The difference between natural sugar and added sugar

This article is written by Rob Maxwell, M.A. Exercise Physiology, CSCS and ACSM CPT from www.fittothemax.net. Follow him on Twitter.

Sugar might be the most misunderstood nutrient on earth.

Does sugar make you fat? Is sugar bad for you? Should you eat it?

Before we can answer any of these questions regarding sugar, we really need to understand what it is.

Sugar is destroyed in the media from Paleo and other health groups. We need to be careful about what we read and hear.

We should learn for ourselves instead of buying into headlines without looking at the actual facts.

What is sugar?

Sugar is a carbohydrate. It is either a monosaccharide or a disaccharide.

Carbohydrates are polysaccharides, disaccharides or monosaccharides.

Polysaccharides

Polysaccharides are what we call complex carbohydrates.

Polysaccharides are either fiber (the indigestible part of a plant), starch (the stored form of glucose in a plant), or glycogen which is the stored form of glucose in humans.

Disaccharides

Disaccharides are two bonds of monosaccharides.

They are lactose (galactose and glucose), sucrose (fructose and glucose), and maltose (two monosaccharides of glucose).

Monosaccharides

Monosaccharides are simple sugars with one chain.

There are three types: glucose (the sugar we think of as blood sugar), fructose (sugar in fruit), and galactose (sugar found in milk).

Disaccharides and monosaccharides are called sugar

A polysaccharide (complex carb) is rarely ever called sugar.

What we call table sugar is sucrose - the sweetest sugar.

Monosaccharides, disaccharides, and polysaccharides were all classified as sugars in the early days of research. They were all considered complex carbohydrates and we were encouraged to eat them abundantly.

We need to pump our breaks for now and understand a little more about this before we jump to that conclusion.

Your body needs sugar

Your body runs on sugar. The sugar in your bloodstream is glucose. Our muscles and brains need sugar to function. We cannot do anything without glucose in our bloodstream.

We store glucose in our body in the form of glycogen and we store glycogen in our muscles and liver.

We store up to 500 grams of it. This is enough for 2000 calories (about 160 minutes of running) of energy.

Natural sugar is healthy

When we talk about naturally occurring sugar, we refer to all the forms of carbohydrates that are found in fruit, vegetables, grains, beans, and dairy. These are all carbohydrate food sources.

The only non-plant sources of carbohydrates are dairy products.

When you consume any of these forms of carbohydrates you get their natural sugars.

When you eat a banana, that sugar is natural. When you consume potatoes you are consuming natural, non-additive sugar. When you eat beans like black beans, you are consuming the natural sugar that they contain.

Naturally occurring carbohydrates are healthier for you than additive sugars (found in processed foods) because of the fiber in these foods. These natural foods also have important vitamins and minerals.

We don't get the vitamins, minerals and fiber when we consume the same amount of sugar in synthetic food. This makes the food less healthy.

Can you eat mass quantities of naturally occurring carbs because they are healthier? You shouldn't eat anything without moderation.

Carbs get a bad rap. They get blamed for making people fat. That is not true.

Any macro nutrient that is eaten too much will make you gain fat.

Naturally occurring carbs are healthier for sure, but we still want to modify how much we eat.

There are no such things as free lunches.

The sugar in processed food is unhealthy

Processed food may have more, less or the same amount of sugar as natural food.

They do not have nutrients like fiber, vitamins, minerals, plant compounds, trace elements and other important nutrients that natural foods have.

Crackers, chips, soda, many breads and pastas are all processed carbohydrates. They can be yummy! Taste tempts us to sacrifice micro nutrients for the same amount of calories.

Do we really want to eat out of a test tube?

A gram of glucose in a tomato is the same as the gram of glucose in a Snickers bar. The Snickers bar has zero naturally occurring vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

Due to all of the synthetic stuff placed in the Snickers bar, it tastes yummy. We want to eat more.

Naturally occurring foods can taste very yummy too.

Glycemic index

Glycemic index is a measure of how fast a carbohydrate converts into sugar when you eat it.

