Is sugar making you gain weight?

is sugar making you fat.mp4 from Hybrid Performance Method on Vimeo.

The premise that sugar is bad for you is such a strongly held belief in and out of the fitness community. It seems to be a globally accepted concept that stems from years and years of misrepresented and misinterpreted clinical studies and an entire generation of a culture of finger-pointing.

This is how 100% of my conversations go when I'm talking to someone about how their diet is going…. 

“Hey what's up man, I am starting my diet on Monday, it's going really well, I cut out all sugars” 

Sugar is bad for you right? You shouldn't be eating if you're on a diet. 

Before I dive into why this thought process is so silly,  let's take a look at what sugar is... 

Sugar or sucrose is a disaccharide made of a 50% glucose and 50% fructose. It breaks apart in your body and basically it's a carb that's made up of two other carbs, both of these can be bad for you in very high amounts.  

Hello “sugar high” some say the absorption of glucose and fructose together AKA eating sugar increases the insulin response and in theory increases the amount of fat stored, yeah who'd want that? 

Yet the underlying principle of fat deposition follows the simple laws of thermodynamics that is accumulated in people based on a surplus of calories, not necessarily by digesting your birthday cake.  

Eating too much food in general along with eating excess sugar increases your spare tire. In one study the effects of long-term fructose consumption on health were looked at 10 healthy young adults who ate a high fructose diet for 8 weeks and at the end they actually lost weight and their vitals were perfectly normal. 

They found evidence that sugar in itself is not the devil, eating in a caloric surplus causes you to pack on the pounds instead.  

So what does this mean to us? 

For one we shouldn't be afraid of the sugar monster, we certainly don't need to eliminate it entirely from her diet.  

Yet we shouldn't be overly indulgent in it either. 

Sugar gets a bad rap for no real or valid reason.  We can definitely enjoy the delicious goodies it creates every once in a while, as long as we’re taking care of our other lifestyle habits, such as sleep, stress management, exercise, and keeping an active lifestyle.. 

Eating a balanced diet while keeping yourself in a calorie deficit will allow you to have your cake and eat it eat it too….without looking like the Pillsbury Doughboy. 

-Stefi