the best recipes to get you started.  

Avoid or reduce dairy products like cow’s milk and cheese. Trust me, you’ll feel better, lighter and you’ll lose weight too.

3rd Step – Eat Less Than You’re Currently Eating

Once you’ve achieved the other two steps, it’s time to start gradually reducing your calorie intake.

If you’re looking to lose some weight, chances are that you’re eating more calories than your body is burning.

But before we reduce our calorie intake, we first need to know how much we are eating.

If this sounds like a boring task, that’s because it is! However, technology helps make it quicker and easier.

There’s an app called MyFitnessPal that is totally free. With it, you can add up all the food you eat and it will automatically calculate, or estimate, the number of calories you’ve consumed. You can download the app here for iPhone and here for Android.

Remember: Add everything, from the few peanuts you ate to that Mars Bar or that half a glass of coke. When I first started using this app I forget to add most of my snacks as I thought “it’s just a few calories – it won’t matter” but those little snacks add up to much more than you expect. So, add everything you eat, even those small snacks. And don’t forget any calorie-containing beverages too. 

After a few days you’ll have a clear idea of how much food and how many calories you are eating. 

After that, reduce your calorie intake by just a small amount – about 100-200 per day. 

Be patient and take it slow; it takes time to train your stomach and your appetite to get used to eating 200 calories less than normal. Once you’re comfortable, reduce your intake a little bit more. It’s not easy, and it takes time and discipline, but it’s not impossible and you’ll soon start to lose weight. 

Eat Balanced Meals: Carbs, Protein and Fats

Every meal should contain the three macronutrients: carbohydrates, protein and fats.

At dinnertime, we should eat meals that are low in carbs and that contain protein for a better night sleep and less fat production and storage.

Carbs have a bad reputation, and so too do fats, and so everybody is eating crazy amounts of protein.

There are good carbs and bad carbs, protein can come from plants or from animals, and there are good and bad fats too.

That’s why it is so important to take some time and understand carbs, protein and fats.

Carbs

Carbohydrate plays a vital role in our diet, but not all carbs are good for us.

Good Carbs: Vegetables, fruits, legumes, potatoes, green noodles, salads

Bad Carbs: Potato chips, soft drinks, candy and chocolate, soda, breakfast cereals, white rice/pasta/bread 

Let’s make it simple and easy to understand:

Good carbs are those foods that come from a tree or from the ground: Vegetables, fruits, legumes, potatoes, and green noodles. 

Bad Carbs are those foods that come in a package and that have been through many different processes before arriving in your supermarket. Fiber is removed, sugar is added, and the ingredients list is longer than the product’s name.

Good Carbs Examples (with recipes)

Oatmeal: Perfect for breakfast, cheap and easy to prepare. Oatmeal recipes here

Fruit: Mixed with oatmeal or have a fruit salad for breakfast. Always have your fruit 30 minutes before your main meal. 

Broccoli: Steamed, broccoli makes a perfect side dish. Recipes here.

Quinoa: Goes great with salads or oven-baked vegetables. All my quinoa recipes here.

Zucchini: Recipes here

Spinach: Spinach recipes here

For a deeper understanding of Carbs, I recommend you to check my guide What Are Carbs? A Beginner’s Carbs Guide.

Protein

Protein is one of the primary building blocks of your body. It’s very important for repairing and building muscle.

In nature, plants produce protein from amino acids. Animals eat plants, so they store protein in their muscles. 

We can get protein both from plants or from meat.  

In the last few years, I’ve been leaning more towards plant protein as most of the meat available in supermarkets is from animals that spend all their lives stressed in small cages, having high amounts of antibiotics pumped into them, and with very bad hygiene. 

In the last decade, a number of studies have revealed problems of a high meat diet.

Plant-based protein sources: 

• Legumes (lupin, lentils, green peas, soy, red, black, and yellow beans, fava beans, chickpeas)
• Spirulina
• Chia seeds
• Broccoli
• Quinoa
• Leafy greens
• Hemp seeds
• Tofu, tempeh, and edamame
• Almonds
• Oats

Animal Protein Sources

• Eggs
• Chicken
• Milk
• Cheese
• Beef
• Fish (tuna and salmon)
• Pork
• Lamb

Fiber Alert: Remember that meat, eggs and dairy don’t contain any fiber, so you should always include vegetables in your meals to add some. In contrast, all plant-based proteins contain fiber. 

Fiber is very important for digestive health. It helps clean your gut and prevent constipation where food rots in your intestine causing bacteria and parasites to flourish. You can learn more about the important role and benefits of fiber in my article Not Enough Fiber in Modern Diets

Fats

Just like we have good and bad carbs, not all fats are created equal. 

Fats have a bad reputation because, in the past, fats were thought to be stored as body fat. That’s not true. In fact, that’s what happens with sugar. All the excess sugar we eat is stored as fat in our body.

Fats are just as important as carbs and protein for our body, but we need to know what fats we should eat and which ones we should avoid.

We can get fats from plants or from animals and again, plant-based fat is more heathy than fat from animal sources

These are my simple Five Rules about Fats:

• No milk, cheese, butter or any dairy (I do have free range eggs)
• Have seeds and nuts
• Use extra-virgin olive oil for salads and for cooking instead of margarine, cooking oils, or butter
• Have wild fish and free-range meat
• Don’t abuse red meats (lamb, beef and pork)

You can learn in detail how to choose healthy fats in my article How to Choose Healthy Fats

You can also learn why Not All Fats Are Created Equally here

How Much to Eat

We all have different energy needs. Some of us work in front of a computer every day but do intense workouts. Others spend their days walking and constantly exercising. It’s impossible to have a set number of calories that is right for everyone. 

But we all know how much food we should have in one meal. We know the difference between being full and binging.

Eat slowly, use your teeth to chew the food into small pieces to help digestion, and remember to breathe. If you eat too fast, you will probably eat more than you should.

Preparing your meals in advance, when you’re not hungry, also helps to set the amount you know that’s enough for your lunch or dinner.

When you finish eating, if you still feel hungry, wait five minutes. In most cases, you are just tempted to binge and, after five minutes, that feeling should disappear. 

It’s also important to remember that your stomach can take a few minutes to tell your brain it’s full. Waiting a few minutes before eating more gives your stomach chance to let your brain know it doesn’t really need any more food. 

The Real Foods

Vegetables: High in vitamins, minerals, and fiber, vegetables help to make you feel full and cleanses your gut. Steam your vegetables to preserve the vitamins.

Fruit: High in sugar and fiber, these are the healthiest carbs you can eat so I have some fruit every morning. Fruit contains sugar, but it’s also very high in fiber which makes sugar absorption slower and causes a smaller insulin spike. This is the big difference from processed foods with added sugar. Learn more about the different of natural vs added sugar here.

Red Meat: An important source of protein and fat but remember that meat, eggs, dairy and fish, do not contain any fiber. Always have your veggies. These days most of the meat we eat is produced using high amounts of hormones and antibiotics, fed with corn, and very little is produced free-range. For that reason I never eat red meat more than once a week.

Eggs and Fish: Free range eggs are a good source of protein, and wild fish provides good source of fat and omega-3 fatty acids. 

Dairy, Butter and Milk: Avoid as much as you can. 

Healthy Fats, Nuts and Seeds: Extra-virgin olive oil, avocados, coconuts, nuts, and seeds are a very good sources of healthy fats in your diet.

What We Should Avoid Eating:

Processed food: Everything that comes in a package, a bottle, or any kind of plastic wrap.

Junk and Fast Food: Everything that comes from a drive-through. 

Refined Carbs: Highly processed food with high amounts of added sugar, including breakfast cereals, commercial granola, ice-cream, liquid carbs (soda, soft drinks), chocolates, candy bars, energy bars…all the crazy high sugar stuff that is so easy to binge on over and over again.

Why Junk Food Makes You Fat?

Most junk/processed food is very high in sugar. You don’t have to trust my word; just check the food label (learn how to read food labels). When we eat too much sugar, our body converts the excess into fat.

Watch this quick animation video where I explain how this happens

Avoid Snacking

When we eat, the beta cells in the pancreas produce insulin. As we have seen in the video before (you’ve watched the video, right?) insulin removes the excess sugar from our blood. 

Now, some foods raise insulin more than others. That’s because some foods are “sweeter” than others (learn more about the Glycemic Index here). A Mars candy bar contains much more added sugar than one mango, even though a mango is pretty sweet. 

Mangos contains fiber which makes sugar absorption much slower, so the sugar goes into the blood stream more slowly and steadily. A chocolate bar contains much more sugar and no fiber, so the sugar floods our blood stream very fast. The pancreas has to start producing as much insulin as it can to remove the excess sugar as quickly as possible.

After we eat, insulin is produced, and while we have insulin in our blood, we are always storing fat. 

That’s why if you take insulin in the form of pills you will gain weight. It’s as simple as that.

The natural way to keep insulin production to zero is not to eat. That’s why it’s very important to allow four hours between meals.

This means no snacking between meals, otherwise your pancreas will be constantly producing insulin, and that insulin will be producing and storing fat all the time. You don’t want to be a fat producing and storing machine.

Allow your body to digest all the food you have eaten and let insulin levels drop to start burning stored fat for energy.

Carbs timing: Before or After Workout

If you exercise, have your carbs an hour or so before or after the your workout. This way the carbs are used for energy and are not stored as fat.

You can learn more about when to eat carbs in my article Carb Timing and Exercise

Ways to reduce calories

• More veggie noodles (how to make veggie noodles here) instead of white pasta or white rice

• Light dinners: soups (recipes here) or salads (recipes here)

• Oatmeal for breakfast: It makes you feel fuller for longer due to the fiber and protein. Oatmeal Recipes here

• Whole foods instead of fast/processed foods

My Nutrition & Exercise Formula

This is my personal nutrition and exercise formula. It’s probably not the best formula out there as there’s always room for improvement, but this is by far the one that’s given me the best results in terms of energy, mood and mental focus. 

• No processed junk or fast food: If it has more than four ingredients on the package I don’t eat it
• No dairy, cow’s milk or cheese: I have almond milk instead
• Try to avoid white bread and white pasta (I have it around twice a week)
• Most of my meals are prepared at home from fresh ingredients 
• I do my best (as my budget allows) to buy organic fruit and vegetables
• No more than two meals a week of red meat
• Only cage-free meat and eggs
• Only wild fish
• No alcohol abuse. I don’t go for spirits, but I love an occasional glass of white wine in the summer and red wine in the winter
• Exercise at least twice a week, and I do my best to walk at least 15 minutes per day

Note: If you prefer to watch a video explaining how added sugar makes you fat, click here and a new window will open. You can watch the video and come back to this page afterward. 

Glucose comes from the Greek word for “sweet”. Some foods are sweeter than others, and some foods contain more sugar (glucose) than others. 

The glucose is absorbed into our bloodstream. The sweeter (and higher in sugar) the food we eat higher is, the higher the levels of sugar in our blood will be.

Glycogen

When you eat carbohydrates, the carbs are converted into glucose and used for instant energy. If there is any left over, this excess of “sweet” (glucose) is then converted into glycogen. Glycogen is just glucose and water bound together into a single molecule. 

Glycogen is stored in the liver and in the muscles. Glycogen is stored energy for later use. Your muscles use it during exercise and liver glycogen is released if blood glucose levels start to fall, such as if you miss breakfast. 

