Reduce Sugar Intake To Lose Weight |
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| By: Jason Chen | ||||
While most people do not pile on 22 tablespoons of sugar per day, our food manufacturers add sugar to food to make it more palatable. These 22 tablespoons of sugar are in our food and drinks in a shape of high-fructose syrups or other sugar substitutes. Because these extra calories are typically not offset by increased exercise, that typically amounts to an annual weight gain of about 7 pounds for an average person. These are useless calories, to make matters even worse, as they do not add any nutritional value. Sugar is the principal driver of blood insulin, which is a hormone that is responsible for storing away extra energy within the fat cells. So, eating a lot of additional sugar, aside from adding nothing nutritionally, really does cause weight gain in normally healthy people. As we have written in our other articles, (see our resource box below for links!), gaining control over insulin response is helpful to both health and weight loss. As a point to drive home, it takes more than one hour of fast walking (at 4 mph, or 15 minutes per mile) to walk off the additional 350 calories of sugar that a typical American ingests. And, this is easily avoidable. Smarter food choices can generally go a long way to control blood sugar and help in weight loss. For instance, an easy and effective substitution is to change sugary drinks for no-sugar-added drinks, such as coffee, tea, or water. Water is also very important to maintain hydration. Other food substitutions, no less useful, are replacing high-sugar content candy or other sweets with fruits (which contain a lot of natural fiber in addition to fruit sugars), replacing white and other enriched breads with whole grain breads, and staying away from highly processed foods - you know, the ones that are typically located in the middle aisles of a supermarket. Weight loss is easily altered by simple lifestyle changes. While exercise and diet typically go hand-in-hand, even small changes can make meaningful contributions to weight loss and health improvement. Check our links below for many other suggestions for healthy weight loss. |
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| Article Source: http://4health.co.za | ||||
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