Weight Loss And Sweeteners

I introduced some caution foods as part of the “Must Dos” for each metabolism type
in the Chapter on Metabolism Types. However, most commercially available sweeteners are
counterproductive to a healthy lifestyle for everyone.

Sugar

It’s said that for every American who eats only 5 pounds of sugar each year, another eats
295 pounds. This statistic is hard to deny, because about 60% of the U.S. population is now overweight
or obese (Chek 2004, 75).

Part of my professional responsibility to you is to not downplay the serious damage that
sugar can do to your body. I am passionate about communicating the harmful effects of sugar
because I have seen clients and loved ones suffer from severe complications of type 2 diabetes,
the onset of which was caused directly by their consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates.
Processed sugar (which is in cakes, cookies, processed cereals, and many other foods) can literally
be considered a poison, which is anything that directly causes harm and can lead to a diseased
state when you ingest it.

For starters, daily sugar consumption produces a continuous acidic condition in the body.
The body combats an acidic condition by taking minerals from body tissues to buffer against the
acidic environment and rectify the imbalance. For example, the body may absorb calcium from
bones and teeth to protect the blood. As a result, bones weaken (resulting in osteoporosis) and
teeth decay (resulting in cavities). Excess sugar eventually affects every organ in the body.

Sugar has been proven to be the cause of several diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular
disease, and cancer (Mercola 2005, 12). When the liver has stored all the sugar that it can,
the excess is returned to the blood in the form of fatty acids. These fatty acids are then stored as
fat in the most inactive areas of the body: belly, buttocks, breasts, and thighs. When these areas
become completely filled with fat, fatty acids are then distributed among active organs (heart,
liver, and kidneys), increasing the risk of developing diabetes and disease in these organs.
It is well known and well documented that cancer cells can survive only in an acidic environment
and will die in an alkaline (non-acidic) environment (Quillin 2005, 120). Sugar keeps
the body in an acidic state, and tumors are enormous sugar absorbers.

Sugar consumption causes a hormonal roller coaster of alternating high levels of insulin
and blood sugar. These hormonal shifts can dramatically affect your attitude and your ability to
concentrate during the day. Also, if you replace nutrient-dense foods with processed sugar, the
chances of acquiring one of the following diseases or side-effects skyrockets (Chek 2004, 76):

• atherosclerosis

• attention deficit disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
• behavior problems
• cancer
• chronic fatigue syndrome
• colon cancer
• coronary heart disease
• food intolerance
• kidney disease
• liver disease
• malnutrition
• osteoporosis
• overgrowth of yeast, especially Candida albicans
• tooth decay
• violent tendencies

Even if you don’t consume candy or sweets outright, once you begin to read the labels
of most snacks, cereals, and drinks you consume, you will notice that it doesn’t take much to
consume approximately 80 grams of sugar—the equivalent of 20 teaspoons—in a day! When
reading labels, don’t be thrown off by strange words like sucrose, maltose, dextrose, glucose, and
the like; any word ending in -ose is a sugar. Quite often, one product will contain five or six different
types of sugar. When you add up all its many forms, sugar is frequently the greatest source
of total calories.

How about fruit? Fruit contains sugar, but solely in the form of fructose, whereas processed
sugar (sucrose) is made up of both glucose and fructose. By itself, fructose breaks down
more slowly in the body; sugar and insulin levels remain relatively constant. In contrast, sucrose
is processed extremely quickly, causing a “spike” in insulin levels—rather like a power surge followed
by a rapid return to baseline levels—that is stressful for the body. Fructose puts a lot less
stress on the body than sucrose, and most fruits have a low GI.

The biggest mistake people make is falling for the marketing hype from juice manufacturers.
They want you to think their “fresh juice” is actually good for you. If you read the package,
you’ll see that many such products are made “from concentrate,” which could easily be
translated to mean “from syrup” (Chek 2004, 77).

Artificial Sweeteners

Some diets encourage the use of artificial sweeteners and products sweetened with them.