It’s estimated that our glycogen storage capacity is around two thousand calories – 400 in your liver and the rest in your muscles. 

Fat

Once our glycogen stores are full, which doesn’t take long as our storage capacity is small, (around 2000 calories) we start storing unused glucose as fat. 

If we continue to eat more carbs than we need, with no physical activity, we continue to generate more fat so that excess energy can be stored.

High sugar foods – Refined Carbs

• Breakfast cereals
• Packaged fruit juices and soda
• Soft drinks (nothing soft about them, they’re high in sugar)
• Sports energy drinks
• Candy
• Flavored yogurt
• Flavored milk and sweetened non-dairy milks e.g. almond milk, soya milk etc. 
• Salad dressings
• Commercial sauces (ketchup, barbecue, tomato)
• Vitamin Water
• Flavored green tea and coffee
• Ready to eat soups
• Granola bars
• Commercial granola
• Iced tea and iced coffee drinks 

When you check the food label on any of the previously listed processed foods or drinks, you will see that they all contain high quantities of sugar. 

The American Heart Association recommends that adults consume no more than nine teaspoons of sugar per day. In America, most adult men consume 25 teaspoons of sugar per day, and most women consume about the same. That’s a whole lot of sugar. 

But, besides these obvious high sugar foods (learn how to read food labels here) there are other not-so-obvious-foods that also cause insulin spikes that can result in fat production and storage.

To help you identify which foods raise high blood sugar levels the most, you can use the  Glycemic Index, GI for short.

Glycemic Index ranks foods from 0 to 100. The higher the number, the higher food will increase your blood glucose levels. 

Examples:

• Apple (raw) 36
• Orange (raw) 43
• Kidney beans 24
• Popcorn 65
• White Bread 75
• White Rice (boiled) 73
• Sucrose (table sugar) 65

As you can see, there are Low GI Foods (55 or less), Medium GI foods (56-69), and High GI foods (70 or more). 

The fruit and whole wheat have a low glycemic index, causing only a small increase in blood sugar. 

As foods become more processed, the GI gets higher, like couscous and popcorn.

All processed food has a high glycemic index, because processed food contains very little fiber and is very high in sugar (sucrose, fructose, glucose).

High GI foods are more likely to end up being converted to fat as they flood  dyour blood with lots of glucose at the same time. They are broken down very quickly and that spells trouble for your insulin levels and your fat stores. 

After the sugar spike we then have a sugar crash to deal with and that causes cravings, feelings of hunger, and can cause our mood to worsen – we need another hit of sugar to feel happy again. 

To avoid high sugar levels in our blood, which would lead to death, our pancreas produces a hormone called insulin to remove all the excess sugar (glucose) from our blood. 

That’s why after eating, our insulin levels spike. The insulin enters our bloodstream and removes all the excess “sweet” (glucose).

Insulin not only lowers blood glucose and helps to store glucose as glycogen, it also prevents fat burning too. 

High sugar and high GI foods cause higher insulin levels because more insulin is needed to remove the sugar excess from the blood. Continuously high levels of insulin can lead to insulin resistance, which is the number one cause of type 2 diabetes. Avoiding high sugar and high GI foods and beverages is the best way to avoid weight gain and prevent type 2 diabetes. 

The High Sugar Diet Problem 

Processed foods are high in calories and contain too much sugar (glucose) so more fat is created.

High doses of sugar mean that more insulin is required to remove all the sweet (glucose) from the blood. And since our glycogen stores are soon full, that excess sugar is converted into and stored as fat to remove it from the blood.

Why Added Sugar is Everywhere, a quick animation video explaining the hidden formula of Food Companies to make more money. Click here to watch the video (a new window will open)

Today in American, and all over the world, we are living on a high sugar diet. Added sugar is the number one cause of obesity and many metabolic chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, Chronic High Blood Pressure, heart disease, and even dementia. I’ve published an article about the dangers of added-sugar here Worldwide Sugar is Killing us.

Ditching, or at least reducing the consumption of added-sugar has to be a priority for all of us.

I’ve created a simple challenge to help you break your sugar addiction, and you can find it here: Welcome to 20 No-Sugar Days Diet

Top 5 Causes of Stress in America (according to the American Psychological Association)

• Job Pressure: Work overload, co-worker tensions
• Money: Loss of job, medical expenses
• Health: Chronic illness, health crisis
• Relationships: Loneliness, divorce, arguments with friends
• Poor Nutrition: Refined carbs (high in added sugar), junk/processed food, caffeine
• Media Overload: Instagram, Facebook constantly showing us amazing moments while we do “tedious” work tasks
• Sleep Deprivation: Too much stress means too much brain activity, so we’re unable to relax and sleep properly
• Violence/Crime: Especially in urban areas
• These are the most common causes of stress, but there are lots more and every year the list gets longer. 

Our lives and environments are becoming more and more stressful, with more work and family tasks to do in less time, but with the added pressure of trying to avoid compromising quality. We are asked to do better and more in less time, and often with fewer resources. 

Subsequently, we have less time and energy for our friends and family, we put our dreams on hold, and this all leads to frustration which causes anxiety and stressful thoughts.

In stressful situations, our adrenal glands release cortisol, the stress hormone. 

Cortisol prepares our body for action by:

• Increasing blood glucose and diverting glucose to the muscles for energy.
• Diverting blood away from your internal organs to your muscles. 
• Switching to survival mode: Growth, digestion and other long-term metabolic activities are temporarily restricted. 

At a first glance, it looks like cortisol could help you to burn more energy and lose weight, and it does, but only in the short-term.

Prolonged high levels of stress lead to continuously high cortisol levels which raise blood sugar (glucose) levels and trigger a spike in insulin production.

Short-term elevated cortisol levels help to burn more energy, but prolonged high levels of cortisol will lead to increased insulin levels. More insulin means more fat storage. The very opposite of what we want. 

Too much stress during the day can also lead to too much stress at night – especially when it’s time to sleep. Increased brain activity during the night causes poor quality sleep and we may also sleepless. This means we wake up feeling tired and with very low energy levels.

A good night’s sleep is not just about how long we sleep, but the quality of that sleep too. Have you ever woken up after a night of sleep feeling more tired than when you went to bed? If the answer is yes, you experienced too much stress at night for yourself.  

Anxiety, worrying, planning, frustration, and thinking about all the tasks we haven’t yet finished means we are often unable to shut down or quiet our thoughts. Instead of calming down, our brains stay in high gear with lots of thoughts running around at the same time. 

We fall asleep but we are too stressed to have the good night’s sleep we need to recharge our batteries and get ready for next day.

When we are tired we tend to binge on junk food. That’s not just my personal experience;  studies have proven it too. It’s been shown that when we don’t get enough rest, we tend to eat more. A study published in Nature.com revealed that sleep-deprived people ate around 385 calories more than usual. Study participants craved high fat, high sugar, and processed foods. 

Another study showed that sleep deprivation causes a higher consumption of high-calorie food.

Scientific American writes “Past studies have established that the stress of sleep deprivation puts the autonomic nervous system on alert, leading to increases in the hunger hormone ghrelin and decreases in the satiety hormone leptin”. This means more hunger signals and fewer satiety signals. This hormone unbalance makes the perfect combination for weight gain.

Ways to Reduce Stress

These are the most common ways that Americans manage their stress: 

• Listen to music
• Exercise: Walk, run or hit the gym
• Meditation
• Yoga

I would like to add the methods I personally find best for reducing my stress levels:

• Sports: Running (our running guide here), home workout routines (a 5-minute workout you can do at home without equipment video here), and walking (our walking guide here)
• Reading: I prefer non-fiction books
• Meditation: During the last month I have been using the Headspace app. It’s free and very easy to use. You can use it to help you meditate anywhere.
• Listen to books: When my eyes are tired, listening to a fiction book while lying in bed helps me to forget my tasks and problems and allows me to be absorbed and distracted by the book’s story.
• Journaling: Writing down my problems, worries, tasks and my in-the-moment thoughts helps me to reduce my brain activity and also improves my sleep time.
• Reduce caffeine: Too much caffeine can make you irritable and tense, increasing your stress levels. Too much caffeine also increases cortisol production. 

Before you go…

Beyond weight loss, reducing stress must be a priority as we are living in evermore stressful times, and stress is the leading cause of many different diseases. It can make you feel depressed and constantly tired, and also affect your relationships and even your job. Reducing stress is one of the most important things you can do for your mental and physical health. 

On the downside, most pasta and noodles are high in carbs and contain gluten. For that reason, they might not be the best food for you. They do contain fibre, more if you buy wholemeal products, but even that doesn’t cancel out their potential drawbacks. 

Veggie noodles are a great alternative to regular pasta and noodles. With veggie noodles, you get lots of vitamins, minerals, and fibre, but hardly any of the calories you normally get in pasta. They still cook fast and are very cheap, but they are much better for your health and your weight.

You can make veggie noodles with a knife, but in my experience, it just takes too long and you don’t get evenly-sized pieces. It’s much easier to use a device called a spiralizer. 

Spiralizers are like mini food processers that quickly and easily slice your veggie into thin, evenly-thick strips. In no more than a few seconds, you’ll have a big bowl of healthy, nutritious veggie noodles that you can cook in seconds or even eat raw. 

There are two recipes using veggie noodles  – Raw Beets and Sweet Potato Salad and Raw Zucchini Noodles & Garlic Sauce – and more will be coming soon. There are also three easy spiralizer recipes at the end of this article so make sure you give them a try. 

The best spiralizers 

There are lots of different spiralizers to choose from, making it hard to decide which one to buy. To make things easier, I’ve researched and reviewed three of the best available. 

1. Mueller Spiral-Ultra Multi-Blade Spiralizer

Sale

270 Reviews

Spiralizer Vegetable Slicer

- Vertical Makes it More Efficient
- Less Mess Easier to Clean
- High-Quality Plastic BPA Free and Superior Garnishing Knives

$15.95

Buy on Amazon

Most spiralizers are pretty lightweight. That’s okay if you only want to use it once or twice a week, but what if you want to make and eat veggie noodles every day? The Mueller Spiral-Ultra Multi-Blade Spiralizer is a bit more heavy duty and is designed for regular use. It has a clip-on bowl to collect your noodles as you make them which means your noodles won’t spill out onto your kitchen surface. 

Supplied with a variety of blades, you can use this spiralizer to slice, make different thickness noodles, grate cheese, and even as a juicer. In fact, it has eight different functions. 

Small and compact, this product looks good, is easy to use, and is much more versatile and useful than a single-function spiralizer. 

Scoring 4.4 out of five stars, 72% of reviewers award this spiralizer the full five out of five stars. If you don’t mind paying a few extra dollars, this do-it-all spiralizer is a good choice. 

2. Spiralizer Vegetable Slicer

Sale

270 Reviews

Spiralizer Vegetable Slicer

- Effortless and Easy to Use
- Spiralize Recipe eBook Included

$15.95

Buy on Amazon

If you want to produce a variety of different-sized noodle, or also want to be able to slice your veggies, this spiralizer is a good choice. It’s like a manually-driven food processor and is much more versatile than a lot of other similar devices.