The faster it converts to sugar, the higher the glycemic index. Low glycemic index carbohydrates take longer to convert into sugar.

Here is a list of foods according to their glycemic index.

We used to think of 'sugary' foods like fruits as bad for us because we called them simple sugars. We used to think of all complex carbohydrates like grains as good for us because they were polysaccharides.

Now we know that this is not the case.

Some of what we think of as simple sugars, like fruit, have a low glycemic index. This includes cherries, berries, and green apples.

Many complex carbohydrates have a high glycemic index. This includes white pasta, many types of bread (including whole wheat bread) and white rice.

Glycemic load

We must pay attention to the glycemic index (how quickly sugar goes into your bloodstream) and glycemic load (how much sugar goes into your bloodstream).

Glycemic load is the glycemic index times the grams of carbohydrates in that food.

For example, the glycemic index of cherries is 62. A serving of cherries has 19 grams of carbs. Doing that math, the glycemic load of a serving of cherries is 1178.

In you eat 3 servings then the load is 4712.

Now let us look at an example of a high glycemic food such as the cereal Cornflakes.

Cornflakes have a glycemic index of 81. A serving of corn flakes has 26 grams of carbohydrates. This load now equals 2106.

If you eat a single serving of cornflakes, you get more sugar (2106) than a serving of cherries (1178).

On the other hand, three servings of cherries give you more glucose (4712) than a single serving of cornflakes.

The higher the glycemic load, the more glucose will pour into your cells. Serving size is important.

Serving size matters

Like everything, serving size matters.

We can eat too many cherries, which has a low to moderate glycemic index, and flood our cells with glucose.

We can eat fewer corn flakes, which have a very high glycemic index, and consume less glucose.

Naturally - no pun intended - the lower glycemic index foods are going to be your best bet when eaten moderately.

It really comes down to simple math.

The nutrients surrounding sugar matters

Sugar is sugar. I explained what sugar is. The sugar in fruit is the same as sugar in candy as far as molecules go.

The surrounding nutrients in natural foods versus synthetic foods are not the same.

You can eat sugar in an apple. It comes with fiber. You will fill up quicker and not eat as much. Who finishes a bag of apples and feels guilty about it?

You can eat white bread. It is made up of sugar, but has zero fiber. Chances are you will eat more because you won't feel full.

The apple, which is natural, will also have vitamins and minerals that come with it naturally.

The white bread will have all these micro nutrients stripped away.

Natural foods are full of antioxidants and phytochemicals which boost our immune system. Processed foods are totally void of these wonderful little gifts.

What would you prefer? Mother Nature knows what she is doing.

If we eat as natural as possible, our body will thank us.

We don’t have to be perfect. It is great to shoot for better.

This article is written by Rob Maxwell, M.A. Exercise Physiology, CSCS and ACSM CPT from www.fittothemax.net. Follow him on Twitter.

Disadvantages of a keto diet

The ketogenic diet

A ketogenic diet (or keto diet) is a diet with very low or no carbohydrates that keeps your body in a state of ketosis. Ketosis is a state where the body converts fats into energy instead of sugar. Nowadays, everyone wants to lose weight. Many people are promoting and using the keto diet for rapid weight loss - especially in the United States. The reason it has become so popular is because the keto diet helps you to lose quite a lot of weight in a minimum amount of time. The keto diet, though, might be an unhealthy way to lose weight. Let's look into how keto diet could be unsafe for us.

Types of keto diets

There are several types of a keto diets. Some of those are as follows:

High-protein keto diet

It is rich in proteins. It contains 60% fats, 5% carbs, and 35% proteins.

Standard keto diet

This one is low in carbs and high in fats. It contains 75% fats, 5% carbs, and 20% proteins.

Targeted keto diet

This one allows you to add carbs in workouts.

Disadvantages of a keto diet

Negative impact on the heart

Many people are happily adopting a keto diet because it allows foods like burgers, pizzas, and meat. The meat-heavy nature of this diet increases cholesterol levels in the body. It is also high in fats, so it harms your blood cholesterol level.

