The Second Step To Rapid Weight Loss - Reducing THE White Poison

Actually, if you think about it, there are 2 foods that could be called white poison - enriched white flour and sugar.

Sugar earns the title for the worst food poison. Restricting sugar to 15 - 25 grams per day (the second step to rapid weight loss) works for weight loss and wellness. Just by the way, the 5 steps are listed in this article and step 1 is covered in this post.

Unless you've been living on Walden Pond for the past several years, you KNOW excessive sugar puts on weight, contributes to heart disease (this one is more recent), and does not contribute to good health.

Are You Addicted To Sugar?
I love sugar.

In fact, I am a sugar addict. I was the kid who collected everyone's bubble gum from the baseball card packs my friends bought.

So, I made sugar restriction a habit. Once you get used to less sugar, too much of it is way too sweet.

Sugar restriction became a weight loss accelerator for me. I dropped the last 10 pounds of the twenty I wanted to lose in about a month.

Some people experience drastic weight loss when they get rid of sugar - the relative who stopped drinking regular coke (a 6-pack a day) lost 15 pounds in 3 weeks. Note that EACH soda contains almost 40 grams of sugar. 40 X 6 = a whopping 240 grams a day.

Click here to read my article about losing weight by restricting sugar.

Also, here's Mark Hyman's 10-day detox diet, a way to end sugar cravings and boost your health:

Even So-Called "Healthy" Foods Are Full of Sugar

A few days ago, The World Health Organization (WHO) dropped its sugar intake recommendation from 10 percent of daily calorie intake to 5 percent. Finally, the WHO has recognized sugar's major contribution to diabetes, obesity, kidney, and heart disease.

The new WHO sugar recommendation translates to about 6 teaspoons or 25 grams of sugar per day for an adult.

Unfortunately, most people don't know that processed foods usually contain a lot of sugar. You can drink 37 grams of sugar in one can of coke. 

A perfect example of a sugar-laden "healthy food"

Chobani yogurt claims to be a "healthy" protein food, yet the black cherry version has 24 grams of sugar. Even the light version, only 100 calories, contains 7 grams. 

What do you do if you're trying to reduce the sugar in your diet but love yogurt? In the above example, the fruit contributes the greatest amount of sugar.  Here's what you do - buy the plain version of Chobani (3 sugar grams) and add a few slices of strawberries or some lemon or lime juice. Now you have your yogurt with 5 grams of sugar, about 20% of the daily recommendation.

Losing weight is much easier when you control the amount of sugar you eat. The eating plan described below restricts sugar and carbs, encouraging the consumption of "good carbs."

Lose 20 lbs In 1 Month 

on a safe, healthy, cost-free eating plan . . .  

Get my FREE ebook by clicking HERE 

New JAMA Medical Alert: Sugar Causes Heart Disease (Is This Possible?)

What's Your Fasting Glucose Level?

Dr. Mark Hyman, MD and author of several books, including The Blood Sugar Solution, has been fighting an all-out war against sugar consumption in the United States. 

He claims that excessive dietary sugar is the root of nutritional evil and "causes heart attacks, obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer and dementia, and is the leading cause of liver failure in America."

He's NOT a quack. 

The Journal of the  American Medical Association recently published a study involving 40 thousand people. 

The study conclusion states that "Most US adults consume more added sugar than is recommended for a healthy diet. We observed a significant relationship between added sugar consumption and increased risk for CVD (cardiovascular disease) mortality."

Whoopsy! 

Fat doesn't cause heart disease; sugar is the culprit.

There was no reason for the fat scare that started 50 years ago and led to low fat food and low fat diets. Now that that trans fats have been identified as a dietary no-no, all other fats have been re-accepted into the nutritutional mainstream.

But the writing is on the wall for sugar. It cannot be eliminated, but certainly should be minimized in any healthy eating plan. 

A Low Sugar Eating Plan
I have used and have been recommending a low sugar/low carb eating plan ever since I read Dr. Hyman's book. Now the JAMA study cited above has given his work added credibility.

Sugar is the enemy of good nutrition. 

Get my Free Ebook describing a low sugar plan which just happens to help you lose 20 pounds in one month. Click HERE for the ebook.

This Simple Carb Is A Major Health Hazard (But We Still Consume It In Excess Every Day)

One food we all eat every day constitutes a major health risk.
Unfortunately, it's built into most processed foods.

It is responsible for the following:

• Losing appetite control (so that we overeat).
• Creating an environment for major disease.
• Putting on unwanted pounds, especially around the waist.
• Feeding cancer cells.

Obesity is the result of consuming food laced with this ingredient and not because people overeat and don't exercise.

Yet we keep eating and drinking it in large quantities. 

Why? It tastes good. We are used to it. We need it like a drug addict needs heroin or a smoker craves nicotine. It's a bad habit that's difficult to break.

This is a problem created a hundred years ago when food manufactures discovered that this ingredient sells food. Consumers eat processed food. They lose control of their appetite and don't realize they are overeating. 

What popular commercial boasts that ":You can't eat just one?" When's the last time you mindlessly munched through a box of cookies or crackers or a oversized bowl of ice cream.

We eat 19 times the daily amount of sugar that our ancestors consumed. 

How Do We Break This Bad Eating Habit?
First, many people need an incentive to change their eating habits. It may not be enough to say that sugar is a major health hazard (smokers still smoke even though they are committing suicide with each cigarette they light up). Listing all the problems that will likely show up at a future date will not incent some people.

If we supply a substitute every time we identify a trigger for sugar eating, that's a good start. That means we have to plan to make sugar substitutes (or foods with lower sugar content) easily available.

Sugar addiction will not disappear on its own. Gradual sugar reduction may be the answer to turn appetite control back on. Essentially, you wean yourself off sugar. We cannot be so strict that we bypass the occasional treat (especially if it's been prepared with less sugar than usual).

An example might help.
If you drink coffee or tea or lemonade with sugar, start cutting down the amount of sugar you use. I used to drink coffee with sugar. After a few weeks of eliminating sugar gradually, I got used to sugarless coffee. And a caution - do not substitute artificial sweeteners. Healthwise, that's even worse than using the real thing.

The First Step 
Keep a food diary. 

Jot down every food and drink you consume (except for water), the amount you eat, and its sugar content. This is easy for processed foods because the amounts are spelled out on package contents. It's somewhat trickier for meals that include several ingredients. You will guesstimate the sugar content. You can look up the sugar content of most individual items online.

The benefit of a food diary is that you will be aware of your daily sugar consumption. You will be surprised at the amount you do it and will start looking for substitutes. You will automatically cut back on sugar.

Double Your Weight Loss

Click HERE to view a video entitled Double Your Weight Loss with a Food Journal.

In the video, Barbara Ficarra, RN, explains how keeping a food journal can make a huge difference and help you reach your goals.