With this spiralizer, you place your veggies in a sort of lathe and then turn a handle. The result? Perfect noodles or sliced veggies. The blades are made of stainless steel, and there are several different types, so you can create a variety of different veggie noodles. A large suction cup on the base will hold your device in place while you work.

This product breaks down into three parts for easy washing and storage and is supplied with an e-book full of good recipes.

This well-priced product scores 4.6 out of five stars, with 82% of users awarding it the full five out of five. It you want more than just a simple handheld spiralizer, but don’t want to spend a lot of money, this is a good choice.

3. DRAGONN Vegetable Spiralizer

Sale

163 Reviews

DRAGONN Vegetable Spiralizer

- Lifetime Warranty
- Two Super Sharp Blad Types

$9.95

Buy on Amazon

The Dragonn vegetable spiralizer is cheap and very easy to use. It’s a handheld tool that’s small and portable so you can take it with you when you are traveling or store it in a drawer when you aren’t using it.

All you need to do is hold the spiralizer in one hand, push a vegetable into the end with your other hand, and then twist. There are no moving parts so there is nothing to break or go wrong. Supplied with a cleaning brush and a carry/storage bag, this spiralizer has long lasting and super-sharp ceramic blades.

Reviewers on Amazon.com award this product 4.1 out of five stars, with 60% giving the maximum five stars. If you want a simple, cheap spiralizer, this is a great choice.

Which one is right for you? 

If you want a spiralizer for occasional use, and only want to spend a few dollars, the DRAGONN Vegetable Spiralizer is your best choice. Small and compact, it’s a good option for light use. Available at Amazon.com.

If you want a more substantial, versatile spiralizer, but still don’t want to spend lots of money, the lightweight Spiralizer Vegetable Slicer is both good value and good quality. The lack of a bowl is the only real drawback. Available at Amazon.com.

If you want a heavy-duty spiralizer for regular use, and you want to do other slicing and juicing jobs too, the Mueller Spiral-Ultra Multi-Blade Spiralizer is a good option. It’s not quite a food processer but comes very close! It’s also very competitively priced. Available at Amazon.com.

DRAGONN

Mueller Spiral-Ultra Multi-Blade

Spiralizer Vegetable Slicer

Low Price

Lifetime warranty and live telephone customer support

Good Quality

-

Vertical Use Makes it Less Messy and Easy to Clean

-

-

Superior Knives Quality

-

163 Reviews

4,629 Reviews

270 Reviews

$9.95

$23.97

$15.95

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Amazon

DRAGONN

Low Price

-

-

163 Reviews

$9.95

Buy on Amazon

Mueller Spiral-Ultra Multi-Blade

Lifetime warranty and live telephone customer support

Vertical Use Makes it Less Messy and Easy to Clean

Superior Knives Quality

4,629 Reviews

$23.97

Buy on Amazon

Spiralizer Vegetable Slicer

Good Quality

-

-

270 Reviews

$15.95

Buy on Amazon

Recipes 

When I first started using a spiralizer, all I really did was slice up zucchini and use the noodles instead of pasta. I’d lightly cook some chicken strips, toss in the noodles for a few minutes, and then add some pesto. Simple and tasty, but also a little dull after a while. 

Here are three spiralizer recipes you can try so you don’t end up making the same meals other and over again. 

1. Mini butternut squash frittatas – makes 12

These mini frittatas are easy to make, healthy, and perfect for snacks and lunchboxes. Make up a batch at the weekend, and you’ll have more than enough to last you for the rest of the week. 

Ingredients 

• 1 tablespoon olive oil 
• 1 large butternut squash – peeled and spiralized 
• 1 red onion – spiralized 
• 1 red chili chopped and deseeded
• 6 eggs 
• 4 sprigs of thyme, leaves only
• 100 grams crumbled goats’ cheese 

Method 

1. heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly oil a 12-hole muffin tin. 
2. In an oiled pan, cook the squash and onion spirals until they are softened. Add the chili and then remove from the heat and allow to cool. 
3. Beat the eggs in a bowl with a little pepper and salt. Add the cooled, cooked veggies, cheese, and thyme leaves, and combine thoroughly. 
4. Spoon the mixture evenly into the muffin tin and then bake for 15-18 minutes until the eggs are set. 

Recipe credit: bbcgoodfood.com 

Image credit: bbcgoodfood.com 

2. Spiralized potatoes with parmesan and garlic – four servings 

This simple side dish is very easy to make but looks and tastes amazing! You, your friends, and your family are going to love it. 

Ingredients 

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 medium potatoes, spiralized
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• Salt and pepper 
• ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese 
• ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
• ¼ cup chopped parsley

Method 

1. Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the potato noodles and the garlic, salt, pepper, and rosemary. Toss and cook for ten minutes, or until slightly browned. 

2. Transfer the potatoes to a serving bowl and top with the cheese and parsley. Serve while still warm. 

Image credit: biteofhealthnutrition.com 

Recipe credit: inspiralized.com 

3. Spiralized raw carrot salad with lemon and Dijon – four servings 

Raw salads are super-healthy and very easy to make. This colourful salad is one of my favourite lunchtime treats. 

Ingredients 

• 1 pound of carrots, peeled and spiralized 
• 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard 
• 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice 
• 1 tablespoon olive oil 
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper 
• 1 tablespoon chopped shallots 

Method

In a large bowl, combine the spiralized carrots with the mustard, lemon juice, olive all, salt and pepper. Toss well to ensure the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Cover and chill in the fridge for an hour and then serve. 

Recipe credit: skinnytaste.com 

Contrary to what doctors, food companies and the media say, it is not your fault.

It has nothing to do with a lack of willpower or any other kind of failure. We feel hungry, cold, tired, and depressed. These are all real measurable physical effects of calorie restriction.

Calorie Restriction

 There are mainly two categories of calorie restriction: 

15% Moderate Calorie Restriction – This is where we slightly reduce our daily food intake. There are studies showing the benefits of how eating what we need is better than overeating. In a well-balanced meal, 15% calorie restriction basically means not overeating. Most of us eat more food than we need. 

It takes some time to get used to this but 15% calorie restriction provides your body with all the calories it needs and eliminates the excess that would otherwise cause weight gain.  More about this in our article “Eat less Live Longer” 

50% Severe Calorie Restriction – This is a huge restriction which results in quick weight loss but makes us feel cold, tired, depressed, and unfocused. These are the most popular diets and the biggest failures in terms of weight loss. 

This kind of diet works very well in terms of weight loss, but only for the first few months. Then weight loss hits a plateau, and those lousy, cold and tiring sensations continue. Eventually, anyone following this type of diet will give up, gaining back all the weight they lost in just a month or two.

2000 calories – This is the standard recommendation for how many calories a normal adult should eat. It’s kind of a magic number.  This number cannot be the same for all of us, but it’s only a reference of what an average adult needs per day. Some of us need fewer calories, and some of need more. 

Another quick note: Not all calories are equal and the calories from a bunch of fruit doesn’t have the same effect on our body as a Wendy’s burger and fries, or a bowl of Special K granola loaded with refined sugar.

Why Calorie Restriction Diets Don’t work 

I’ve found a very good analogy in the book “The Obesity Code” to explain how our body manages energy expenditure. 

Imagine that you work in a power station that produces all the energy for a city. To produce all the energy the city needs, the power station must burn 2000 tons of coal. 

Every day a truck carrying 2000 tons of coal arrives, sometimes a little more.

The most intelligent thing to do is to store the extra coal in case one day there’s a problem with the coal distribution. You slowly build a coal savings stash.

Then, one day, you only get 1500 tons. If you continue to burn 2000 tons you would quickly burn all the extra stash that took you so much time to create, using all your savings. Without these savings, you could run out of coal and the city would go on a total blackout, and you’d be fired.

A smarter choice would be to use only the 1500 tons. Sure, some parts of the city might experience some energy shortages but, in general, the city would be all powered up and functioning properly. You would keep your job and keep your coal savings intact.

Once you start getting the 2000 coal again, you would probably build up more savings and burn more coal.

Slowly you would start burning the 2000 tons.

This illustrates how our body works. We use the energy we consume, while we try to store energy to be on the safe side. Once we reduce our calorie intake, our body adapts to use less energy. 

We feel tired, cold, and depressed because our body reduces some activities in order to use less energy. It adapts to the available energy without using our stored energy (fat).

Studies have shown that this works both ways – calorie restriction AND calorie surplus. 

When you increase the number of calories consumed, people gain more weight during the first few months but, once the body adapts, it starts to burn the energy available and the body slowly bodyweight stabilizes.

Besides the increase or decrease of body functions to balance energy usage, our body also uses hormonal signals to amplify or reduce hunger signals.

When we drastically reduce calorie intake (50%) our hunger hormones signals are amplified and we’re constantly thinking about food. When we eat more than we need (50% more) our hunger hormones are so silent that we hardly think about taking another bite of food.

These’s not just common sense. The effects of calorie restriction have been widely studied. The biggest starvation experiment was ever done on humans, The Minnesota Starvation Experiment, revealed exactly how this happens. Learn more about this experiment here.

But why do we lose weight during the few first months of a diet? 

Say we have 2000 calories per day (the magic number of calories that every adult should have per day). 

Your body probably burns all 2000 of those calories.

One day you reduce your intake to 1000 calories. It takes time for your body to adapt, so in the beginning, it continues to use 2000 calories per day. It makes up this calorie shortfall by burning fat, and you lose weight. 

As you continue your diet, your body starts to slowly reduce some activities to reduce the energy expenditure. Less heat, so you feel cold, less brain activity, so you feel unfocused, less energy for metabolism, so you feel tired, lousy and depressed. 

You’ve lost some weight but, one day, your body weight hits a plateau. As you feel tired, lousy and depressed, you continue your diet with huge sacrifices but no rewards. Your weight is stuck because you are burning the same amount of energy you’re eating.

This has been proven by one of the biggest starvation experiments ever done on humans, The Minnesota Starvation Experiment. 36 young people were given too much food (3200 calories) and others got too few (800 calories). 

In short, what happened was that in the beginning, one group gained weight and the other lost weight as expected, but not as much as you might think. 

After the experiment, once the diet finished, both groups went back to the exact same weight as before the experiment. This is what happens to all of us when we start any calorie restriction diet. You can read more details of the experiment in my other article “The Minnesota Starvation Experiment.”

Why is it so hard to burn fat?

Contrary to popular belief, when we reduce our calorie intake our body adapts to use less energy. This means it burns less fat, and not more when we eat less. 

Food and air are critical for us. When we reduce the amount of food we eat, our body cleverly adapts to use the same amount of energy we consume.

We have energy stores, glycogen in the liver and fat under the skin, but our body always prefers to leave those stores untouched. Why? Because we can never predict how much food we will have tomorrow.

In the past: Food was not always so abundant, and there were times of feasting and famine. The body stored as much energy as possible during feasting times and used the stored energy whenever food was short. 

Today: Food is abundant. In fact, we are constantly being bombarded with food advertising and you can pretty much eat everywhere 24/7. There are no famines, but our body doesn’t know that. It continues to store as much energy as possible, just in case that one day there is no food and it will still have energy to use. 

Scientifically:  Every time we eat, insulin is produced by the pancreas to remove the excess sugar from our blood. Insulin removes the excess of sugar and it stores it as glycogen in the liver and muscles. Once that storage is full (there is a very limited capacity) it starts to generate fat and stores it under the skin. 