When the amount of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) increases in the body, it causes slow blood flow to the heart muscles. Arteries become narrow, and this condition can lead to heart disease.

Deficiency of essential nutrients

Our body needs many essential nutrients to work properly. These nutrients include proteins, minerals, fats, vitamins, and carbohydrates. To remain healthy, we need a healthy diet that contains all these nutrients. Keto diets don’t allow whole grains and fruits. The keto diet can therefore lead to a shortage of essential nutrients. You lose weight through this diet, but your body loses nutrients that are needed to perform important cellular tasks. So if you are planning to follow a keto diet, always consult a registered dietitian first.

Keto flu

The deficiency of carbs in the body causes keto flu during a keto diet. Keto flu is a condition where you feel

• Headache

• Nausea

• Fatigue

• Hunger

• Irritability

• Constipation

Sleep and hydration will help but you will still feel weak throughout the day. It is because our body gets most of our energy from carbohydrates. With a low intake of carbohydrates, your body doesn’t get much power and you can feel sick as a result.

Can make you feel thirsty

Your body converts carbohydrates into glucose, and glucose stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin. Insulin carries glucose to cells of the body for energy and saves the rest of glucose as glycogen. Between meals, our body takes energy from these glycogen stores.

During a keto diet, there is a deficiency of carbohydrates in the body and it doesn’t produce sufficient amounts of insulin. Instead, ketones interrupt overall electrolyte levels. This causes the kidney to release water. It leads to frequent urination. Your mouth remains dry throughout the day and you feel thirsty.

Causes bad breath

You may have lousy breath if you have recently started a keto diet. Our liver uses fat cells to produce organic compounds called ketones during a keto diet. It includes acetoacetic acid and acetone. These byproducts show up in your breath. When your body starts to break down fats for energy, gases are produced. These gases are released through urination and exhalation. So people often complain about bad breath during a keto diet. Bad breath is actually a good sign too that your body has started burning fats for fuel.

Sugar deficiency

We know that too much sugar can damage the body, but our body needs enough sugar to work optimally. Sugars travel through the bloodstream to the cells. There, they provide energy for the cells. Carbohydrates and sugar break down into glucose. The brain cells and red blood cells use glucose for energy.

During a keto diet, our body doesn’t get enough carbs and sugars. Glucose doesn’t travel through the bloodstream, and you feel low in energy.

Regaining the weight

You may lose weight in a short period of time through a keto diet, but as soon as you introduce carbs again, your body starts to gain the weight back.  It is because keto diet relies on ketosis for a particular process and once the body is no longer in that state, you begin to gain the weight back. If you want to avoid this situation, consult a dietitian so he/she can guide you through a balanced diet.

Causes diarrhea

If you are going to the bathroom again and again during the keto diet, you are not alone. Many people face this problem during a keto diet. It can be due to a lack of fiber. When you cut off carbohydrate-rich foods like vegetables and whole grains, diarrhea can occur. This is common when you switch to a low carbohydrate and high-fat diet. Diarrhea can also happen due to an increase in dairy and artificial sweeteners.

Conclusion

The keto diet is missing some essential nutrients and some primary food groups. Keto diet can be beneficial for some people for a short period. But people who have a higher risk of heart disease should avoid a keto diet. If you want to lose weight, shift to a healthy diet. It will help you to lose weight and support a healthy lifestyle. But if you're going to use a keto diet, it is better to consult your dietitian for the right food choices.

Saad Shah

My name is Saad Shah. I am an avid food lover and food nutrition blogger. I'm a firm believer in the transforming powers of food. I run a nutrition blog on my website nutrition to encourage conscious food choices, with knowledge of their nutritional value.

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Fasted cardio myth debunked by science

Maybe it is time bodybuilders start training like cyclists

Fasted Cardio Myth Debunked

By Clint Latham – www.BikeALatteCO.com 

 I Wipe the sleep from my eyes, fumbling blindly in my closet for my bibs and ask myself time and time again; “Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?”

I would slowly make my way downstairs while carrying my bike; just thinking that this won't even last an hour, as I try to find some way to grip any bit of motivation left from the depths of my soul.

