WHERE ARE THEY HIDING THE SUGAR?

​One of the foremost reasons you cannot lose weight, or your A1C won't drop, or your cholesterol remains high, regardless of how hard you try, is most likely because you're eating hidden sugar.
 
Most people are aware of the sugar in the obvious “sugary” foods like pastries, snacks, sugary drinks, and cereals. But what fools even the best, even doctors and nutritionists, is the clever manner in which American food manufacturers hide the sugar in foods you wouldn’t think would have sugar. Or, perhaps a more honest way to put it is to say the persistent manner food makers continue to put sugar in almost everything that is processed. Why would they do this? So you will continue to buy the tasty (addictively tasty) food product. 

So why is this something to be concerned about – eating foods you wouldn’t think contain sugar? And we’re talking about all sugars: molasses, syrup, sucralose, high fructose whatever. All of these are harmful in their own way and facilitate the storage of fat in your liver and your fat cells. How so?

The more sugar you eat over time, the more your body literally fills up with sugar. Eventually insulin goes into action to remove the excess sugar (glucose) in the blood stream to put it into the storage compartments, to use later. The primary storage compartments being the liver, fat cells, and other organs. Eventually, when the liver gets overloaded with glucose, it will make a fat, triglycerides, and eventually the fat finds its way to your belly – hence, the belly pooch.
 
If your waist-to-hip ratio measurement is greater than 0.95, it’s a good bet that you have now, or will soon have, a fatty liver and insulin resistance. Which means the excess sugar in your blood is not responding well to the insulin. You become glucotoxic and insulintoxic. This results in being overweight, if not obese – and diabetic.

There are only two ways to get rid of sugar in your body: One is to not eat any more, and the second is to burn it off. Not eating any more sugar means adopting a LOW-CARBOHYDRATE, HEALTHY FAT diet. Avoiding foods that have glucose or turn into glucose. That is, a LOW-CARBOHYDRATE, HEALTHY FAT diet. Exercise will help, but not much. "Eating less, and moving more" has been shown to be a dismal failure.

Sugar in your body is most effectively burned off by – not eating. The longer you go without eating, that is, fasting, the quicker your body’s metabolism switches to burning fat for fuel from the fat and triglycerides. And when the fat is broken down, that fat is going to come from where? – your belly pooch. We’re talking about intermittent fasting. Or, at least skipping one or two meals a day for 2-4 times a week. Voila! Stay off the sugar and your belly pooch and any other pooches will get smaller and disappear. If you stay on a focused low-carb, healthy fat diet, and you are not too much overweight, you may not have to intermittently fast. I didn't.

What are some foods in which one might hide the sugar?
Here’s a modest list of a few such foods: 
The Culprit                                                                                 An Alternative
Pasta sauce (3 tsp sugar/1 cup)                                  organic pasta sauce with caution
Peanut butter (1 tsp sugar/tbsp.)                                natural is better but watch it.
Ketchup or ketchup w sucralose                                 organic ketchup 
Mayonnaise (1/4 tsp sugar)
Relish (1 tsp sugar)
Applesauce (high fructose corn syrup)                       unsweetened applesauce/apple
Sports drinks/w and w/o sucralose                            water with lemon or lime
Energy/protein bars                                       unflav yogurt/almonds/hb eggs/turkey jrky
Organic ice cream                                                        full fat greek yogurt
Granola bar                                                                  Purely Elizabeth brand
Campbell’s tomato soup (6 tsp sugar/can)               make your own soup
Wheat thins                                                                  triscuit
Monster drinks/sucralose = fake sugar                     tea, coffee
Orange juice/juices                                                      eat a real orange
All beef wieners, many franks, bologna,
processed ham
Pork & Beans

There are many others. If you are motivated, you can research and get familiar with a LOW-CARB, HEALTHY FAT diet. Getting on and staying on this way of eating is a change and will require effort and a good bit of attention. I refrain from using the word “strict” as in a strict diet. It is not so much strict as it requires being focused and attentive to the foods you eat. If you adopt a cavalier approach to making the change you will be wasting your time and keeping the pooch. This is a for-the-rest-of-your-life-stay-healthy way of eating.  

A few years ago I came across Dr. Jason Fung who has several books out along these lines. As do other physicians online. Two of Dr. Fung’s books are THE DIABETES CODE, and the other is titled THE OBESITY CODE. Check these out along with his YouTube channel and short talks that explain how you can make this important change in your life. 
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On a personal note, I myself have been able to discontinue my high cholesterol medication, and triglyceride medication as a result of making these changes. Both conditions have been reversed with LOW-CARB, HEALTHY FAT eating.

It's not the dietary fat that's making you fat; it's the sugar.

So, become the NEW you – be free – be sugar free!