Read Time: 1 x large cold brew (6 minutes)
Key Points:
Sugar has been blamed for many of our health problems for the past 5-10 years.
Many of these claims aren’t backed by much evidence.
Problems can occur when we become overly focused on one specific factor or nutrient, as our efforts may be better directed elsewhere.
Rather than focusing on our sugar intake we should invest our effort into other factors that are likely to have a much bigger return on investment.
Unless you're a wildling living on the outskirts of civilisation, fighting rangers and chilling with giants, you've probably heard about how "bad" sugar is.
Perhaps you've heard it's "toxic".
It's not. The 'LD50' (lethal dose) is around 30g/kg of body weight. So unless you're planning on consuming 225 Krispy Kremes in a sitting, you're good.
They say that it's "addictive".
This is reaching. At least when we look at it as a substance. To quote a 2016 review by Westwater and colleagues;
“we find little evidence to support sugar addiction in humans, and findings from animal literature suggest that addiction-like behaviours occur only in the context of intermittent access to sugar…”
This makes sense. You don’t see people spending all their money buying bags of pure sugar and eating it by the spoonful. Nor have I heard of anyone robbing 7/11’s to fund their cupcake habit.
And of course, we all know it's to blame for fat gain and obesity.
Except it's not. At least not solely.
If it were, we would expect to see diets that contained more sugar lead to more fat gain, regardless of calories.
Surwit and colleagues examined this directly, comparing a high (43%) versus low (4%) sugar diet over six weeks. Both groups lost around 7 kg with no difference between groups.
Another study had men follow a high carbohydrate diet (containing 147 grams of sugar) for four weeks before switching to a ketogenic diet (10 g sugar) for another four weeks.
This study was particularly strong because calories and protein were matched, subjects were confined to a metabolic ward, and all food was provided. The results showed slightly more fat loss during the higher sugar period of the study.
The evidence as a whole, doesn't support sugar having a uniquely fattening effect outside of the calories is supplies, and being present in many hyper-palatable foods.
Before you brandish your pitchforks and light your torches, ready to hunt me down like some evil, pro-sugar advocating sorcerer, let me explain.
I'm not advocating a high sugar diet.
I'm advocating that we stop focusing on a single factor as our problem.
"The downward trends over time argue against the assumption that the reduced consumption of refined sugars and SSB [sugar sweetened beverages] will, in themselves, help to reverse societal trends in obesity and chronic disease. Although an overconsumption of energy relative to needs must be addressed to halt the obesity epidemic, our analysis provides little evidence to support a particular focus on any one source of energy. Inappropriately high intakes of savory foods or, indeed, of any energy source (alcohol, fat, protein, starch, or sugars) will result in weight gain."
Paraphrasing the authors above, health and fat loss aren't as simple as cutting out all sugar.
You might be thinking, "yeah, but if cutting out sugar isn’t going to cause any problems, what’s the harm?"
The harm is that we can become overly focused on one specific factor, missing other more important ones.
It's like Cersei in season 7 of GOT (spoiler alert). She's so focused on protecting her kingdom and defeating Daenerys and our boy Jon, she doesn't realise it won't mean shit if the white walkers do their thing and wipe out everyone in Westeros.
I see this Cersei effect all the time. Individuals that are frustrated by their lack of results. Confused because they’ve cut out the specific food or nutrient they think is the problem, in this case all sweets (except for when they binge). When they don’t see results, instead of re-evaluating their starting beliefs they double down on their current formula. If just cutting out sugary “junk” isn’t enough, the next logical solution is to cut out fruit. In extreme cases, even dropping vegetables like capsicum.
This is why I don't provide guidelines on sugar intake to clients. And why 95% of individuals should give fewer fucks about sugar.
What should you focus on instead?
1. Calorie intake.
Calorie balance is what dictates weight gain or loss. As demonstrated in the studies above, the sugar content of the diet doesn't negate thermodynamics.
Due to its direct relationship with your body weight (and body fat), calorie balance within the body has a massive effect on your health too.
Maintaining a healthy body weight in our current obesogenic environment is one of the more challenging but healthiest things you can do. That's because having large amounts of excess body fat increases the risk of almost all chronic diseases.
So, whether you're interested in aesthetics or health, calorie balance is non-negotiable.
2. Protein Intake
There are very few nutrition factors that have a better cost to benefit ratio than an increase in protein. For the majority of individuals, protein is going to have a lot of potential benefits, with very few negatives. These include:
A high protein diet can be a helpful weapon to wield when an obesogenic environment is trying to force its will on you.
Forget the RDI's, and aim to consume at least 1.6 to 2.4 grams of protein per kilo of bodyweight.
3. Nutrient Density.
When we focus on eating a diet based on whole foods, sugar becomes a moot point. I'm yet to meet someone who is consuming a diet of 80% plus whole foods and is also seeing adverse effects of sugar.
By reducing the amount of processed foods in our diet we increase the likelihood of consuming enough vitamins, minerals and fibre. It also helps us regulate our calorie intake (point 1).
So rather than trying to cut out sugar, focus on getting a minimum of 80% of your intake from whole foods.
4. Step Count
I have many clients track their daily step count which I use as a proxy measure of non-exercise activity levels (NEAT). As we've come to discover in the last decade, it's likely not enough to bust your ass in the gym for an hour and then sit on it for the rest of the day.
Reducing sedentary behaviour improves health but also increases energy expenditure (helping manage body fat) and improve our ability to regulate our calorie intake.
I have most clients aim for 10,000 as a starting point.
5. Sleep
Sleep is akin to vegetables when it comes to health.
Everyone is telling you to eat more. You know you should eat more. You know the benefits of eating more.
But you don't.
You'd rather stay up scrolling the gram or watching videos of otters eating cereal.
Poor sleep is one of the BIGGEST factors when it comes to health. It's also free. Yet for some reason we'd prefer to spend our money on supplements and pills that have a much smaller magnitude of effect than sleep.
Just to remind you.
Not enough sleep has been shown to:
The list goes on.
Current recommendations suggest between 7-9 hours as the sweet spot. If body composition is your priority, then I'd aim for a minimum of eight hours.
I'm well aware that in today's hustle biased world that this is a lofty goal. But I'll leave you with this:
A 2012 study looked at whether sleep duration and quality could predict the amount of fat loss during a diet. Each additional hour of sleep, over 5 hours, was associated with over half a kilo of more fat loss over 15 weeks.
While not game changing, for something that requires little effort and a ton of other benefits, why not?
There you have it.
Aiming to improve in all the above would see exponential improvements in your health, aesthetics and wellbeing.
However, even investing more effort into one or two will pay off big time.
Not sure where to start?
Hit me up below and we can organise a time to chat. Alternatively, check out this article here on setting up for success.