You add it to your morning cup of coffee or tea. You bake it into pastries, cakes, and cookies. But that’s not all. It’s also hidden in some of the treats we love, such as sodas, fruit juices, candies, and ice cream. It also lurks in almost all processed foods, including breads, meats, and even your favorite condiments like chili sauce and ketchup.
Depending on your genetic predisposition, your body might be better equipped to process sugar as energy, or you might be more likely to store it as fat. Problem is, there is a lot more room for fat storage, and a lot less room to burn the sugar as energy.
This makes it even more important for us to find out the limit of sugar we can take in each day, and if possible, to track our intake of sugar from the food and drinks we consume. View the infographic to understand more:
Another reason why sugar causes you to gain weight is because it tricks your body into gaining weight. Fructose fools your metabolism by turning off your body’s appetite-control system. It fails to stimulate insulin, which in turn fails to suppress the “hunger hormone” ghrelin which then fails to stimulate the “satiety hormone” leptin. This causes you to eat more and develop insulin resistance.
On the other hand, sugary foods can be as physiologically addictive as many drugs. You can legitimately become addicted to sugar and sugary foods. If you have been wondering why it is always so difficult for you to control your diet and maintaining your weight, sugar may very well be the problem to your woes.
