Well, we asked our West Hartford Connecticut personal trainer, who is also a nutritionist, to elaborate on the subject of the evil white stuff: Sugar.
No one wants to hear it. After all, it is so delicious, and heaven knows that it is in so many foods. But we know—Sugar is bad for us.
Say it isn’t so!
“First, it is my belief that the amount of sugar we consume as a country directly correlates to our waist size as a country and the obesity epidemic we are experiencing,” says our personal trainer from West Hartford Connecticut. “Sugar has no nutritional value; it is only just empty calories. When you consume it, your body does one of two things: Convert it to energy or convert it to fat and store it in your fat cells.”
One of the problems comes in when we don’t use up the sugar as energy. Depending on your predisposition to having a slow or fast metabolism, says our personal trainer from West Hartford Connecticut, this may determine how much and why we store more fat.
“Another issue is insulin,” says our West Hartford Connecticut personal trainer. “Insulin is a hormone that the body releases to deal with excess sugar in our blood stream. Without going into the complicated process of how insulin works, know that too much insulin can be released when too much sugar is consumed, and that can mean bad news for your body.”
An after-effect of this often called a “sugar crash.” We consume more, and it makes us want more.
Our personal trainer in West Hartford Connecticut says
that simply consuming less sugar is only part of the answer. “Sugar is so pervasive in most of the foods we get at our local grocery store, that it is seriously difficult to eliminate it or greatly reduce it,” he says.
“To make matters worse,” continues our personal trainer in West Hartford Connecticut, “our bodies break down certain carbohydrates just like they do table sugar. The more processed our foods are, the more this occurs. You think you are eating ‘whole wheat bread,’ for instance, but that ‘whole wheat’ is processed beyond belief. Your body treats it almost as if you’re eating sugar.”
There is more. When High Fructose Corn Syrup (one of the many types of sugars out there) began being used to cheaply sweeten foods, studies showed that the body does not process it the same way as regular sugar (sucrose). In one study, rats gained significantly more weight than those with access to regular table sugar even though the calorie intake was the same.
“In addition to the way our bodies process sugars,” said our personal trainer from West Hartford Connecticut, “there are some studies that indicate that we can become addicted to the white stuff.” In essence, our bodies were not designed to eat so much sugar, and the response in the brain is a reward signal from consuming it. As a result, our brains can become addicted to the way it chemically makes us feel.
Sugar does more than make us fat, however.
It causes sickness and disease.
“Studies have shown that sugar causes inflammation in the body, and inflammation is the cause of numerous diseases,” continued our personal trainer from West Hartford Connecticut.
The list of negative things that sugar has been related to is too long to convey. We know it causes tooth decay, increases risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes and more, and it interrupts fertility and hormones, and can have a negative impact on our immune systems.
At this point, our West Hartford Connecticut personal trainer suggests that all we can do is to be cognizant of our consumption of sugar, and to try to vigilantly reduce it. Even if you attempt to eliminate sugar entirely, that may very well be impossible.
As always, eat clean when you can, and continue to exercise regularly to reduce the negative effects of sugar that are inherently in our diets.
Remember to share this valuable information with your loved ones and if you are training with a workout partner.
