Calories in Sugar and Weight Loss

Added sugar intake leads to weight gain and increased body fat. These sugars can be found in sugary cereals, sweetened drinks, baked goods and sweets. It is also a cause for chronic health conditions such as diabetes, obesity and heart disease.

Adding just one teaspoon of sugar to a cuppa tea never seemed like a big deal, but over time, manufacturers started adding sugar to everything, including crackers and spaghetti sauce.

Sugar can cause lots of health conditions over a period of time, including:

• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
  Sugar plays a massive role in the progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and if you removed it from your diet as best as you can, it can be one of the best ways to treat this condition.
  
  
• Hindrance in weight loss
  Regardless of where the sugar comes from, it can put a huge decline on your weight loss journey. Mainly because you can’t actually track consistently, how much sugar you’re intaking, and also because it’s in everything we enjoy.
  
  
• Poor nutritional value

Generally, foods that consist of high levels of sugar are less nutritious than foods of lower sugar. You gain very little from the nice things like sweets, ice-cream, pastries and juices.

• Tooth Decay

You can probably close your eyes and reminisce about the times when your parents told you that sweets rot your teeth. They weren’t wrong. Sugar breaks down tooth enamel and causes cavities. This causes harmful bacteria to grow and multiple, causing tooth decay.

• Impacts blood sugar and hormone levels
  Having sweet things every so often isn’t a bad thing, but if you eat high levels of sugar on a daily basis, it can really harm your health. If you have prolonged elevated blood sugar, it can cause hyperglycaemia which then has an affect on your body, including weight gain.

• May cause you to overeat
  If you have too much added sugar in your diet, it will cause you to overeat. This is due to the fructose affecting a part of your brain called hypothalamus which is responsible for the functions such as appetite regulation, calories burned and carb/fat metabolism.
  
  

Small amounts of sugar in our diet doesn’t harm us, and there are some healthy foods such as dairy products and fruits, contain natural sugars which help towards our energy levels.
Although, we tend to consume way too much sugar without even realising. It is added to all of the processed foods that we eat. Foods that seem harmless when put into our mouth, such as: salsa, ketchup or canned soups. They might not even be sweet enough to tell that there is sugar in them. Even the drinks we consume usually are loaded with sugar.

There are diet drawbacks of too much sugar too. It might also even be a case of, if we eat too much sugar, then it’s even more sugar that we crave, causing a vicious cycle.

You may be piling on the weight due to excess sugars due to the fact that it’s high in calories and it offers hardly any nutrients. This is then often referred to as empty calories and your body needs vitamins, minerals, fat and protein to function, which sugar doesn’t have.

Sugar becomes a major culprit in weight gain, and as hard as it may seem to begin with, is something you should really consider cutting out if you want your weight loss journey to be a success. Not only does excess sugar lead to weight gain, but can in fact, cause obesity.

When you’re used to eating sugar, your body craves it, especially when your brain knows that you’re cutting it out for a sugar free diet. It’s hard to defeat, and definitely becomes one of the hardest challenges you’ll come to face.

Ways to help substitute sugar during weight loss.

• Eat plain Greek Yogurt

Believe it or not – because they always advertise to be healthy – yogurt is a common source of added sugar. More than you might believe, in fact, as it can be up to 30 or 40 grams per serving!
If you choose a plain Greek yogurt instead, then you’ll be choosing to consume just natural sugars. Just make sure to double check the ingredients.

• Substitute sugary drinks for water

It might seem like the most boring drink on the planet, but it is actually the most beneficial to your health. Sugary drinks are lovely, but they contain so many added sugars. Maybe even cut down slowly on your morning coffee or tea, try to have them black, without added sugars or sweeteners!

• Limit fruit and AVOID honey, jellies, honey and other preserves

Fruit can contain high amounts of sugar, and if you’re consuming it on a daily basis (multiple times a day) then you might want to double check how many calories you’re actually eating. Fruit is healthy, but you should limit your intake to 2-3 pieces per day, potentially less if you can. Jams and jellies also have high sugar levels. You should exclude these if you’re serious about this lifestyle change.

• Avoid fruit juices

Just think about this for a moment – orange juice has five oranges in it, which means, it has five times the amount of sugar. Even if they state they’re not from concentrate, they’re still processed.

Sugar is one of the highest known issues in regards to weight loss. If you have high sugar levels, then you are more than likely going to put the weight on. As stated above, this can lead to more serious health concerns.
Sit back and take a serious look at your diet to consider how much sugar you’re actually consuming.

Once you’ve done this, you can take the right steps forward to achieve the best from weight loss. Try our AI Weight Loss Diet which has been created for rapid weight loss by fixing nutritional gaps in the diet using Artificial Intelligence.