Hello and welcome to a post most of you will know all about….

I can’t tell you how many people I’ve come across that has had an addiction to sugar (including me). This stuff is proven to be more addictive than cocaine! And I’m not joking. What’s worse is that every damn processed food maker knows it! In fact, the magic ratio to get you to over eat is 50% fat and 50% sugar. If you look at the most popular brands of cakes and chocolate, you’ll find that the ingredients are pretty close to that ratio and whenever you walk into a cafe and see the cakes lined up with the fresh smell of coffee (another subject of addiction) you’ll know that the cafe owners know how to keep their businesses ticking over!

So you may ask “so what?” well here’s a top 10 list of why getting on the processed sugar train with no brakes is a bad idea:

1. It increases inflammation in the body
2. It can help cause diabetes
3. It feeds fungus and parasite infections, which, by the way, we pick up all the time. It’s just that if you have a vital immune system, you’ll fight them off.
4. It lowers your immune system. Not great for coping with the fungus and parasites mentioned above right?
5. Cancer cells feed off sugar more than anything else
6: It promotes premature ageing
7: It’ll make you fatter faster than anything else
8: It’ll increase your uric acid levels and make you more acidic, leading to many other problems including fatigue
9. After spiking blood sugar and then generally causing a blood sugar drop, you’ll find yourself on the merry go round of overeating and craving the same food that caused the spike in the first place
10. Processed sugar is a stressor on the body and due to various factors too complex to go into here, it’ll increase stress on the body/mind complex.

So if you just read that and thought “what the hell, I’ve got a family sized trifle to finish off and a litre of chocolate milkshake to wash it down with in the cooler” then take a bite for me but if you want to do something about cutting this stuff out here’s some basic tips:

1. Use alternatives to ween yourself off. Think unprocessed sugars that occur naturally, honey, fruits and even a natural sweetener like stevia.
2. Eat right for you. I go into all these things in much more detail with clients but on a basic level, if you’re getting the right macronutrient (fats/proteins/carbs) ratio for you, that’ll balance blood sugar and stop your body craving anything with a cherry on top.
3. Eat every 3-4 hours to once again help stop cravings
4. Read labels! Food manufactures of course know you like it, so they’re putting it in all sorts now, even Marks and Spencer is loading their meats with the stuff. This is of course done in the hope that customers will buy their meat rather than the competitions.
5. Cut down on the caffeine. This also disrupts blood sugar balance (wondered why the cakes go well with coffee?) throwing you into the craving cycle again.

Well, there you go, a few pointers on what you can do.

Eat well

Rupert Hambly

Ref: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/