How To Stop Eating Sugar Without Losing Your Mind
See the full video How To Stop Eating Sugar Without Losing Your Mind
And see the companion video: Is It Possible To Never Eat Sugar?
Transcript:
So in this video, I’m talking about
how do you avoid eating sugary foods
without losing your mind?
And I’ll preface it by saying
that I do not consume any sugary foods.
Now, many have said that Kevin
is some sort of superhuman being,
and as much as I liked being called a superhero,
it’s actually not the case at all.
There are some very concrete steps
that I took over the years to be where I am today.
It didn’t happen overnight
and I’m going to share it with you because I think that
in a world where type 2 diabetes is so prevalent,
and a world also where so many people struggle
with trying to stop eating sugary foods
that to whom much is given much is expected
and I’ve been really blessed by finding a way
and a path to stop eating sugary foods,
a way that I’ve been able to share with my clients
and help them, many of them stop eating sugary foods.
Stay tuned and I look forward to sharing this with you.
So in today’s video,
we’re talking about how do you stop eating sugary foods
without losing your mind?
Now I’m going to start by thanking everyone for tuning in
and do be sure to like and subscribe.
We’ve had a tremendous amount of support
for this channel so far,
and I really appreciate being able to share
all that I’ve learned over the past 30 years of my career
helping others with you.
So getting onto it.
How do you stop eating sugary foods
without losing your mind?
The first step is to be in a place
where you’re not beating yourself up.
The Addictive Effects Of Sugar On Our Pleasure Centers & Why There Is Nothing Wrong With Craving Sugar
Understand you are surrounded, completely surrounded
by what are called hyper-palatable foods.
We figured out through technology
how to take the fiber out of the natural foods that we eat
and create, by adding certain concentrations of sugar,
salts and fats to create products
that are almost addictive.
Keep in mind, the part of your brain
that responds to sugary foods is the same part your brain
that responds when someone uses opioids
or someone uses a drug like cocaine,
it’s called the HPA axis.
It’s a very powerful part of our body
related to what’s called our pleasure centers.
Now that pleasure response
can sometimes make us, as you very well know,
do things that we don’t necessarily always want to do.
It can make us have cravings for things that
intellectually we know we shouldn’t be eating,
but physically it’s almost like
there’s an irresistible force
that makes us keep on eating all these sweet things.
And the important part, to start,
is that there’s nothing wrong with you.
The most important thing of this entire video
is for you to start with the perspective of
there is nothing wrong with you,
and it’s perfectly human for you to crave sweet things.
I want you to even say to yourself,
it’s perfectly normal and human to crave sweet foods.
Now, there’s a reason for that.
And if you understand the reason,
it’s going to stop you from beating yourself up,
and the first thing you want to do
is get to a place where you’re not beating yourself up.
How Our Desire For Sugar Keeps Us Alive
Now, every single one of us have come
from an ancestral background where
if we didn’t have that pleasure center response to sugars,
we would not exist.
How could that be?
Think about it.
An infant, when an infant is suckling,
when an infant is drinking breast milk,
the only reason why that infant knows
that it should be drinking breast milk
is because of an HPA axis response.
When a baby or an infant mammal of any type,
has its first taste of milk,
there are sugars in the milk, not much sugar,
but there are sugars in that milk along with some fats
that really stimulate the HPA axis.
Those pleasure centers fire up and because of it,
the baby keeps on drinking.
Now understand this, before the 20th century,
and the advent of things like baby formulas,
any human baby that didn’t have access
to human breast milk would perish.
There’s no other food that a human baby,
a newborn human baby can consume. [In A Natural Environment]
And so, for our very survival,
we are hard wired with that attachment
to pleasure being associated with sweet foods.
How We Evolved With Foods That Are Not Very Sweet & Why That Makes Us Overreact To Highly Sugared Foods
Now, you may think to yourself that breast milk
or milk in general isn’t that sweet,
but understand in nature,
nothing in nature is sweeter than let’s say a carrot.
What I say in nature, I’m talking about wild foods.
If you were consuming fruits
that have not been agriculturally developed by humans,
you’re not going to find the sweetness
that we’re so used to in our regular fruits.
Some argue that honey is sweet,
and therefore there are very sweet
naturally occurring foods.
But the problem is that we only have evidence of humans
consuming honey going back to about 8,000 years.
And before that, before the dawn of human agriculture
and our ability to stay in one place
and not have a hunter-gatherer type existence,
humans didn’t really have access to honey.
Even under those circumstances,
going back 8,000 years
and to the dawn of agriculture as well,
honey is used primarily for medicinal purposes
and the amount of honey that you would have available
to our ancestors really isn’t enough to say that
we have evolved alongside with it
to be able to consume really sweet things
and not have any problems, because that’s just not the case.
Our fruits have been modified over centuries of agriculture
to be as sweet as possible.
If you ever have the good fortune, for example,
to eat a fruit that hasn’t been touched by agriculture,
by any type of human intervention whatsoever
and they do exist, not in many places,
but places like, for example, the Amazon,
some parts of Africa as well, you’ll find that like I said,
they aren’t any sweeter than a carrot.
And they also are very high in fiber and very high in bulk.
Now modern fruits are much higher in sugars
because we’ve altered them to be as sweet as possible,
but we’ve evolved eating these fruits and vegetables,
in fairly large quantities.
And so our bodies are adapted to [consuming] them.
And because they are high in fiber
and because they are also high in bulk,
there’s only so much you can eat.
I always give the example of apples.
None of us can eat that many apples,
but all of us can consume a dozen apples easily
by drinking a glass of apple juice.