I don’t. Consuming artificial sweeteners will keep you craving sweetness. You’ll never be able to
stop your carbohydrate cravings. Worse, some research indicates that artificial sweeteners create
the same insulin surge as sugar (Kirsch 2005, 120).

Artificial sweeteners signal to your taste buds, “Sweet stuff has arrived,” which is translated
to the brain as, “Nutrition has arrived.” When the artificial sweetener reaches the small
intestine, the receptors find no nutrition and send a message back to the brain, saying, “We’ve
been tricked. There’s no nutrition here.” The appestat (the part of your brain that triggers satiety)
therefore signals to “keep eating … to help process all this nonfood” and keep the body functioning
(Chek 2004, 76). For this reason, many people who constantly drink diet sodas are overweight
and always hungry.

If you eat foods that contain some form of artificial sweetener, add up how much you
consume each day. Knowing now that artificial sweeteners are toxic to the liver, how overwhelmed
do you think your liver is? Does it have the ability to work properly? If weight loss
or avoiding sweets has always been a problem for you, then take particular notice of how much
artificial sweetener you have been ingesting. It just may be the culprit. I have seen many people
experience dramatic weight and health changes just by quitting diet soda!
Even if you don’t intentionally use artificial sweeteners, you must read labels. Almost every
diet or sugar-free product on the market has added artificial sweetener, as do some children’s
snacks and most flavored waters. Read ingredient lists, and avoid all products that contain saccharin
(Sweet’N Low), aspartame (NutraSweet), and sucralose (Splenda).

Stevia: A Natural Alternative

Eliminating sugar and artificial sweeteners may be difficult if you are accustomed to
sweet tastes. A wonderful natural alternative to both sugar and artificial sweeteners is an herb
called stevia. Extraordinarily sweet (200–300 times sweeter than sugar), stevia also is almost
free of calories, so it is perfect for people who are watching their weight. Unlike sugar, it doesn’t
trigger a rise in blood sugar, so you won’t experience a sudden increase in insulin levels. Because
insulin levels and blood sugar are not affected, you won’t experience a burst of energy followed
by fatigue and cravings.

Stevia also presents great advantages over saccharin and other artificial sweeteners in that
it isn’t toxic and has been used safely for hundreds of years. It can be used to sweeten drinks and
even in baking.

If you are addicted to sodas or other beverages sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners,
try my Tea Juice recipe in the Recipe Guide. After only 72 hours off of sugar and sugarcontaining
products, your cravings will decrease drastically. You can get stevia here: http://
go.thedietsolutionprogram.com/steviva

Chocolate
Good news for chocoholics.
As a chocolate lover myself, I do enjoy a piece of healthy chocolate every now and then.
Healthy chocolate you say? Yes you heard that right. One of the biggest problems with chocolate
is the heavy processing it goes through and the added sugar. Luckily I have found one of the
best resources for chocolate that can actually be good for you:

http://go.thedietsolutionprogram.com/vivapura (look under Raw Organic Cacao)
The raw Cacao Bean is one of nature’s most fantastic superfoods due to its mineral content and
wide array of unique and varied properties. Since many of the special properties of cacao are
destroyed or lost by cooking, refining, and processing, we feel that planet Earth’s favorite food
is still unknown to most of us. Now we get to reconnect with the power of real chocolate: raw
Cacao Beans.

With Cacao Beans there is fantastic hope for chocoholics everywhere! You can turn cravings for
cooked, processed, chocolate into super-nutrition with raw chocolate (Cacao Beans).
Cacao Beans are extraordinarily nutritious!

Action Steps

• Read labels! The sugar content of any food is listed right under the carbohydrate listing.
Also pay attention to where the sugar is listed in the ingredients. (The order indicates
relative quantity.)

• Avoid all foods that contain artificial sweeteners, sugar, or sugar derivatives.

• Avoid all sweetened beverages, including fruit juices that are not freshly juiced.

• For all your baking and sweetening needs, use only stevia and raw organic cacao