As we continue to eat, more fat is generated and stored. Once we stop eating, a few hours are needed for insulin levels to drop. Only then will we start to use our stored genergy; first glycogen is used and once depleted (12h with exercise activity or 24h with no intense activity) the body starts to burn stored fat. 

This is why avoiding snacks allow insulin levels to drop so the body can burn glycogen. Intense exercise or Fasting are the only ways to burn stored fat.

Our body always finds a balance between calories in and calories out, so it can avoid burning fat as it’s our emergency energy store.

Why are other diets doomed to fail?

There are other diets besides Calorie Restriction. We have the Ketogenic diet, the Low-Fat diet, the High-Fat Low Carb diet, the Portion Control diet, etc. 

All these diets have two things in common – they severely reduce your food intake, and they only work for a month or two. 

Most of us start a diet to lose weight, but we don’t plan to follow that diet for the rest of our lives. Mostly, it’s only to lose that extra weight and then continue to eat healthily, maintaining tour goal weight thereafter. But it never works out like that, and we, and everybody around us tend to blame ourselves for the failure.

It’s not a failure, it’s natural.

All these different types of diet have the same things in common: calorie or food restriction. We are constantly restricted in what we can eat and how much we can eat. We continue the sacrifice while we see the results, but all the while are going against our will. We are only driven by the results. 

Once the results are not what want, we lose hope, we don’t see the point of continuing, and all the sacrifices leave us feeling miserable, and so we give up. 

Then, when we go back to our previously unhealthy diets or eating too many calories, we regain the weight we have just worked so hard to lose. 

Why is Hard to Lose Weight?

Losing weight triggers two important responses:

-Total energy expenditure, as we have seen earlier

-Hormonal signals to amplify hunger and motivate us to get more food

As we start to lose weight our hunger hormones amplify their signals to get more food, we feel hungrier and more obsessed with food. 

What is the solution? No More Diets!

We are all different. We have different food habits, different daily routines, and live in different parts of the world. Because of this, there can be no “one size fits all” diet for successful weight loss. 

Because of this, I have found the best way to lose weight and keep it off is to avoid diets and instead experiment with different approaches to find the best sustainable solution for weight loss for you. Habits that last a lifetime are better than any unsustainable, short-term diet. 

Good habits that work include: 

No More Sodas

Sodas and other high sugar beverages are loaded with refined fructose, added sugar, or artificial sweeteners.

Refined fructose is the cause of fatty non-alcoholic liver disease because fructose, just like alcohol, is only processed by the liver. 

High consumption of added sugar is converted into fat in our body, making us fatter and sicker. You can learn more in my video explaining this process in detail.

Artificial sweeteners do not contain calories, and diet drinks like diet soda are popular because they don’t contain added sugar or refined fructose, and they are very low in calories. 

What most people don’t know is that artificial sweeteners are highly addictive, just like sugar, and they can raise insulin levels, causing insulin resistance and fat gain. Some artificial sweeteners, like aspartame, are even linked with cancer.

Avoid Added Sugar

Sugar is the source of energy of every cell in our body, but we need very little sugar in our diet. Too much sugar in our blood makes us sick, so our body must quickly remove the excess sugar from our blood. That’s insulin’s job.

Fruit provides all the sugar we need, but fruit contains fiber to make sugar absorption slower and avoid raising blood sugar too high or too fast. This means insulin can do its job slowly and steadily.

Refined carbs like bread, breakfast cereals, sodas, chocolates, candy, processed food, junk food, and most of the food available in supermarkets contain refined sugar without any fiber. 

As we eat junk food without any fiber, our blood sugar levels spike so high that our body must produce ha a large amount of insulin to remove all the sugar from our blood. 

As we continually eat loads of sugar every day, our pancreas continually produces more and more insulin. This can cause insulin resistance and we start to develop type 2diabetes. Watch my video Why Added Sugar is Everywhere and learn who’s profiting from it.

Added sugar is the number one cause of obesity and overweight in the world. Avoiding added-sugars is the most simple and efficient step to lose weight. Simply avoiding added sugar or artificial sweeteners will help you lose weight easily. You can check out the 20 No-Sugar Days Challenge to get motivated and ditch sugar from your diet today.

Eating Less

I’m not saying you should dramatically reduce the amount of food you eat. Instead, I’m talking about eating only what you need. We all know when we are full, and when we want more food just for the taste of it.

Eating what we need is what we have been doing for centuries, but during the last 40 years, we have been binging on food like never before.

We use food to suppress emotions, we use food to reduce anxiety, we use food to deal with frustration, we use food to celebrate, we use food to deal with isolation. After all, food has a big impact on our brain and our emotions. 

We all know this and yet we continually eat more than we need. The result: we get fatter, sicker, and we don’t feel any better. We just feel worst and perpetuate these unhealthy eating habits every single day.

We need food every day, we depend on food to live every day, but that doesn’t mean we need to eat all day. 

Enjoy your meals, eat as much as you need, but using food to deal with our emotions only makes us feel worse than before.

Eating more is not the solution. In fact, that’s exactly the problem. Eat less to enjoy a better, longer life.

Fasting

Instead of a severe food reduction to lose weight, I prefer to skip my breakfast and extend my nighttime fast until noon. I’ve been doing this for a year and I’ve lost weight. More importantly, I’ve maintained my weight loss without having to make any food sacrifices. 

We all fast during the night, but, after we wake up, if we extend our fasting period it allows our body to continue burning that extra energy we have stored in our liver in the form of glycogen. 

If we extend our fast for 24 hours we start burning fat without doing any kind of exercise. It may sound crazy, but it’s all natural, healthy and proven by different studies from today and from centuries ago. Fasting is a well-known medicine, not only for weight loss but for healing too. You can learn more about fasting in my article here. 

No Snacking

The food companies introduced snacking to sell us more food. 

40 years ago, there was no such thing as snacks between meals.

Today: some doctors recommend two snacks a day. How can having three meals and two snacks a day will help you to lose weight or feel better? Most people are already eating too much! 

The solution to weight loss is not eating more.

We must take time between meals for our bodies to use the calories we have just consumed in the previous meal. This gives us time to burn the excess before we start eating again.

Feasting then fasting. After lunch, leave it at least 4- 5 hours before your next meal. Snacking will not help you to eat less in the next meal. it will only make your body store more energy and generate more fat.

This is scientifically explained by insulin levels. When we eat, insulin is produced. Insulin removes the excess of sugar from our blood and stores it as fat under our skin. We can only burn stored fat when our insulin levels drop, and no more insulin is running through our veins. It’s only then that we start to burn the stored energy. 

If we snack and continue to eat, our insulin levels are always high and new fat is always being generated and stored under our skin. In short: we continue to gain weight.

We need to give our digestion a break to allow our bodies to burn the excess energy and stop producing even more fat.

Reduce Alcohol

Beer and spiritsl are especially high in sugar, making us feel bloated. 

A glass of wine occasionally is not really a problem. The problem is continued and daily drinking. 

Give it a try: avoid or reduce alcohol for seven days to see how it effects on your mood, energy, and that bloated sensation.

Walking

Walking is very underrated by many people. I suppose a lot of people only look at how many calories this type of exercise burns. Walking might not burn many calories, but you can do it every day. 

That’s much better than one hard workout a week – even if that workout burns a lot more calories. And walking is definitely better than no workout at all! 

Daily walking is so simple, cheap and very effective for burning extra energy accumulated in our liver (glycogen) and for burning fat.

One of the best things about walking is that you can do it every day without getting too tired or spending too much time. A pair of good walking shoes and you’re ready for some walking.

Sources

The Obesity Codebook, available at Amazon.com

“The Minnesota Starvation experiment source here 

Video – Why Added Sugar Is Everywhere

Video – Why Added Sugar Makes You Fat

Video – Leptin & Insulin Resistance Balancing Tips w/ Jason Fung, MD Dr. Fung

Believe me, calories are not your enemy. Calories are a mistaken belief. 

The problem is not the number of calories you consume per day, but where those calories come from.

The number of calories might be the same but eating fast-food does not provide the same energy or nutritional value as eating whole foods.

Processed-Fast-Junk Food

Man-made foods, chemically processed and designed for over-consumption, these are not REAL foods and are products created by companies to increase their profits, not to provide nutritional value to the consumer.

Fiber is removed for:

• longer life shelf
• making the food easier to chew and swallow (so you can eat more and eat faster)
• making the food easier to digest (fiber makes the digestive process slower so you feel fuller for longer)
• increased insulin requirement and production: without fiber, all the sugar enters the bloodstream quickly, raising insulin levels which cause the sugar to be stored as fat in your body.

Refined sugar is added for:

• sweeter taste, something we all inherently like 
• sugar is highly addictive, which is why you have sweet cravings
• the more added sugar you eat, the hungrier you feel

A high sugar diet causes:

• weight gain
• type 2 diabetes
• high blood pressure
• tooth cavities and decay 

There’s also a strong link between a high sugar diet and cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

You can learn more about why Sugar is Makes us Fatter and Sicker here.

Whole Foods

Natural foods contain fiber and naturally occurring sugars. They are also low in salt, contain protein, and have all the nutrients your body needs.

Example: Whole Foods (Banana) Vs. Processed Food (Cheerios)

Let’s look at an example: Banana Vs. the best-selling breakfast cereal in America – Cheerios

One portion of Cheerios (which is a very small portion) has 110 calories. As we will see later, these calories are loaded with refined sugars (9 grams per serving) and some salt, without any fiber, and very little potassium. 

If you eat two servings per day, the high sugar content in Cheerios will keep your blood sugar and insulin levels constantly elevated. This will lead to weight gain, create cravings, and increases your chances of developing insulin resistance and diabetes type 2 in the future. 

This is not an exaggeration; this is exactly what’s happening today.

In contrast, a medium-size banana (7” to 8” long, 118 grams) has roughly the same number of calories.

However, the calories provided by the banana contains virtually no salt, is high in potassium (very good for your health), contains fiber (very important to your gut to help you go to the toilet and clean your intestines, preventing colon cancer), and yes, it contains sugar too. 

Yes, a banana has more sugar than one small serving of Cheerios, but it’s naturally occurring sugar, and not refined or added sugar.

Refined VS Naturally Occurring Sugar – What’s the difference?

Bananas have fiber which slows down sugar absorption in the gut. This makes sugar absorption slow and steady, with no blood sugar spike and no need for crazy amounts of insulin. This is the best and the only sugar your body needs; the naturally occurring sugar in fruits.

You can eat one, two, or even five bananas a day, and you will not gain weight, or develop insulin resistance or diabetes. You will, in fact, improve your bowel movements, load your muscles with potassium to help you recover from exercise better, and enjoy the best natural and healthy breakfast that you can possibly have.

However, eating the same 110 calories from Cheerios is a nightmare for your body.

It’s Not the Calories!

Only looking at the number of calories in our food doesn’t give us the full story. That’s only the sum of the energy provided by each element of the food.

Refined sugars are converted into calories the same way dietary fiber is, or naturally occurring sugars are, but these are three very different things.

Don’t just look at the number of calories in your food. That’s only a small part of the information you need about what you are eating. Food is much more than just calories! 

Is it 110 calories of junk or healthy food? Is it 105 calories with fiber or no fiber at all? Is it 110 calories with refined or natural sugar? Is it 110 calories of processed food or whole foods?

