Feast on healthy fat to unlock your inner GLOW
It’ll boost your mood — and your skin. Our pioneering series shows how . . .
SO MANY weight-loss diet plans urge you to avoid fat but peddle foods soaked in sugar — and I’m a fierce critic of excess sugar. It’s right up there with smoking and drugs in my mind. People used to smoke without any knowledge of the health implications and in a similar way, we all eat vast amounts of sugar blindly and unquestioningly, without really knowing if it’s OK. Let me tell you — it’s not!
Sugar is a drug that makes us fat (yes, many of those low-fat products are riddled with sugar!) especially around the middle.
It leads to fat deposits around our internal organs; it increases our risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes, and it is now known to contribute towards premature ageing. And by that I mean every form of ageing from wrinkles to Alzheimer’s.
You may think cakes, biscuits and sweets make you happy but studies show any foods that spike your blood- sugar levels actually have a startlingly negative impact on brain health and moods, too.
The route to a consistently positive and upbeat demeanour actually lies in cutting sugar right out of your life, and enjoying a wealth of other delicious foods instead. Healthy fats and oils can have a noticeable impact on moods, so enjoy the feelgood boost of oily fish, avocados, olives and coconut oil.
I’ll be honest. It’s tough to cut out unnecessary sugar in your diet!
Not only is sugar everywhere, it can also be addictive, both physically and emotionally. Studies show sugar can be more addictive than cocaine because it has a pleasurable effect (like the feel-good hormones, endorphins) on the brain. So don’t beat yourself up if you’ve tried to quit but have failed.
But I can help you break this addiction — the secret lies not in ‘ depriving’ yourself of something sweet and lovely, but ‘enhancing’ your diet with other better, more rewarding foods that will help you reverse the acceleration of abdominal weight gain, hold back the ageing process and achieve that elusive healthy glow.
Most of the sugar in my diet comes from fruit; I also get a little from the couple of glasses of good red wine I drink each week (wine is high in sugar, but at least red wine supplies antioxidants) and the occasional cube of dark chocolate. You can have a dessert every now and then, such as my delicious lowsugar recipes on the opposite page.
But it is important to stop regarding sugar as a treat and see it instead as a poison — something that’s making you fat, tired and miserable, and if eaten regularly and long term, could contribute to illness.
We often turn to sugar when we haven’t had a proper lunch because there’s little food in the fridge, or if we have run out the door and skipped breakfast.
So if you’re going to reduce the sugar in your diet, it is important to eat regularly — three good meals a day — because if you miss a meal and your blood sugar levels drop, or you become hungry, the quick burst of energy and taste a chocolate bar or biscuit provides can prove to be impossibly tempting.
Cutting back is good, but the best method, and the one I recommend to my clients, is ‘cold turkey’ removal of that sugary drug in the form of total abstinence for one week. This doesn’t mean you can’t ever have cake or wine again — you can (I do)! But you need dramatic measures if you’re going to stop the daily dripfeed of sugar in your diet.
After decades of drinking ten or more cups of tea a day, each with three (yes, three) teaspoons of sugar, I know what breaking the addiction is like. But I’m out the other side and let me tell you, it’s wonderful! Because I now eat so little sugar I never crave it and that feels incredibly freeing.
When clients tell me they are hungry for sugar I tell them to drink more water, eat more vegetables and ensure a portion of protein at each meal to ride out the cravings. The cravings normally lessen after a week of breaking the cycle.
Believe me, getting control of sugar will be one of the best things you ever do for your body, health, face and emotional wellbeing.
Scientists now know that excess sugar can attach itself to cells all around the body, forming a hard sticky crust in a process called glycation. This crust is detrimental to the ageing process. So, no matter how much money you spend on amazing skin creams, if your diet is full of sugar you simply won’t be able to undo the cellular damage that sugar causes from the inside.
Research has also shown that sugar consumption could stunt short-term memory.
Our body is designed to only allow a very small amount of sugar in the bloodstream at any one time — about 1–2 teaspoonfuls.
If we eat more than this, the hormone insulin is produced to transport this sugar out of the bloodstream. This sugar gets converted into fat, which is stored around the waist and clings to the organs.
If we eat a lot of sugar our cells can become resistant to the pres- ence of insulin (insulin resistance), which increases our risk of diabetes and heart disease, even if we’re not overweight.
If you want a trim figure, glowing skin and vibrant energy, and you’d rather not have diabetes or heart disease, then you might want to think about how much sugar you are eating.
EXTRACTED by Louise Atkinson from Eat. Nourish. Glow.: 10 Easy Steps For Losing Weight, Looking Younger And Feeling Healthier by Amelia Freer (Harper Thorsons, £16.99). © 2015 Amelia Freer. To order a copy for £12.74 (25 per cent discount) visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808 272 0808. Offer until May 9, free P&P for a limited time only.