I’m sure that you’ve heard it a million times; especially if you are involved in the body building community.

If you want to maximize fat loss, you need to wake up early and hit the cardio before a single calorie hits the pit of your stomach. But the science would actually indicate otherwise. If you lived during the late 1990’s you have likely heard of the health craze sweeping the nation: Body for Life.

It was a health and fitness challenge put on by sports supplement company guru Bill Phillips. I was especially fascinated by this challenge as it was based out of my home town of Golden, CO.

  In Bill’s chapter on cardio he had two basic principles:
1) Hit the cardio early before eating your 1st meal
2) Perform short, high intensity interval cardio or High Intensity Interval Training

The idea was that the body had been fasting all night while you slept; reducing blood sugar levels, decreasing muscle glycogen stores and further decreasing insulin levels. Thus if you hit the cardio before your first meal the body would have no choice but to use fat as its primary fuel source.

This would send the body's fat burning potential into high gear. Ever sense countless cyclists, bodybuilders and anyone else has been looking to cut weight; they have been clawing their way, tired and hungry, through high intensity cardio in the hopes of shedding a few extra pounds.

As I traveled the country to the world's biggest bodybuilding events - The NY Pro, the Arnold and the Olympia - I would hear this time and time again. You've got to do your cardio fasted if you want to burn fat. It is as if it had been inscribed into the 10 commandments.

As I would head down to the hotel gym in the morning for a spin, I would see countless bodybuilders knuckling the cardio equipment in the hopes of shedding a few extra ounces of fat, being so tired and hungry that they could barely keep a steady pace, let alone reach the intensities required for High Intensity Interval Training.

Could this really be the best way to burn fat? They looked absolutely miserable. As I started to get back into the racing scene, a friend and training partner (Gareth Thomas - the national triathlon coach for the UK) used to always harp on me before our rides. "How many grams of carbs have you eaten?"

But I always brushed him off. Here I was working with some of the fittest people on the planet, who can get to 3% & 4% body fat and your telling me to eat!? Yeah right!

But that's when I got curious. We have bodybuilders performing fasted cardio and we have cyclists cramming as many carbs as possible. Yet both are extremely lean.

What's the truth? How does the body oxidize fat?

The human body does not operate within a vacuum

The body is constantly adjusting its use of fat or carbohydrate usage depending upon a variety of factors. Kent Hansen, in his study, The Effects of Exercise on the Storage and Oxidation of Dietary Fat, found that, "Generally if you burn more carbohydrates during your workout you will burn more fat post workout".

While research does show that fasted cardio can increase the mobilization of fat from the adipose tissue, this only occurs at very low levels of intensity. In the study Regulation of plasma fatty acid oxidation during low- and high- intensity exercise, "Our data suggests that, in addition to sub-optimal FFA availability, fatty acid oxidation is likely limited during high-intensity exercise because of direct inhibition of long-chain fatty acid entry into mitochondria." 

If a bodybuilder performs HIIT, they may see an increase in fat mobilization but that does not mean an increase in fat oxidation. This results in all those fatty acids being re-packaged and stored back into the adipose tissue.

After all of that suffering you put it right back where it came from! Furthermore Jeffery F Horowitz in his article in the American Journal of Physiology, found that; “When trained subjects exercised at 50% of the their maximum heart rate, an intensity that equates a slow walk, there was no difference in the amount of fat burned - regardless of whether the subjects had eaten or not.”

These results continued to be the same until the subjects, that were fasted, exceeded the 90 minute mark. Only then did the fasted cardio begin to show favorable results. Thus what are we left with?

The body will burn more fat cells when fasted at a lower intensity, but the duration has to be longer than 90 minutes. Anything shorter and it's a wash. And if we try to increase the intensity, there is an inhibition of fatty acids being able to enter the mitochondria.  

Why bodybuilders should think like an endurance athlete

As a competitive cyclist my goal for each workout was to make my engine bigger, stronger & faster. The way to do this is to increase the size and density of your mitochondria. Mitochondria are what produce ATP and is the only place in the cell where fat can be oxidized. It is the cell's fat-burning furnace.