You need to do more than a little math to understand whether a food is good for you or not. 

Real Food is Better than Calories  

Processed-Fast-Junk food is not really food. It’s just a bunch of chemicals, sugar, processed fats and empty calories. Instead, choose Real Whole Foods.

Fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, whole grain, and nuts.

Get your groceries from markets, pick fresh ingredients, prepare your meals in advance, and enjoy real food for every meal.

For the few things you do need to buy at the supermarket, make sure you read the nutrition label first.

Nutrition Labels

Nutrition labels are not intuitive, but we can quickly use them to differentiate between healthy food and junk. 

Does it have too much sugar? Too much salt? Both?! 

Check my recent post about how to quickly scan nutrition labels at the supermarket. You can find the article here.

The only way to stop sugar cravings is to get rid of your sugar addiction. This usually takes 20 days without any added sugar or artificial sweeteners.

Quitting sugar is not difficult; the hard part is surviving the sugar cravings for 20 days.

This was my daily routine two years ago:

As much as I didn’t want to eat sweets, I somehow always end up having some. I instantly felt better so I had another bite, and then I felt guilty. I couldn’t stop and, by the end of the day, I felt miserable.

We know that we shouldn’t eat so much sugar, so why we end up repeating the same actions and feeling and unhappy every time?

Why we can’t outsmart our sugar cravings? 

We can, but first, we need to understand what’s causes them.  

In short: We have been hooked on sugar for a long time, and now we can’t break the habit.

The Sugar Conspiracy

Thousand Years Ago: Our preference for sweet-tasting food helped us to choose between ripe and unripe fruit. Unripe fruit can be very bad for us and ripe fruit is way more nutritious.

30 Years Ago: Food companies discovered how adding sugar to food would make people want to eat more, constantly craving for another bite. They got us hooked. Food companies continue to make millions in profits while people continually get sicker

Today: Sugar is everywhere. 74% of the food available in supermarkets contains added sugar. Sugar is found in products that are not even sweet. We live in a sugar-saturated world. (Video – How Sugar is Everywhere).

Worldwide, the consumption of sugar has skyrocketed, and so have  diseases like: type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart diseases. More about the consequences of eating too much sugar in my article “Worldwide Sugar is Killing us”

Why We Crave Sugar – The Sugar Habit 

After eating a chocolate, your brain is flooded with dopamine, and you instantly feel good. Then your brain creates a note “remember; this food makes you feel good”. 

Every time you see and eat a sugary food, you get that same reward – a small dose of pleasure. Then you repeat it, again and again.  

The trigger (see sweet food), the behavior (eat sweet food), and the reward (feeling good) creates a habit, and you’ve had this habit since you were a toddler. As children, we were often rewarded with sugary foods. Good behavior? Good school report? Feeling sad? We were often given sweets. This habit has followed many of us into adulthood. 

The reason sugar is so addictive is because it gives you an instant blast of pleasure. And we all love pleasure, especially when you don’t feel great, so we go for more in the hope of feeling better – often instantly.  

We repeat this habit so often that we start to develop tolerance to sugar, so we need to eat more to get the same levels of dopamine and to get the same amount of pleasure. 

When we stop eating sugar, we start to feel withdrawal, and your cravings kick in. Your brain is missing its dopamine and happiness fix. 

Why Sugar is So Addictive 

Alcohol is an addictive substance, but a lot of people drink alcohol but are not addicted. 

People get addicted to habits or substances when they are used to cover up or avoid emotions.

If we drink alcohol every time we feel frustrated, sad, or mad, you will soon start to develop an addiction because we feel at least one of these emotions (if not all of them) in every single day.

The same thing happens with sugar. We know sugar makes us feel better for a couple of minutes. If we start consuming high-sugar foods or beverages every time we get anxious, nervous, frustrated, mad or sad, we will start to develop an addiction. We use sugar to avoid feeling and dealing with these types of emotions. 

Since sugar is everywhere, and it’s not regulated, we all use it and without knowing that, soon, we will end up hooked. In time, instead of reaching for a sweet treat to elevate your mood, you’ll grab one purely out of habit – regardless of what your emotional state might be. 

Why Sugar Cravings Are Tough

Every time we feel those “negative” emotions (frustration, sadness, loneliness or anger) we instantly crave sugar because that’s been our habit for many years.

Let’s change our perspective. These “negative” emotions in many ways can be very helpful.

Loneliness is a great way to learn how to enjoy time with ourselves. 

Frustration helps us to lower our expectations and be grateful for our achievements. Good things are not achieved overnight. 

Sadness is a chance to rethink our actions and recheck where you want to go. 

This is not just positive thinking. Emotions are feedback from our bodies, and so we had better listen and try to understand what it is we need to do to improve our well-being.

When we block, avoid, or deny these emotions with sugar, alcohol, or any other type of drug, we are only postponing the inner work that needs to be done. This ends up perpetuating our suffering instead of addressing the problems that go on in our minds.

Remember: Sugar cravings only last for 10 to 20 minutes. 

How to Deal with Sugar Cravings

If you’re planning on quitting sugar, or you’ve already started your No-Sugar Diet (check my 20 No-Sugar Days Challenge here), you need to prepare yourself for those first sugar cravings. They can be intense, and there may well be several waves of cravings. As we know they’re coming, we need a plan to defeat those sugar cravings early on. 

1st – Awareness: Sugar Habit

First, we need to realize that we have a long-time relationship (a gentle way to say addiction) with sugar.

We eat high sugar foods as if we are on auto-pilot. Without realizing it, we end up eating four chocolate bars, a bowl of ice cream, or a big serving of any other high sugar food.

When you feel that life, or the universe, is not being fair to you, you find comfort in sugary foods: chocolates, candies, ice-cream, soft-drinks. They are a quick fix that temporarily reduces your suffering.

Solution: Be Curious. 

Allow your emotions to develop and see what happens. Allow them to happen, without denying or avoiding them. Feel the sadness, the frustration, the anger; let it grow inside you. 

Take a seat and silently observe your emotions happening. 

What other emotions are coming? What do you feel? As time passes, see that, as these emotions dissipate, and too do your cravings.

2nd – Why You Go for Sugary Food 

Sugary foods taste nice, but what we often really crave is the sensation of feeling good or the dopamine effect. 

It’s not because we are hungry. Instead, it’s the urge of “I need another hit of pleasure”.

Why do you feel you need another hit? Why do you need a quick dose of pleasure?

Solution: Force yourself to think about why you feel you need that instant pleasure? Is something bothering you so that you need something to make you feel better?

Take your time and write down your feelings. Understand what’s going inside you; the thoughts, the worries, the pain. Once you have finished, your cravings may have already gone away.

3rd – The Decision to Quit

Before you make the decision to quit sugar, I would like you to write down how sugar negatively affects your life, and why you have decided to quit it. 

These are the reasons that will keep you away from sugar for 20 days. 

This are my reasons:

“Sugar makes me feel bloated, sleepy and gives me headaches. Sugar is making me fatter and puts me in a bad mood. The few minutes of pleasure I get from eating sugar is nothing compared to the next few hours when I feel miserable.”

I took the decision of not having any kind of added sugar or artificial sweeteners for 20 Days so I could break free of my sugar addiction. Today, I can enjoy a sweet or a dessert occasionally but without having too much. My body naturally says “that’s enough”.

It’s a personal decision to quit. 

We are not forbidden to have refined sugar. We simply choose not to eat is because we know how it negatively affects our health.

4th – Rewrite the Sugar Habit

We are creatures of habit. You might have the habit of drinking a coke mid-morning or eating a candy bar after lunch, or having something sweet during a movie or at home after dinner.

These are hard-wired habits we have perpetuated for many years. Studies say we can’t delete them, but studies also show we can rewrite them.

Instead of popcorn and soda during a movie, we can have fruit (berries, cherries) and water, natural juice or tea instead. Instead of a sweet dessert after dinner, eat some creamy natural yogurt. By doing these things, we rewrite old, unhealthy habits with new, healthier habits. 

Remember: The can of coke and a dozen cookies might taste good during a movie, but you will feel miserable and even ill afterwards. While fruit and water, in the beginning, might not taste as good, in the long term will make you happier and healthier. 

Instead of a can of coke for a mid-morning snack at work, change it for some carrots, fruit, or a natural juice. It’s not the sugar-loaded drink you crave but, again, you will feel much better and much less guilty.

5th Anticipate your cravings

We all have different reactions to stress and emotions, so we need different plans for dealing with cravings. Test a few different strategies to discover what works best for you when your cravings strike. Good examples include: 

• Listen to a music you like
• Drink water
• Brush your teeth or wash your face
• Do push-ups
• Write your feelings and emotions
• Go for a walk

Find a behavior that works for you and then, when you feel the cravings, you’ll have a plan. The more times you do it, the easier it becomes to change your sugar habit.

6th Every day is a victory

You’ve been perpetuating your sugar habit for many years. Every day that you reduce or avoid added sugar is a victory. Celebrate it!

Tomorrow is another day.

7th Believe

As hard as it may be, remember that it’s going to get easier, and better days will always come. Sunshine always follows the rain. 

Always believe in yourself; you will find a way to beat your cravings and better deal with your emotions.

Remember: the long-term happiness of living a life without sugar is a million times better than the instant pleasure of eating ten cookies.

Conclusion

The reason why sugar cravings are so hard to deal with is we have been eating large amounts of high sugar foods for many years. Plus, we also use sugar to reduce the pain of certain emotions.

But sugar is not a solution. In fact, it’s the cause of many major problems. It causes weight gain, bad moods, chronic diseases, tooth decay, and obesity just to mention just a few.

The most effective I’ve found is to understand why you have these emotions in the first place, and then deal with them instead of using sugar to cover them up.

We all have hundreds of emotions per day, and having another piece chocolate will not help us to deal with them; it’s only a quick fix – like putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm! 

This is not a quick fix or a list of ten tips to follow; it’s a journey that will take you a lifetime. Hopefully, governments will start to regulate sugar, but until then sugar is everywhere, and will always find you wherever you hide.

Join My 20 No Sugar Days Challenge

Get rid of your sugar addiction: regain energy, lose weight, improve your mood, no more bloated sensation and improved mental focus.

References

Ted Talk – A simple way to break a bad habit | Judson Brewer

I quit sugar! But who cares?

The 7 Step Program to Quit Smoking

If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight

It’s about calorie balance 

It’s about exercise 

It’s about not eating too much 

It’s about diet and exercise

A calorie is a calorie

We have all heard these things, but it never worked for us. Why?

Because it’s not just about calories, it’s about food.

In this article I will show you:

• The calorie conspiracy
• How calories are calculated
• Why the food industry wants you to count calories
• A better alternative to counting calories
• How to lose weight without counting calories

The Calorie Conspiracy

A calorie is a measure of energy. In food, a calorie is the amount of energy that your body could get from eating and drinking.

But not all foods are digested and absorbed in the same way. Processed-fast-junk food and whole foods are all very different and all are made of different chemical bonds.  

“A calorie is a measure of how much energy is stored in a food’s chemical bonds.”

source What is a calorie? – Emma Bryce

But the food industry want us to think that processed-fast-junk food is healthy, just like whole foods, and that a calorie from fast food is the same as a calorie from homemade food. 

