Let's talk SUGAR!!!!

rougecrayon

Actually refined sugar like granulated sugar and high fructose corn syrups (and other sugars that are processed) are not as good for you as natural sugars like cane sugar and sugars in fruit!

If all carbs were the same then we would be fine eating nothing but twinkies all day.

The MFP sugars are very unrealistic. I can go over with one serving of fruit and a SALAD!

mmapags

The MFP sugars are very unrealistic. I can go over with one serving of fruit and a SALAD!

Agreed. That's why I cringed earlier in this thread when I saw one person recommending to track them here and another saying they were now going to do that!

swiftjen77

I recently quit drinking sugary sodas and cut out a lot of sweets I was eating. I should add I'm a nursing mom and I've been craving sugar since my 6 month old son was born. When I decided to cut out all this sugar, about a week later I was SO LETHARGIC I could barely find the energy to walk up or down stairs. I thought my tiredness was just from working out. I tried drinking caffeine. That didn't help at all. I was craving sweets terribly & decided to go ahead and have a "free meal" where I would eat whatever I wanted. I ate 2 toaster strudels and a rice krispie treat and felt like a brand new woman. I felt SO MUCH BETTER.

With that said.... I feel that having too little sugar is detrimental. I don't know if it's because I'm nursing my son or what, but I MUST have sugar to not get that way again. Before I had my son, I had a sweet tooth sure, but not like I do now. I HAVE to have something sweet every day and at least twice a day or I just don't feel normal.

rougecrayon

Having too little sugar is probably not the best thing in the world, but feeling down after quitting sugar means you were having too much.

Cutting out sugary drinks does not mean you are cutting out all sugar, there are sugars in lots of fruits, veggies, carbs, everything! Getting that lethargic just means your body is looking for that sugar rush, when it should be feeding off the fat stores (instead of the easy and accessible burn of sugar).

Give your body a chance to get over it's "sugar withdrawl" and you will be feeling up in no time.

Started to feel down, and need an immediate boost? Can't wait? Eat an apple. It's packed with sugar! It will give you more of an up than a cup of coffee!

No disrespect at all - but nursing moms were nursing just fine before sugary drinks and sweets. They got their energy from a more nutrient dense source!

Katia_Quesadilla

Thank you so much for starting this thread, kellybeam! I've been stressing because I can stay under all my other areas but go over in sugar every day. I'm glad I'm not the only one having this problem

richardheath

Excellent post. The real issue IMHO, is not sugar but carb intake in general. Sugar is a carb. All carbs become blood glucose. If you set a reasonable carb macro target and stick to it, worrying about sugar is not the issue. And no, fruit sugar is not any better than any other sugar. Or worse for that matter. Sugar is not inhernently bad. It is useful in the proper dose and context.

Sugar is one half glucose and one half fructose. Excess fructose consumption has been connected to obesity and insulin resistance (and few other things I can't remember). One should try to limit the amount of sugar consumed while trying to meet carb requirements.

And what dosage and in what context? That would be my point. What difference would it make if the dosage were low enough in the overall context of well managed calories and macronutrients?

A person consuming most of their carbs from, say, Frosted Flakes is more likely to build insulin resistance than a person who eats most of their carbs from, say, potatoes. Now, this person who loves his/her (delicious!) Frosted Flakes is hitting their target carb macros and calories for weight loss and is successfully losing weight. However, due to insulin resistance, this person's weight loss will come at the expense of not just fat, but of lean body mass. Let's say this person lost 60lbs in 3 years and started at 30% body fat. Because of insulin resistance, the 60 lbs lost would register as 2 or 3% decrease as opposed to a 10 or 15% decrease. You can't look at weight loss in a healthy manner without looking at body composition as well.

This is an extreme example, but I'm just trying to highlight what insulin resistance from fructose over-consumption might do to an obese person who is trying to lose weight and lower the risk factors associated with not just weight, but body composition. I didn't even mention the fact that fructose is stored as fat at a much higher rate than glucose, even while on a deficit diet (I guess I just did).

Actually, I don't know that it is proven that there is a causal link between sugar consumption and diabetes. As far as I can tell, genetics is the major factor in determining whether you get diabetes or not. In identical twins, "[t]he concordance rate for any abnormality of glucose metabolism (either Type II diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance) at 15 years follow-up was 96%." (ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10064093). Non-identical twins see a similar % as in the general population.

There is a correlation between obesity and diabetes, yes, but which way does the arrow actually point? And, remember, correlation doesn't have to equal causation anyway.