The more mitochondria my body has, the bigger my engine and the faster I can ride. Think about it like a car. If you have a V12 and a 4 cylinder engine both sitting at idle, which one is going to use more gas? The V12, right!

Thus we would be better suited to turn our bodies into a V12 mitochondria machine so that we are constantly burning more fat cells. The study: An acute bout of high-intensity interval training increases the nuclear abundance of PGC-1α and activates mitochondrial biogenesis in human skeletal muscle found that low volume, high intensity interval training increases mitochondrial biogenesis.

Within 24 hours of maximal intensity exercise, new mitochondria were being formed.

I preach to any new cyclist I that work with to always eat before their rides. Why? Because without the fuel to fuel your muscles, you can't reach the intensity levels required to produce the enzymes that lead to mitochondria growth.

I know countless bodybuilders who will preach, “You got to eat before you lift bro! You need to fuel those muscles.” Why doesn't the same principle apply to high intensity cardio? You need to fuel the muscles to perform at a high level in order to induce growth. In this case, increase mitochondrial growth and fat burning potential is the goal.

In the same study, they found that a combination of both endurance and resistance exercise causes a significantly higher degree of mitochondrial biogenesis then endurance exercise alone. Bodybuilders have the resistance training part down, but what about the endurance?

Most bodybuilders I know cannot wait for their cardio sessions to be over. In fact, most of them dread cardio. Enter the popularity of the high intensity interval training workout. It's short and sweet. We also know that one of the best ways to cut fat is calories in vs calories out.

As bodybuilders get closer to show prep they begin cutting calories drastically to start leaning out.

Now it is even more important that our mitochondrial engine is huge. We want to run the fat tank on empty.

When performing an HIIT workout at the correct intensities, the body uses roughly 75% carbohydrate and 25% fat.

 The body, fully stocked full of glycogen stores, has roughly 90 mins worth of fuel for a moderately intense workout. In order to maintain optimal levels of glycogen, a daily carbohydrate intake of approximately 3 to 5 grams per pound of lean body mass is recommended when accumulating between 1 to 5 hours of training daily.

If a bodybuilder cuts (and especially limits) their carbohydrate intake, they are already running on empty before they hit the gym.

The bodybuilder's worst nightmare

Muscle tissue is made up mostly of protein which, in turn, is made up of amino acids. Normally, your body does not use protein to produce energy. If you run out of glycogen stores and no glucose is available, however, your body will then break down its own muscle tissue to release amino acids.

These amino acids are sent to your liver where they are converted into glucose in a process called gluconeogenesis.

When your body starts to use muscle tissue for energy, you lose muscle mass.

Starving without any glycogen left in the muscles to fuel their cardio efforts, bodybuilders still hit the treadmill in the hopes of shedding more fat.

What's really going to happen is your body? It's now going to use the protein in that hard earned muscle to fuel your HIIT session.

Think about a Tour De France rider. (If you're asking what the TDF is, it's like the super bowl of bike racing) Why are they so dang skinny? They burn so many calories during the race that they cannot eat enough to restore glycogen stores.

What happens? The body starts eating the muscle. A bodybuilder is doing the same thing to a lesser degree during the cutting phase. The question becomes, why not have 20-40 grams of carbohydrates pre-cardio, to be able to hit the intensity requirements needed to build more mitochondria and save that precious muscle mass?

You will be a constant fat burning machine and not have to sacrifice any muscle mass! In my Ride to 75 programs for new cyclists, one of the key principles is fuel.

We want to ride to lose weight. Cycling for Weight loss requires that we build a big mitochondrial engine to be a 24/7 fat burning machine. Now it is never a good idea to make a major change before a big show.

However, you can start focusing on building your engine between shows by fueling your HIIT workouts which will burn more fat cells.

You will also have to suffer less during the cutting phase. If you or someone you know who is interested in achieving happiness and health on two wheels please share with them, Cycling for Weight Loss, the FREE resource guide is found here.

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