Like the late great Notorious B.I.G once said “The more money you make, the more problems you get.” Amen to that. In our quests for success we tend to look at money as a victory symbol. But as Biggie said, there’s an even bigger problem that folks develop once they have too much of that money.
I’m not going to talk about money issues, but a different type of issue. I want to talk about sugar. You see, there’s a correlation between that Biggie statement and sugar. We don’t see it at first, because sugar appears to be so non-threatening.
C’mon, who’s afraid of a lil white substance? Pause and think about that one for a sec! Sound’s familiar right!
Here are some reasons why we don’t need all that extra sugar in our lives.
No Essential Nutrients
Our purpose for eating is for human survival. The whole reason we eat is to protect our bodies. We were designed to eat items that will make our bodies more efficient machines. So in addition to protecting our bodies and making it good for survival we also just eat for the natural hunger that we have in our bodies.
Hunger is biologically something we need to survive. Sugar is not needed for your survival. There is absolutely nothing nutritious about sugar. It doesn’t fulfill hunger. Sugar has no vitamins or minerals.
Doesn’t Feel You Up
So how many licks does it take for you to get the center of a Tootsie Roll lollipop? It’s pretty funny when you actually think about that commercial with the owl and the boy putting that statement to the test. The reality is you can keep licking and licking forever and you’re never going to feel totally fulfilled by that blow pop.
As a kid, you can eat candy all the time. It’s very easy for you to feel like the candy is filling you up. Because you’re so young you don’t really understand what it takes to satisfy true hunger. At that age you just want everything that’s sweet in your body. So a simple little juice box will make you feel fulfilled. The reality is that it’s your parents that make you feel fulfilled as a child. They tell you when to stop eating, and control your meal sizes. That’s why it’s easy to get full off of the sweet stuff.
As you get towards your teenage years, your body starts to mature. You start to experience hunger more often than you did as a kid. Now your body really craves nutritional substance to get it through the day. The sweets that use to feel you up no longer do the trick.
Most teenagers don’t know how to handle this and will try to just eat more sugary snacks to compensate. The sad truth is the sugary sweets will never fulfill that hunger.
Sugar Has Absolutely No Satiety
Satiety is when your body tells your brain that you’re full and satisfied. The foods that provide the best satiety are whole foods. When you eat whole foods (foods closer to their natural state ) you tend to eat less calories because those foods have more satiety than the sugary substances.
99% of your eating plan should involve whole foods so that your hunger can be satisfied. When not eating whole foods, you’ll just be adding hundreds if not thousands of calories to your body. Those calories add up over time. Even though you don’t feel full with those sugary snacks, you’re on your way to massive weight gain and multiple health issues.
Sugar Jacks Your Insulin Resistance
I’m about to to get scientific on you for one quick minute. Insulin is one the most important hormones in your body. Insulin is what allows glucose (a.k.a. blood sugar) to get into your blood cells. You see too much glucose in your blood is a very bad thing. When people have too much glucose bad things start to happen.
As healthy people we want insulin to do it’s job the correct way. We want to make sure that glucose is being burnt out all the time. When you have so much glucose in your body, your body cannot properly handle all that excess. What should biologically happen no longer takes place. Because of all that extra blood sugar your body wants to create extra insulin to correct the imbalance. That’s when bad things start to happen.
You see our bodies should not have to keep pumping out insulin to take care of the glucose. We were not biologically designed to have so much of both flowing around. When our bodies have so much glucose that it stops responding to insulin, it has become insulin resistant. Having a body that’s insulin resistance most likely means you are suffering from obesity, cardiovascular disease, type II diabetes and more bad stuff!
Sugar Is Dope
Our bodies love to be rewarded. That is why when we eat sweet substances it is so hard for us to stop after one bite. You see that biological response is something we can’t easily control. Every living persona has a reward center located in the center of their brain. When we put stuff in our bodies that make us happy, it pleasures that part of our brain. The brain releases dopamine.
Dopamine gets released whenever you eat sweet substances. Dopamine also gets released whenever people take drugs. That’s what makes sugar and drugs so addictive. The addiction develops because of what goes on in your brain and bloodstream. The moment your senses get a taste of the high of sugar/drugs, there’s a secret handshake between the sugar/drugs and dopamine in your body. Dopamine loves what the sugar/drugs are doing to it and wants more. Thus that aching sensation is what causes the addiction.
Are you starting to see a correlation here? Sugar is one biggest baddest drugs on this planet.
The Mo’ Sugar we have the Mo’ Problems we develop!