Does anyone have foods that they eat that are low in sugar? I'm having a hard time staying below my daily sugar limit but over 1000 calories. I don't want to be below 1,200 calories but find when I try to get to 1,200 I'm way over the sugar.

Ideas?

Rice, pasta, potatoes, steel cut oats. These have high glucose and are very low in sugar.

But glucose IS a sugar...

richardheath

ETA - I am prediabetic, and I don't track my sugar. Just overall carbs. I do try to stay away from refined sugar though.

goldthistime

I LOVE that MFP tracks your sugar. I entered into my diary a can of organic vegetable soup the other day and was surprised to see what MFP reported as its sugar content. I would never have even thought to check the label for sugar.

StaticEntropy

Excellent post. The real issue IMHO, is not sugar but carb intake in general. Sugar is a carb. All carbs become blood glucose. If you set a reasonable carb macro target and stick to it, worrying about sugar is not the issue. And no, fruit sugar is not any better than any other sugar. Or worse for that matter. Sugar is not inhernently bad. It is useful in the proper dose and context.

Sugar is one half glucose and one half fructose. Excess fructose consumption has been connected to obesity and insulin resistance (and few other things I can't remember). One should try to limit the amount of sugar consumed while trying to meet carb requirements.

And what dosage and in what context? That would be my point. What difference would it make if the dosage were low enough in the overall context of well managed calories and macronutrients?

A person consuming most of their carbs from, say, Frosted Flakes is more likely to build insulin resistance than a person who eats most of their carbs from, say, potatoes. Now, this person who loves his/her (delicious!) Frosted Flakes is hitting their target carb macros and calories for weight loss and is successfully losing weight. However, due to insulin resistance, this person's weight loss will come at the expense of not just fat, but of lean body mass. Let's say this person lost 60lbs in 3 years and started at 30% body fat. Because of insulin resistance, the 60 lbs lost would register as 2 or 3% decrease as opposed to a 10 or 15% decrease. You can't look at weight loss in a healthy manner without looking at body composition as well.

This is an extreme example, but I'm just trying to highlight what insulin resistance from fructose over-consumption might do to an obese person who is trying to lose weight and lower the risk factors associated with not just weight, but body composition. I didn't even mention the fact that fructose is stored as fat at a much higher rate than glucose, even while on a deficit diet (I guess I just did).

Actually, I don't know that it is proven that there is a causal link between sugar consumption and diabetes. As far as I can tell, genetics is the major factor in determining whether you get diabetes or not. In identical twins, "[t]he concordance rate for any abnormality of glucose metabolism (either Type II diabetes or impaired glucose tolerance) at 15 years follow-up was 96%." (ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10064093). Non-identical twins see a similar % as in the general population.

There is a correlation between obesity and diabetes, yes, but which way does the arrow actually point? And, remember, correlation doesn't have to equal causation anyway.

Does anyone have foods that they eat that are low in sugar? I'm having a hard time staying below my daily sugar limit but over 1000 calories. I don't want to be below 1,200 calories but find when I try to get to 1,200 I'm way over the sugar.

Ideas?

Rice, pasta, potatoes, steel cut oats. These have high glucose and are very low in sugar.

But glucose IS a sugar...

I apologize. Yes, glucose is sugar. However, when you look at a nutritional label, the distinction being made with "sugar", as opposed to the rest of the carbohydrate content, is referring to disaccharides, which could be either lactose (glucose + galactose), sucrose (fructose + glucose), or HFCS (also fructose + glucose, but the amount of fructose to glucose is much higher than 1:1). So when you look at MFP's tracking of sugar obtained from nutritional labels, you are not looking at glucose content, but the content of these aforementioned disaccharides.

As for the research you sited, it only focuses on genetic causation for diabetes but does not look at whether the twins carried similar diets or highly divergent ones.

As for there not being a causal link between sugar and diabetes, I specifically mentioned that the fructose in sugar (again, the disaccharide noted on nutritional labels) has been linked to a whole host of problems, including diabetes, when consumed in excess. And it is a strong link. The following is an exhaustive and well sourced review on the subject:
Fructose, insulin resistance, and metabolic dyslipidemia
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/2/1/5

I'll quote a (very) small section of the long article, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing:
"it was found that after 28 days of fructose feeding there were no changes in insulin receptor concentration, but, insulin stimulated autophosphorylation, a mechanism necessary for insulin action, was reduced to 72% in the liver."