My husband sent me this email last week it’s an article about blood SUGAR. All I have to say is WOW! sugar is evil… for those of you like me who didn’t know well now… you know! read on.
Diet and Weight Loss Tutorial
When we eat, our body converts digestible carbohydrates into
blood sugar (glucose), our main source of energy. Our blood sugar level can affect how hungry and how energetic we feel, both important factors when we are watching how we eat and exercise. It also determines whether we burn fat or store it.
Our pancreas creates a hormone called insulin that transports blood sugar into our body’s cells where it is used for energy. When we eat refined grains that have had most of their fiber stripped away, sugar, or other carbohydrate-rich foods that are quickly processed into blood sugar, the pancreas goes into overtime to produce the insulin necessary for all this blood
sugar to be used for energy. This insulin surge tells our body that plenty of energy is readily available and that it should stop burning fat and start storing it. However, the greater concern with the insulin surge is not
that it tells our body to start storing fat. Whatever we eat and don’t burn up eventually gets turned into fat anyway.
The greater concern is that the insulin surge causes too much blood sugar to be ransported out of our blood and this results in our blood sugar and insulin levels dropping below normal. This leaves us feeling tired and hungry and wanting to eat more. The unfortunate result of this scenario is that
it makes us want to eat something else with a high sugar content. When we do, we start the cycle all over again.
What to Watch For
- Simple Carbohydrates: Because of their small molecular
size, simple carbohydrates can be metabolized quickly and are therefore most
likely to cause an insulin surge.
Simple carbohydrates include the various forms of sugar,
such as sucrose (table sugar), fructose (fruit sugar), lactose (dairy sugar),
and glucose (blood sugar). Watch for the “-ose” ending.
- Hidden Sugar in Processed Foods: Watch for “hidden” sugar
in processed foods like bread, ketchup, salad dressing, canned fruit,
applesauce, peanut butter, and soups.
- Sugar in Beverages: Be aware of the amount of sugar in
beverages, especially coffee and soda pop. It can add up quickly, and most
such drinks aren’t filling.
- Fat-Free Products: Sugar is often used to replace the
flavor that is lost when the fat is removed. And as if that’s not bad enough,
without any fat to slow it down the sugar is absorbed into your blood faster.
- Cereal Box Claims of Less Sugar: Many newer cereals do
contain less sugar, but the calories, carbohydrates, fat, fiber and other
nutrients are almost identical to the full-sugar cereals. The manufacturers
have simply replaced sugar with other refined, simple carbohydrates.
- No Sugar Added: It doesn’t mean that the product doesn’t
naturally contain a lot of sugar. 100% fruit products often contain
concentrated fruit juice, still another form of fructose or sugar.
Table sugar (sucrose) is often said to provide “empty
calories” because it has no nutritional value other than providing fuel for
energy. Honey and other more natural sugars, on the other hand, are often
considered to be healthier because of the trace vitamins and minerals they
provide. Still, for weight loss purposes, all of these sweeteners can simply
be treated as sugar.
What You Can Do
It is also important to understand what happens when you skip
a meal or go on a crash diet. When you skip a meal your metabolism slows to
conserve your energy. And when you lose weight too quickly for a few days, your
body thinks it is threatened with starvation and goes into survival mode. It
fights to conserve your fat stores, and any weight loss comes mostly from water
and muscle.
Regulating your blood sugar level is the most effective way
to maintain your fat-burning capacity. Never skip a meal, especially breakfast,
and eat healthy snacks between meals. Eating frequently prevents hunger pangs
and the binges that follow, provides consistent energy, and may be the single
most effective way to maintain metabolism efficiency.
When you will be away from home or work, plan your snacks and
take them along so that you will be able to eat regularly and won’t be tempted
by junk food. This may be good advice for people who stay at home, too.
But remember that it was probably snacking between meals that
caused you to become overweight in the first place. It will be very important
that any snacks are healthy; that they are pre-portioned so you won’t be tempted
to overeat; and that meal sizes are reduced to compensate for the additional
calories the snacks provide.
High fiber snacks and meals also help to regulate your blood
sugar level. The fiber slows down glucose absorption and your rate of digestion,
keeping your blood sugar level more consistent and warding off feelings of
hunger. This makes eating apples and oranges a better choice than drinking (pulp
free) apple and orange juice.
A Note about Diabetes
Some people either produce too little insulin or their body
doesn’t respond to it properly. This creates too high a level of blood sugar in
their blood which leads to diabetes. For further information please visit the American
Diabetes Association website.
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I was roaming through the blogsphere and checking out other mom bloggers. Since I have been in the blogging game for a while now, I have collected a great deal of friends. As I look into some of the mom bloggers most of them had some kind of writing back ground or aspiring to be writers or just love to write. I take a look at myself got me thinking… English is like my third language, my grammar is terrible, and I can’t spell to save my life! Am I just a big giant fraud?