But it’s not, and while some people know this, a lot of people still believe the calorie fallacy.  

Despite counting calories, we continue to gain weight and lose quality of life. Something is wrong! 

Why a calorie is not a calorie

Two simple examples in which we will compare foods, based on calories: 

Orange/Banana and Beer

One orange (49 calories) and one small banana (90 calories) total 139 calories. A bottle of the most-sold beer in the U.S., Bud Light beer (16 oz), contains 146 calories. The calories are almost the same, but the effects and the energy you feel after eating or drinking these foods are completely different.

If you have one orange and one banana for breakfast every single day, that’s probably one of the best breakfasts you can have. But, if you have one bottle of beer every morning, with almost the same calories, you will not have enough energy for the next few hours, and you certainly develop an addiction after just a short time.

Oh, but this one is easy because its’s alcohol!

Alcohol is a source of energy. In fact, it is high in calories, but if you drink too much you will certainly end up feeling sleepy, and if you do it every day you will most certainly develop an addiction. 

Yet, alcohol has calories but has no nutritional value, and is toxic to your body, just like refined fructose (like high fructose corn syrup). 

But we all know that alcohol is bad for you and we will not give it to any kid. 

But kids drink on average two high-sugar beverages per day, causing type 2 diabetes and many other metabolic diseases (more about that in my article Worldwide Sugar is Killing Us), because the food industry wants us to think that all calories are the same.

They are not. 

Refined fructose (type of refined sugar found in most beverages) has the same effect as alcohol in your body. It’s a toxin, it’s addictive, it makes your life miserable, and it’s killing people worldwide.

Big Mac (Processed Food) vs Homemade Oven Baked Frittata

This oven-baked frittata (a video recipe I’ve shared here) has vegetables (zucchini, pepper, onion, tomato), eggs, and cheese. It’s high in fiber and protein, and it contains 381 calories for one serving. 

A Big Mac burger (only the burger, not the menu with French fries etc.) is high in salt and sugar, contains trans-fats, and is high in cholesterol. That’s a total of 563 calories, with no nutritional value.

Healthy homemade foods like my oven baked frittata provide you with nutrients from fresh ingredients, while a Big Mac is made with frozen and processed ingredients, only providing you with bad stuff (cholesterol, sugar, trans fats).

The question is not how many calories we eat, but where those calories come from.

How Calories Are Calculated

Calories are calculated based on the components of the food:

1 gram of carbs = 4 calories

1 gram of protein = 4 calories

1 gram of fat = 9 calories

1 gram of alcohol = 7 calories

Carbs

We know that not all carbs are the same, we have bad carbs and good carbs. 

Example: White rice is a bad carb because it raises blood sugar (high glycemic index), has no fiber and gives no nutritional value (white vs brown rice example here explained here). 

Quinoa is high in fiber, sugar-free, and is a good source of protein. Quinoa is a good carb and is recommended for diabetics while white rice is not.

But, when you do the math to calculate calories, you always multiply one gram of carbs (without distinguishing between bad or good carbs) by four to get the total number of calories.

Fat

We know that not all fats are the same. 

Trans fats: This “bad” fat is well-known and documented to cause high cholesterol and heart diseases, which is why it’s been mostly removed from food. However, Big Macs still contains trans-fats.

Unsaturated fats: The “good” fat we all should have more of is found in: avocados, nuts, seeds, sardines and salmon (but only wild salmon, not farmed).  

Saturated fats: The “sometimes good, sometimes bad fat” fat. Depending on the source, coconuts contain saturated fat but are also high in fiber. Dairy foods are high in saturated fats but should be consumed in moderation.

Related: Not All Fats Are Created Equally – learn more about the different types of fats

Again, when calculating calories, one gram of fat is equal to nine grams, but the type of fat is not considered. 

Protein

Protein is found in plants, meat, dairy, and eggs. Not all protein is created equal as some animals are stressed all their lives and get high doses of antibiotics and hormones. Some studies show how a high meat diet, combined with low fiber, can cause colon cancer. 

Although the differences between plant and meat protein are hotly debated due to the meat lobby, once again when calculating calories one gram of protein (irrespective of the source) is four calories.

Alcohol

We know that alcohol is not good for us, and that’s why we don’t give it to children, and we don’t drink it before driving or working as it negatively affects our concentration and skills.

It’s commonly known that the calories from alcohol are different from the calories in a hot dog, or a quinoa salad, or an oven baked frittata.

Alcohol is not dangerous because of its calories. 

Alcohol is not dangerous because it causes obesity. 

Alcohol is dangerous because it is alcohol! 

Sugar is the same thing, it’s dangerous because it’s sugar, because of what it does to our bodies, and how it is metabolized by the liver.

Why the food industry wants you to keep counting calories?

In the last 30 years, the food industry has put all its money and effort into convincing the world that processed-junk-fast foods are healthy. We may like the taste, but we can feel right after eating that it’s not good for us. We know it’s not healthy. Why?

Processed food is made from refined ingredients. Fiber is removed (for a longer shelf life), too much salt and sugar are added (to boost flavor), and that all makes us sleepy, bloated and not satisfied; you can always eat more. 

Related: How the Food Industry make millions by removing fiber and adding refined sugar explained in my video here 

Meanwhile, homemade food is made from fresh ingredients and is high in fiber but low in sugar and salt. We finish our meals feeling satisfied and full, and without the need to eat more and more. 

Counting calories is highly promoted by the food industry so that we think fast food, junk food, and processed food are healthy, just like whole foods are. 

While whole foods give a high nutritional value, man-made foods (processed-junk-fast food) don’t provide any nutritional value.

When calories are calculated, it doesn’t matter if it’s a good or bad fat, or good or a bad carb, it’s all the same when you only calculate calories. 

It has nothing to do with calories, it’s all about the food you eat.

The Better Alternative to Counting Calories

You never have to count calories again. Instead, pick fresh ingredients: fruit, legumes, vegetables, seeds and nuts.

Prepare your own meals, prepare meals in advance, and take them to work with you.

Eat fruits for breakfast.

Have salads, vegetables and legumes for lunch.

Eat soup and light meals for dinner (my soup recipes here).

Avoid processed-junk-fast food:

• Soft-drinks: loaded with sugar and high fructose corn syrup
• Fruit-flavored yogurts: high in sugar
• Breakfast cereals: made mostly of sugar
• Salad dressing: high in sugar
• Granola: again, it’s mainly sugar
• Alcohol: high in sugar

Check Nutrition Labels

Quickly scan nutrition labels to understand how much sugar, salt and fat a food contains.

I recently published an article about how to quickly identify junk food at the supermarket. You can find it here.

How to Lose Weight Without Counting Calories

If you’re struggling to lose weight, or you don’t want to gain weight, these are by far the most effective and easy steps you can make:

• Avoid refined sugar (beverages, cookies, breakfast cereals, fast food) you can join my 20 days no sugar diet here.
• Prepare your own food: I’ve shared more than 250 healthy recipes here.
• Read nutrition labels: How To Read Nutrition Labels here so you know exactly what you’re eating.

Over the last few years, I’ve been reducing the amount of processed foods I buy. Instead, I make my own salad dressings, ketchups and mayonnaise (recipes here). 

I also eat whole cereals instead of refined breakfast cereals, make my own soup instead of eating canned soup (soup recipes here), eat more fruit and less bread, and make more raw desserts (recipe here) instead of buying ready-made cakes and sweets.

The healthiest foods are usually those that don’t come with a nutrition label: whole foods, seeds, nuts, and legumes.

But, in case you need to buy processed food, it’s important to learn how to read nutrition labels to understand exactly what you are buying.

A lot of products are marketed as healthy when, in fact, they are loaded with sugar. Products like granola, salad dressing, sauces, juices, soft drinks, and breakfast cereals are all good examples. These are high in sugar, low in fiber, and some are also high in salt.

We are eating way too much sugar, and most of the sugar consumed in the U.S. and the rest of the world comes from sweetened beverages and soft-drinks. A large percentage of added sugar also comes from processed food, and yet a lot of people don’t know about it. 

Nutrition labels are not quick or easy to read. In fact, they are unnecessarily complicated which makes discovering the truth about the food you eat very difficult. Maybe the food industries like it this way?  

How to Quickly Choose Healthy Food at Supermarket

Five quick and simple steps:

1st –  Reduce your consumption of processed food. Preferentially select food that doesn’t have a nutrition label: seeds, nuts, whole foods, and whole grains.

2nd – Avoid high sugar foods.  (We will show how to identify these later)

3rd – Avoid foods that have long ingredients lists. 

4th – Avoid foods that are high in sodium. 

5th – Avoid foods that are high cholesterol and saturated fats. 

If we must buy processed food, we should try to get “not so bad” products:

On nutrition labels, look for:

• More potassium than sodium
• More fiber and less sugar
• Fewer ingredients

Nutrition Labels

To learn how to read nutrition labels, let’s start with an example; the number one best-selling breakfast cereal in America: Honey Nut Cheerios (source here ).

Our Example: Honey Nut Cheerios

I’ve created two ways for you to learn how to read nutrition labels easily.

Complete version – We will go through all the items on the Cheerios nutrition label (recommended). Click here to scroll directly to that section. 

Quick version – How to quickly scan nutrition labels at the supermarket to know if a food is healthy. Click here to scroll there. 

How to Read Nutrition Labels – Complete Version

Let’s divide the Nutrition Facts in five parts from top to bottom.

1. Serving Size 

Serving size ¾ cup (28 grams)

When I was a kid I ate breakfast cereals, but I didn’t know how much I was eating. So, one day, I measured my breakfast and it was around 1 ½ cups, or 56 grams, that’s double the serving size listed on the nutrition label.

That means we need to multiply each nutrient by two to get the real values.

Note: Take a minute and measure in grams or cups how much you or your kids usually eat for breakfast. I’ll bet it’s not the standard ¾ cup serving size! 

2. Calories

Counting calories and not understanding where calories come from is one way that food companies have found to trick us. 

110 calories from one serving of Cheerios does not produce the same effect in our body’s as the same number of calories from a mid-size banana. The results, in terms of health and the quality of energy produced, are very different, both short term and long term. 

The only thing that 28 grams (one portion) of Cheerios and a mid-size banana have in common is the number of calories.

The only problem with eating bananas every day is that you might get sick of the flavor but, in terms of health, you would be totally ok as bananas contain good levels of potassium, fiber and natural sugar to give you sustained energy for the day.

If you eat Cheerios twice a day and every day, you will gain weight, and increase your chances of developing insulin resistance, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Not all calories are the same. I’ve compared Cheerios with one banana to better explain the very common mistake that people who only look at number of calories usually make.

3. Nutrients

Total Fat 1.5 grams

Before we dive into the fat, let’s look at what is meant by Percentage Daily Value.

The percentages shown in the first column represents the percentage of each nutrient in a single serving compared to the daily calories recommended per day (2000 calories).

Note: 2000 calories is an arbitrary number, and you may need to consume more or less depending on your age, gender and activity level. 

But, as I’ve said before, I don’t like the idea of counting calories because where you get your calories from is just as important as how many you consume. 

Always pick whole and plant-based foods over animal or any kind of processed food.

As you can see at the bottom of the nutrition label, the recommendation from the USDA is 65 grams of fat per day based on 2000 calories.

