Sugar has gotten a bad rap over the years, and rightfully so. Otherwise known as the bad boy of the food industry, you’ll be hard pressed to find food made without it, which makes sense considering the drive for food manufacturers is profit versus health.
Initially used to sweeten breakfast porridge in 1689, the first sugar refinery was built in NYC. Within 10 years, sugar consumption per person was already up to four pounds per year. Today, the average American consumes more than 100 pounds of sugar per year in contrast to only eight pounds of broccoli.
Additionally, the US is the largest consumer of sweeteners and one of the largest global sugar importers. Yet the USDA recommends we eat no more than 10 teaspoons of sugar a day when we’re really eating as many as 30, which is three times the recommended daily allowance!
What’s worse is, you may not even know why you eat so much of the white stuff in the first place.
It’s little known that sugar qualifies as an addictive substance, or in other words, a drug. Like heroin or cocaine, even eating a small amount creates a desire for more, and suddenly quitting causes withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, mood swings, cravings, and fatigue.
Found in many of the usual suspects, like candy, cakes, and cookies, you’ll also find it in canned veggies, baby food, peanut butter, bread, cereal, salad dressings, and even cigarettes, and it’s often disguised as corn syrup, dextrose, maltose, glucose, or fructose.
Even so-called healthy foods contain sugar! For example, protein bars contain as much as 21g of sugar per serving, which equates to over five teaspoons, compared to other food like donuts, which may only have three.
As a result, the overconsumption of refined sweets and added sugars found in everyday foods has led to an explosion of hypoglycemia and type 2 diabetes just in the US alone.
To compound matters, if you want to know why you have no energy, think sugar! People with energy deficiencies constantly wonder why they’re so tired all the time without ever recognizing the true source of their depleted energy reserves.
The answer lies in four specific reasons:
- Exhausted adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are responsible for your fight-or-flight response, which for most people, happens all the time. Instead of every once in a while like they were designed, your adrenals are firing off nowadays left and right, such as being late for work, an argument with a spouse or friend, or an irate boss, which sends cortisol shooting through your system in reaction to the stress, exhausting your adrenal glands, and in turn, you, which is a surefire way to set you up for sugar cravings as a way to get instant energy. Sugar being an artificial stimulant though actually exhausts you even more, making you crave more, and so on.
- Sugar is void of nutrients. Since it’s so highly refined, sugar by itself has no nutritional content, which means in order for your body to process it, it has to pull from your body’s own store, further depleting it, creating nutritional voids and consequently making you more tired.
- Sugar is highly toxic. Anything toxic will drain your energy, and that includes sugar. It’s one of the most toxic substances from a nutritional standpoint, and, like with all toxins, causes lethargy. Any substance that your body can’t process on its own causes undue nutritional stress, gets stuck in various organs and tissue, clogs up normal bodily processes and functions, and throws your body out of whack, which means you don’t feel so hot, and you have no energy.
- Sugar is highly acidic. On the pH balance chart which ranges from 1-14, seven is within normal range, yet when you eat foods that are more acidic than alkaline, your whole internal ecosystem becomes acidic, dropping you well below seven. Enter sugar, one of the most acidic foods on planet earth! An imbalanced pH indicates the foods you eat are imbalanced too, which creates an overall imbalance in your entire body. When that happens, everything is effected, and most specifically, energy levels as any kind of nutritional imbalance will suck what energy you have in an attempt to keep up your vitality as well as make up for the nutritional deficiencies your body is already experiencing.
An important key to remember is that sugar is not actually the problem, but rather the solution to an underlying imbalance that your body is trying to alert you to. Reducing or eliminating refined sugars and sweeteners and replacing them with natural sweeteners is your best defense to overloading your body with too much artificial sugar, which only makes you more tired, and preventing long-term disease in the long run.
Try my 30 Days to No More Cravings self-study course for a quick, easy way to kick sugar!
Angela
