The Scary Thing About Sugar #4 and #5
We all have been there. We go a few hours without eating. Maybe you forgot your lunch. Maybe that meeting went 2 hours longer than anticipated. Maybe the day went by and you just realized you haven’t eaten since breakfast and it’s 7:00 pm. Cue the scary thing about sugar reasons #4 and 5: sugar makes you a hangry, crazy, lunatic and eating sugar makes your body forget how to burn fat.
But what do you mean, you ask? Its because I went without all food, not just sugar. Ok hold your horses, let me explain.
Your body biologically was built to process 3 kinds of sources of energy: glycogen (sugar and carbs), amino acids (proteins) and fatty acids (fat). As an infant, our source of food consists of a little over 50% fat (breast milk). As we start consuming soft foods however, the macros change quite significantly. If you have ever had a kid and fed them baby food, most of this food consists of carbohydrates (think, little bottles of veggie and fruit puree and on occasion a very interesting looking meat puree. We talked about in the last article how our ancestors rarely had fruits and sugars and how our taste buds and our biology created systems to drive us to consume them in high doses, because we needed to store fat. Think of a baby getting pulled right into that addiction cycle before they can even stand on their own!
So the majority of what we eat end up being in the form of glucose. Decades go by and the body is quite happy with this status. Its the quickest and most energy efficient source of energy and the body prefers the lazy way to process food. Unfortunately, glucose happens to be processed very quickly by the body and is shoved into the cells pretty darn fast (again, because it required little processing). So this creates a blood sugar low, thus sending those signals to your brain that you need to eat more sugar. This doesnt mean your body has even used hardly any of that gluces you ate 2 hours ago. Sure some of it got used, but very little. The rest are just sitting in storage (i.e. stored as fat). So each time you replenish because you feel your blood sugar is low and you are getting HANGRY, you body happily stores it quickly, then sends you the signals it wants more. So the endless cycle goes.
Your body forgot it has another source of energy! Because it’s been so darn long since it needed to use it, it just plum forgot! ITS BODY FAT! So when you get that low blood sugar, I am gonna rip your freaking head off if I don’t eat right now feeling, you can thank your lazy body for not figuring out you have ample food already stored in the form of body fat. So you are in this endless cycle where you are constantly adding to that body fat and never tapping into it because you get a bit lighted headed and a lot bitchy when your blood sugar gets low. (p.e. remember those Snickers® commercials? Look what they did there…Snickers® wants you to stay right there in the trapped fat cycle.)
How do you start tapping into that body fat instead of having to experience these crazy mood swings every time you go a few hours without food? You make your body remember that is has fat to use. The fastest way is to begin introducing intermittent fasting into your weekly routine. The additional way is to go back to the infant style of eating and eat a majority fat (breast milk optional). The Fire Team Whiskey Nutritional Plans walk you through this process in 30 day increments to slowly get you detoxed from carbs, get your macros re-balanced and to start burning fat again without turning into a raging psycho when you don’t eat.
Wan’t to stay on the store fat blood sugar emotional roller-coaster? Fine. We suggest a straight jacket and a Snickers®.