Let’s look at our example…

So, 1.5 grams of fat in one serving of cheerios is 2% of the daily amount recommended of 65 grams by the USDA.

Confusing? Hell, yes!

How to read it faster 

When you look at the percentages and you see a high number (higher than 20%), check which nutrient we are talking about. High levels of fiber and potassium are not a problem, and rarely happens as most processed foods are very low in both these things.

But, if you find a high percentage value for fat, sodium, and total carbs, have a better look as you may be holding a high fat and high added sugar product.

Saturated fats

No saturated fat.

The American Heart Association recommends a low consumption (11 to 13 grams per day) of saturated fats from dairy products, animals, and plants to reduce the chances of raising cholesterol in the blood to lower the chances of heart disease. (source here )

Confusingly, studies have shown how coconuts are high in saturated fat but also have many health benefits. Natural saturated fat is probably ok, but processed saturated fat is not. Saturated fat is also high in calories, so it’s not a good idea to eat too much if you want to lose or avoid gaining weight. 

Trans fats

Trans fats are created industrially by man, and are commonly found in fast food. It raises the levels of bad cholesterol in the blood. Completely avoid trans fats.  

Unsaturated Fat

Commonly found in salmon, sardines, avocado, olives, nuts and corn, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats are very different to saturated fats.

These are good fats and healthier alternatives to saturated and trans fats that may lower your insulin levels and help improve your blood cholesterol.

Cheerios have about one gram of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, possibly from the whole grain oats listed in the ingredients. We will discuss the ingredients list in a second.

Cholesterol

This breakfast cereal contains no cholesterol – 0mg.

It’s important to understand that the number shown for this item (cholesterol) does not mean that after you eat and absorb the food you will get the same amount of cholesterol. Eating sugar has been shown to increase cholesterol levels – even though sugar is free from cholesterol. 

To avoid the chances of high “bad” cholesterol we must pay attention to what type of fats (previous section) we are eating. Trans fats will raise “bad” cholesterol while unsaturated fats like olive oil and avocado are good fats that help reduce your “bad” cholesterol.

So, have a look at the cholesterol levels, but mainly look at what type of fats the food contains.

Sodium

The American Heart Association recommends a maximum of 2400 mg of salt per day.

Looking at the percentage daily value, we should buy products with less than 5%. Anything with more than 20% is very high in salt.

Pay special attention to breads, chips, pizza, soups, sandwiches, pretzels, popcorn, crackers, hamburgers, and also breakfast cereals. 

As you can see, Cheerios contain 170mg, which is 7% of the amount recommended for one day. If you eat three servings for breakfast, which is very common, you’re getting 21% of your recommended daily sodium intake in first hour of your day, and that’s a lot.

Potassium

This mineral helps to prevent high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes. The problem is that the worldwide diet is high in sodium but low in potassium. Add a couple of bananas a day to your diet to easily add more potassium to your diet. Potassium helps balance out your sodium intake. 

“The recommended intake of potassium for adolescents and adults is 4,700 mg/day. The recommended intakes for potassium for children 1 to 3 years of age is 3,000 mg/day, 4 to 8 years of age is 3,800 mg/day, and 9 to 13 years of age is 4,500 mg/day.” by HHS.Gov

At the bottom of the nutrition label (where the recommendation daily amounts are expressed) you can see that the potassium recommendation is 3500mg.

As you can see in our example, Cheerios contains only 3% of the recommended potassium. This means it’s lower than 5%, making Cheerios a  low potassium food.

Carbohydrates

Dietary Fiber

The American Heart Association recommends 25 grams of fiber per day (like it says on the bottom of this Cheerios nutrition label under the recommended nutrients intake per day).

Cheerios contain two grams of fiber per serving to total of 8% of the recommended amount per day. This is not bad as most of the processed food is usually very low in fiber. However, even this decent amount of fiber does not make Cheerios healthy, as we’ll see next… 

Sugars

The American Heart Association recommends 25 grams (6 teaspoons) for women and 38 grams (or 9 teaspoons) of sugar per day.

Cheerios contain 9 grams per serving. 

The sugar industry has found ways not to show the percentage of the recommended daily amount on nutrition labels. If they had to, that number would be  23% for men and 36% for women, from only in one serving. When you see it as a percentage you can easily see that this it’s too much sugar.

A quick way to see if a product contains too much sugar is:

• Get the grams per serving, in this case 28 grams
• Get the grams of sugar, which for Cheerios is 9 grams

If you divide 9 / 28 = 0,32 * 100 = 32 percent of Cheerios is made of sugar. That’s more than one third, and that’s a lot.

Protein

The American Heart Association recommends 46 to 56 grams of protein per day.

Cheerios are low in protein, but that is not a problem. Adding diary or non-dairy milk to cereal increases protein intake, and it’s easy enough to eat enough protein by including it in your lunch and dinner. 

Ingredients List

The ingredients list is in order of the weight used, from the highest to the lowest, and the first being the highest. 

Tips:

If sugar is in top three, that’s not good at all. 

If the list is too big, it usually means that it’s highly processed with a lot of chemicals.

If you see a lot of names that you don’t recognize, they’re probably sugar names. Food companies have 61 different names for sugar to disguise the presence of “sugar” in the ingredients list. Learn more about this topic here.    

How to Read Nutrition Labels Fast

I know that time is often a premium, and not everyone has time to spend carefully reading every food label in your shopping basket. Luckily, you can also review the food you are about to eat quickly and easily. 

Here’s a quick way to understand the nutrients in the food you are about to buy…

1st – Serving size

Get the number. For Cheerios it’s 28 grams

2nd – Sugars: 5% or less 

Cheerios contain nine grams of sugar in a serving size of 28 grams. That means that around 32% of the product is made of sugar. That’s clearly a high sugar food.

And you, or your kid, probably eats more than 28 grams of cheerios for breakfast and may even eat double this amount, just like I did when I was a kid. That’s 18 grams of added sugar just for breakfast. 

Remember: The recommended amount of added sugar for an adult per day is 36 grams for men and 25 grams for women.

3rd – Check the ingredients list – less the better

The ingredient are listed in order of the weight used, from the highest to the lowest, and the first being the highest.

In our Cheerios example, we can see whole grain oats at the top, and that’s good. But, the second ingredient is sugar. That’s already an indicator that this is a high sugar product.

• Sugar is in top three means it’s a high sugar food
• Fewer ingredients are better
• Words you don’t know are probably different names for sugar (the 61 different sugar names the food industry uses to disguise sugar here). 

4th – Sodium – 5% less

Cheerios contains 160mg of sodium per serving. We should pick products with 5% or less of the daily value of sodium. (I explain what this % of daily value is here). 

Cheerios contain 7% and you will most certainly eat more (at least I did), so if you eat double, that’s double the salt and totals 14% in just one meal.

5th – Fats

Trans-fast must be 0g (very few products contain trans fats but always check).

Saturated fats generally should be low (the percentage should be less than 5%). Unless it’s a whole plant food like coconut.

No Sugar Diet – Avoid High Sugar Foods

Worldwide, high sugar diets are causing a pandemic of metabolic diseases: type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart diseases, dementia, obesity and overweight. 

Our bodies love the naturally occurring sugar in fruit, combined with the fiber. But the refined sugar added to soft-drinks, beverages, sweets, and most processed food in general causes a lot of health problems. I’ve covered all the diseases caused by a continuous high sugar diet, and you can check it here.

Our best option is to avoid or at least start to reduce the amount of sugar we eat every day. 

Reading nutrition labels is the best way to discover exactly what type of food we have at home and which foods not to buy.

One of the best things I did for my health was to cut out refined sugar from my diet two years ago. 

I did 20 No-Sugar days to do a total cleanse of added sugar. I felt so much better. I lost weight, my mental focus improved, my mood was better, and my anxiety was drastically reduced.

I highly recommend that you at least give it a try. You don’t have to take my word for it; experience the benefits yourself. It’s a simple and totally free challenge.

Find more about my 20 No Sugar Days Challenge here.

References

Using the Nutrition Facts Label: A How-To Guide for Older Adults

Use the Nutrition Facts Label to Reduce Your Intake of Sodium in Your Diet

AICR HealthTalk

Lowering our Sodium-to-Potassium Ratio to Reduce Stroke Risk

Understanding Food Nutrition Labels

USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005

Protein and Heart Health

The World is Getting Fatter

55 percent of Americans, meaning the majority of the population, are either overweight or obese. 

Worldwide, in 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight; that’s 27% of the world population. Of this number, over 650 million were obese.

But it’s not only adults

China is currently in the grip of a childhood obesity epidemic, with eight percent of kids significantly overweight in urban areas. 

Today in America: 

– 20 million kids are seriously overweight 

– Almost one-third of 9-month-olds are obese or overweight

Added Sugar Consumption and Percentage of Overweight and Obese from 1961 to 2000

As the consumption of refined fructose goes up, the obesity rate goes up too. Is the sugar following the trend, or is the overweight and obesity trend caused by the sugar? 

The cause is the refined sugar and refined fructose.

How Is Added Sugar Making us Fat?

1st – Studies have shown (source here) that 80% of processed food contains added sugar. Food companies have found that by adding refined sugar and removing fiber, food is easier to eat, quicker to prepare, easier to digest, and highly addictive. 

Food companies make more money, we lose quality of life, and we pay the bill in the form of more expensive medical care. (Watch my video Why Added Sugar is Everywhere? and How Food Companies Make Millions of Dollars).

Refined sugar is everywhere, and we are eating too much sugar – as much as 20 teaspoons per day. The recommended amount of sugar per day is just nine teaspoons. 

Our body converts the excess sugar into fat and stores it under the skin. The more sugar we eat, the fatter we get. 

2nd – We have a hormone on our stomach called leptin, which is also known as the hunger hormone. After we eat a meal, Leptin sends a message to our brain to let us know that we are full. 

Our brain gets the message, we then feel full, and we know that we don’t need to eat any more. When we eat too much sugar, our hunger hormone doesn’t work properly and doesn’t notify our brains that we are full. Because of this, we constantly feel hungry – no matter how much or when we eat. This leads to constant cravings, constant snacking, overeating, and weight gain.

3rd – Different studies (sources here and here) have shown that sugar is highly addictive. We develop a tolerance to sugar, so when on a high sugar diet for too long, if you eat less sugar than normal you’ll start to experience symptoms of withdrawal – just like giving up smoking. 

This makes us feel depressed and we seek out sugar to feel good again. It’s a terrible addictive cycle that drains our energy. Constant eating and digesting lots of sugar uses a lot of energy, and that leaves you feeling tired all the time. 

No Only Fatter but also Chronically Sicker

Nobody dies of obesity. Instead, people are dying from chronic metabolic diseases such as: 

• heart attack
• heart failure
• stroke
• diabetes
• cancer
• dementia
• non-alcoholic fatty liver

Chronic metabolic diseases are a man-made cluster of illnesses that occur because of lifestyle factors. Their cause is mainly the same: the food we eat – our diet.

Chronic metabolic diseases significantly increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. 

Chronic Metabolic Diseases

Type 2 Diabetes

Type 2 diabetes is a dietary and lifestyle disease caused mainly by a high sugar, low fiber diet. Type 2 diabetes was quite uncommon until the twentieth century, and it was typically diagnosed after age fifty. In fact, it was often known as Adult Onset Diabetes Mellitus. It was very rare for anyone under the age of 50 to develop Type 2 diabetes. 