So processing is all about taking the fiber out
and by taking the fiber out and adding sugar,
we can eat more and the sugar makes us want more
and companies in the food manufacturing sector
spend millions of dollars to create foods
that have that exact “bliss point”
that’s going to make your brain completely overreact.
Now again, our brains and
our bodies are designed to react
only to very small amounts sugar.
So imagine how much of a unstoppable force it can be
when you consume something very sweet.
Kevin’s Decompression Model For Beating Sugar Addiction
Now I say all this to say that
you should not at all be beating yourself up
if you find yourself failing,
because the path that I’m describing is one of
I would say decompression.
So think of it in terms of a diver
who is deep underwater
and needs to get back to the surface.
And I say get back to the surface because taking sweet foods
and sugary foods out of your diet
is actually going more towards your natural self,
eating more like the way that your body
was designed for it to eat.
And so, in keeping with that decompression model
that I’m describing,
as you take one thing out of your diet,
you don’t want to have any extreme adverse effects
so you need to put something back in.
Why You Should Avoid A Keto Diet If You Are Trying To Quit Eating Sugar
So it’s very important
if you’re stopping eating sugary foods
to make sure that you’re not on a low carbohydrate diet.
It’s a huge mistake to try to take sugary foods
out of your diet and at the same time,
restrict your carbohydrate intake.
In fact, we talked earlier about the importance of fiber.
Using High Fiber Complex Carbohydrates & Food Timing To Stop Sugar Cravings
That’s going to be very important
that all your carbohydrate sources are very high in fiber
and the timing is important as well.
Many people who find themselves craving sugar
tend to crave sugar and sugary foods
sometime around three, four o’clock
way over into the evening into the night.
And as the day goes by,
those cravings get stronger and stronger and stronger.
One of the best ways to help deal with those cravings
and not have sugary foods in your life
is to front load your carbohydrates earlier in the day,
and front load was really high fiber carbohydrates.
If you have a good breakfast,
a big breakfast with high fibrous sources,
such as oatmeal or oat bran cereal,
which is one of my personal favorites,
that’s what I eat every day,
along with some [lean] protein,
it’s going to go a long way
because of the high fiber content to fill you up
and also because your body had carbohydrates
earlier in the day,
you’re not going to have the same dramatic response
of a need, an almost addictive need for carbohydrates
later in the day.
Now you will feel it,
but it will be not anywhere near as extreme.
It’s going to blunt that pleasure seeking response
that usually happens to most of us later in the day.
So very important, like I said, first,
make sure you have carbohydrates in your diet
and also make sure you have a good high fiber breakfast.
Another thing that’s important is to note
that you need to eat carbohydrates
for what you’re about to do.
So, if you’re going to be active more than normal,
you need to have some carbohydrates and again,
always and only naturally occurring high fiber carbohydrates
like yams, sweet potatoes.
and if you’re going to have rice,
try to get that fibrous as possible
by choosing brown rice, if possible,
and think of it as your fuel,
but think of it as your fuel and think of the fiber
as a backup that’s going to help you
deal with any sugar cravings that you get later on.
But if you’re really active
and you don’t add complex carbohydrates
that are high in fiber,
and you’re taking out sugary foods that you were
eating before, it’s going to be too much for you.
You have to balance it off.
As one thing comes out, you have to add something in.
That’s the way it works.
If you want to have a smooth transition
from eating sugary foods to not eating sugary foods.
The Importance Of Not Beating Yourself Up If You Fail From Time To Time
Sounds simple and in practice,
it can be, if you stick with it,
but sticking with it means sticking with it when you fail,
which goes back to my first point and an important point.
You will fail from time to time,
but it’s important to understand that just like someone
who is dealing with a drug addiction,
if you fail and keep on beating yourself up
about your failure,
what you’re doing is you’re reliving the experience
of doing an activity and a behavior
that you want to get out of your life.
The way that you go forward is about forgetting about it.
So the more you’re beating yourself up
is the more you’re actually unconsciously retaining
the experience and thus,
making yourself more likely to repeat the experience.
If you constantly think about that piece of cake
that you had and “messed up” with,
that piece of cake is going to come back into your life
because you’re constantly thinking about it.
You need to forget, you need to let go, and letting go
means forgiving yourself when you “mess up”,
get right back up and keep on going
and what’s going to happen, as well, is that
you’re going to get to a point where it’s not so much
a matter of you’re going to see all these desserts
and use your willpower
and say, “I’m not going to have them anymore”,
but over time when not eating high sugar foods,
that pleasure response get blunted,
and you no longer have the same sensations,
you no longer have the same cravings that you did before.
And our body will always go towards what’s pleasurable.
That’s part of what causes the problems in the first place.
Getting To A Sustainable Place Where Willpower Is No Longer An Issue
And without sugary foods,
you’re going to feel the pleasure of being healthy
and it’s going to feel good
and you’re going to want more of it.
And you’re going to get to a point, which I define
as healthy eating,
which is where you’re eating foods that are good for you
but they are also the foods that you actually want.
You’re not doing it out of willpower,
you’re getting to that place
that very few are able to get to because
most people don’t believe they can, but you can!
And where what you want
and what you should be eating is the same.
Again, like I said at the beginning,
there’s nothing super human about me.
It’s just consistency and anything that I can do,
you can do too.
Thanks so much for tuning it and Excelsior.
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How I Lost 30lbs And Got Ripped Permanently- A Step By Step Guide
Keto vs Low Carb Diets For Fat Loss
Is It Possible To Never Eat Sugar?
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