Today in America, one-third of all new diagnoses of type 2 diabetes are in teenagers and kids. So much for adult onset! 

It all started 30 years ago when food companies started to add more sugar to most processed food.

20 years later, the number of people with type 2 diabetes has skyrocketed. 

There are 30 Million Americans with Type 2 diabetes; that’s 10% of the population.

Another 84 million Americans have pre-diabetes, a condition that if not treated usually leads to type 2 diabetes within five years.

More than 110 million Americans are pre-diabetic or diabetic ( Diabetes report By CDC source here)

Over 40 percent of death certificates are due to type 2 diabetes.

The numbers are going up all over the world

In Canada, 29% of the population is living with diabetes or pre-diabetes.

In the UK 3.7 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes.

Malaysia has the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes on the planet.

Diabetes is rampant all over the world. 2013, the world diabetes statistics were shocking, but these numbers are increasing yearly and people continue to get sicker. 

We’re Losing Health and Money

People and the governments are paying this expensive bill.

– The total costs of diabetes and pre-diabetes in the U.S. are $322 billion

– The average price of insulin tripled between 2002 and 2013

• People with diabetes have health care costs double that of those without diabetes

source Diabetes.org 

Type 2 Diabetes can be Reversed

It’s proven that patients with type 2 diabetes can reverse the disease by avoiding processed food, added sugar, and by following a plant-based diet. No added sugar, no processed food, and only vegetables, legumes and fruit.

Chronic High Blood Pressure

Processed foods are high in sugar, salt, and fat, and for decades experts blamed the last two (salt and fat) as the villain of this story.

But they were wrong. 

Chronic High blood pressure increased 39% between 2001 and 2011, source News.Heart.Org. This is exactly the same period when type 2 diabetes skyrocketed, and exactly 20 years after the food companies started to add increasingly more refined sugar to all processed food. It’s NOT a coincidence. 

In the 1980s Added Sugar in Processed Food Skyrocketed.

Today, 38 years later:

Around 80 million U.S. adults have chronic high blood pressure.

About 7 out of every 10 people having their first heart attack also have high blood pressure (data by CDC source here)

The biggest problem is refined sugar and, in particular, the very cheap, very sweet and very poisonous refined fructose. One example of this is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a sweetener with a very high glycemic index that is made from highly processed corn starch that has been converted into fructose.

“Fructose can exert detrimental health effects beyond its calories, and in ways that mimic those of ethanol, its metabolic cousin. Indeed, the only distinction is that because fructose is not metabolized in the central nervous system, it does not exert the acute neuronal depression experienced by those imbibing ethanol”

study source here

HFCS and refined fructose are used in most sweet beverages, soft drinks, breakfast cereals, salad dressings and processed foods.

Highly refined sugar food spikes our blood sugar level which, in turn, increases our insulin levels. Insulin takes the sugar out of your bloodstream and then stores it as fat under our skin – a process called lipogenesis. This happens primarily on our belly, hips, and butt. 

If we eat too much sugar, our cells develop a tolerance to insulin and it doesn’t work as effectively as before. This is called insulin resistance. 55% of Americans are insulin resistant. This means that more of the sugar eaten is stored as fat, and blood glucose levels remain elevated for long periods; this is very unhealthy. 

Blood sugar levels are critical. If they are too high, called hyperglycemia, you can die. Because of this, it’s important that insulin can do its job and keep you’re the levels low. 

To get that critical job done, when you eat sugar, the beta cells of the pancreas produce more insulin. If not diagnosed and treated, long-term elevation of insulin can lead to pre-diabetes and, later, to type 2 diabetes. There 110 million Americans diagnosed with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.

Studies have found that high insulin levels lead to hypertension or high blood pressure.

“High-sugar diets may contribute substantially to cardio-metabolic disease. While naturally occurring sugars in the form of whole foods like fruit are of no concern.”

in “Investing In Your Health… You’ll Love The Returns” by Will Shelton

Fruit contains natural fructose along with other nutrients and fiber. Fiber reduces and slows down sugar absorption in the intestines. Eating whole fruits is always, unless your doctor says anything to the contrary, a healthy choice.

Added sugar is more of a factor in high blood pressure than sodium (salt). 

“Added sugars probably matter more than dietary sodium for hypertension, and fructose, in particular, may uniquely increase cardiovascular risk by inciting metabolic dysfunction and increasing blood pressure variability.”

Study “The wrong white crystals” source here

Refined fructose is only metabolized by the liver (just like alcohol). When consumed in large quantities, refined fructose causes high blood fats and triglycerides, leading to high blood pressure. 

“Over time, consuming large quantities of added sugar can stress and damage critical organs, including the pancreas and liver. When the pancreas, which produces insulin to process sugars, becomes overworked, it can fail to regulate blood sugar properly. Large doses of the sugar fructose also can overwhelm the liver, which metabolizes fructose. In the process, the liver will convert excess fructose to fat, which is stored in the liver and also released into the bloodstream. This process contributes to key elements of MetS (metabolic syndrome), including high blood fats or triglycerides, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and extra body fat in the form of a sugar belly.”

Cancer

Studies by Dr. Lewis Cantley (one of the most renowned experts in the field of cancer metabolism) established a strong link between high levels of insulin and cancer cells. Dr. Cantley believes that insulin is the fuel that feeds cancer cells. And what produces high levels of insulin? Sugar.

Dr. Cantley words:

“Insulin is the best of all activators of PI3-kinase—and PI3-kinase is arguably the most mutated pathway in all of cancer,” he explains. “So, if you follow the logic that anything that drives activation of PI3-kinase ultimately results in cancer, and that insulin is the best way to do it, then that suggests that having high levels of insulin is likely to drive your cancer. And what drives insulin levels is sugar.”

Source here

Dementia

In America, there are 5.3 Million people suffering from Alzheimer.

Researchers have found a possible link between a diet high in refined sugar and Alzheimer’s disease.

In the world, there are 35.6 Million people diagnosed with Alzheimer.

There’s no evidence yet, but

“people with elevated blood sugar often have insulin resistance which may be the link that affects our brain cells.”

Study source here

The numbers continue to rise. 

Heart diseases

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the world. 

In America every year 610,000 people die due to heart disease. That’s nearly 1700 per day. 

Today, it hasn’t been established exactly how sugar affects our heart health, but it’s clear that there’s a strong link between the two.

“Overall, the odds of dying from heart disease rise in tandem with the percentage of sugar in the diet—and that was true regardless of a person’s age, sex, physical activity level, and body-mass index (a measure of weight).”

High sugar levels overload the liver, and the liver processes refined fructose just like alcohol. Creating fat around the liver, raising triglycerides, which may turn into fatty liver disease, which can lead to diabetes, raising the risks of heart disease.

As we have seen before, a high sugar diet raises blood pressure leading to chronic high blood pressure which can result in heart disease.

High consumption of sugar, especially in sugary beverages and breakfast cereals, all contribute to weight gain and later to obesity (click here to watch my video – how added sugar makes you fat).

High blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes, obesity, and fatty liver disease are all linked to an increased risk of heart attack and strokes.

“Basically, the higher the intake of added sugar, the higher the risk for heart disease,”

says Dr. Hu.

How Much Sugar is Okay?

The American Heart Association recommends nine teaspoons or 36 grams of sugar per day for men and six teaspoons per day for women.

Today in American the average per person consumes 24 teaspoons of sugar every day.

Note: One can of coke has 36 grams of sugar.

How to Reduce Refined Sugar?

1st – Don’t drink sweetened beverages.

All juices, soft drinks, and sodas are high in sugar, fructose, or artificial sweeteners. Drink water or prepare your own smoothies at home (with whole fruit) and have homemade orange juice with pulp.

2nd – Check the nutrition labels of all the processed food you have at home.

Discard all the processed food containing sugar. Learn how to read nutrition labels to understand how much sugar is in the foods you have at home and in the supermarket. 

3rd – Understand Nutrition Labels

Let’s use this breakfast cereal called Lucky Charms as an example: 

First, you must understand the serving size which is always at the top. As you can see, it says ¾ of a cup. I’m pretty sure that anyone who has Lucky Charms for breakfast eats more than ¾ of a cup, but let’s assume they stick to this very small-sized serving. 

Let’s switch to grams to make it easier, so ¾ of a cup is 27 grams.

Now look down to Total Carbohydrates. In dietary fiber, you see it’s a very low two grams, which is basically nothing. But sugars is a very high 10 grams. 

This means that in 27 grams of Lucky Charms, there are 10 grams of sugar. That’s almost 50% sugar. This means that Lucky Charms are almost entirely made of sugar.

That’s why on the right side of the ingredients list you see marshmallows (which is pure sugar) as the second ingredient. 

It’s interesting to mention that the ingredients are listed ordered by the highest to the lowest amount, and sugar is the 2^nd most used ingredient in that list. 

Oh, and sugar is also next after the marshmallows and is also listed 5th too as “Corn Syrup.” (Learn more about the 61 different names for sugar here).

So, if you eat two portions, a total of 54 grams or one and a half cups, (27grams + 27 grams or ¾ cup + ¾ cup) that’s a total of 20 grams of sugar!

Just for breakfast you’re already at more than half the sugar you can have in one day for an adult (36 grams is the recommended amount of sugar per day for men, and 24 grams per day for women). We know that kids eat a lot of this stuff in the morning.

4th – Avoid buying processed food

You don’t need to eat processed food. They might be quick to cook and eat, giving you instant pleasure but, in the long run, all that added sugar, processed fat, salt, and high calories will make you fat and ill. 

Instead, forgo the instant gratification of processed food and make your own meals and snacks. In return, you’ll lose weight and be healthier – a source of delayed gratification.

5th – Enjoy Fruit, Vegetables, Legumes

Prepare your own food. Have a big bowl of fruit in the morning. Have a big salad for lunch, or some beans and lentils.

There are so many delicious, easy, and quick to prepare recipes that only take 20 minutes to make. You can cook a batch of meals for the week, putting leftovers in the fridge to grab-n-go the next morning before going to work.

I’ve shared more than 200 healthy recipes, and every Friday I share two more.  

Enter your name and email and hit the button  to subscribe to my weekly newsletter and get two healthy recipes in your email every Sunday)

6th – Processed Food Is Cheap, But You Pay for It Later With Your Health 

Eating fast food, ready-to-eat meals, and all that processed food may be tempting and very cheap, but in the long run what suffers most is your body and your well-being. 

The money you will save today will cost you in your daily quality of life.

20 No-Sugar Days Challenge

Join our No Sugar Diet Challenge and for 20 days avoid added sugars and artificial sweeteners. 

It will be challenging for the first few days but, after the first week, you will:

• Improve your mood
• Lose weight
• Have less anxiety
• Have more mental focus

It’s 100% free and there are tips, tricks and sugar-free recipes to help you start you challenge.

Click here to Join The No-Sugar Diet Challenge

Video Resources

How Added Sugar Makes You Fat

Why Added Sugar is everywhere

Sugar: Hiding in plain sight – Robert Lustig

References 

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/02/25/sugar-blood-pressure.aspx

http://www.newsweek.com/generation-xxl-161899

Robert Lusting website

Books

Fat Chance by Robert H Lusting

The Complete Guide to Fasting

How Not to Die