A Sneaky Secret About Maintaining or Losing Weight
Can you believe the balls in that statement, as if I know the secret?
I mean really.
But, I know one secret and it’s this–you have to be bold to fight against weight gain.
Here’s the deal. If we’re talking about weight loss…and who isn’t these days, we need to talk about sugar. WAIT!!
I’m not a sugar hater! I’m not going to take your sugar away. Not by a long shot.
I’m in love with sugar.
I’d marry it if the US wasn’t so conservative about that kind of thing.
Confession: If I didn’t feel like total crap the next day AND I could maintain my weight I would eat candy excessively. Specifically, that caramel candy donut with the white powdered sugar in the center.
I respect candy. Candy doesn’t try to be anything else but what it is.
Candy is a sweet, superficial, exclamation point of a food.
It’s okay to eat a little candy, a little bakery, a donut now and then-it’s not toxic in small amounts nor is it dirty eating or anything of the sort.
Candy-ON Wayne.
The thing we have to watch is the sugar that is added to our otherwise healthy foods that turn unsuspecting dairy, condiments, bread, and yogurt into candy.
Watch this.
Here’s you at lunch trying to eat healthy.
A piece of bread a 100% whole wheat bread from Brownberry has 4 grams of sugar per slice. This means that there is one teaspoon of sugar in each slice of bread which adds 16 calories to each slice. If you make a sandwich that is 32 calories more than you need because you can make bread without that much sugar.
Then you add a yogurt?
One cup of Dannon Activa Greek Yogurt is 34 to 40 grams of sugar (depending on the flavor). That means there is about 9 teaspoons of sugar in that yogurt and 120 calories of sugar and that’s before you get to the white stuff. Your yogurt is candy.
So in a meal of 2 pieces of bread and a cup of yogurt you are consuming 150 calories of sugar. Sugar that you don’t get to enjoy like candy. Sugar you are eating when you think you are being virtuous. Sugar that isn’t as fun as candy.
You know how many gummy bears you can eat for that?
17
Sugar amps up the calories of your food and possibly throws your calorie consumption into the too high arena.
So here’s you, trying to be good everyday by eating some whole grain bread and yogurt and you do it every day for 6 months.
6 months (180 days) X 150 cals (accidental candy eaten in the form of supposed healthy foods) = 27,000 calories eaten in sugar. Divide this by 3500 (amount of calories in a pound of fat) = 7.8 pounds that you don’t lose or pounds that you gain by eating in sneaky sugar.
BUT let’s be clear.
You only gain this weight if the yogurt and bread are eaten in excess of your calorie needs.
You don’t gain weight just by eating sugar.
But, say, every food you eat has sugar in it. That is what nickels and dimes your diet to death.
All that sugar in your diet adds up and explains why you are gaining while eating supposedly healthy OR you aren’t losing because your diet is being highjacked by hidden sugar.
My point is this-The sugar hidden in your foods is sneaky calories that you can do without.
Here’s how you read labels.
NUTS AND BOLTS:
Look under in the label under SUGARS. If there is a number there, like say 16 grams, that equal 4 teaspoons of sugar. 4 grams = 1 teaspoon of sugar (I make this conversion for you because I don’t have any idea what a gram looks like).
If you want to know how many calories that sugar amounts to in that food take the grams and multiply by 4 because 1 gram = 4 calories.
TAKE AWAY: It’s the sneaky sugar in foods that makes weight loss so hard and weight gain so easy.
I hope this makes you mad and gives you the tools you need to teach others.
Chat to change people. Let’s chat to change the world.
Those buttons down below here are for chatting and changing the world with information. Click-On Wayne.
So clear, so simple, and yet next to impossible to overcome.
Thanks Vitania! So nice of you.
🙂
Hi Ann~
My son, Collin attends UWW and was in your class. I know that he enjoyed your class since out of all his classes, he talked about you and your class the most. He even suggested adding me to your email list. Which is huge for a son to recommend something to his mom! Thanks for your fun outlook on life and all of the helpful health info!
Such a huge compliment Kristen. Thank you so much for writing. Thanks for commenting here and I’ll see you next month.
Here is what might help with the sugar cravings through the holidays: STARBUCKS SKINNY PEPPERMINT MOCHA. Had one yesterday and another one today and probably will have one tomorrow too.
I want one of those right now.
Today I weigh 172. That might sound like a lot but it’s 20 lbs less than what I weighed last year.
I’ve been preparing for my retirement (June 30, 2015) and I joined the local YMCA last January. I did some of the low impact chair aerobics for seniors to start but they are in the morning and since I still work full time the only time I could go was during vacation days. So I switched to the low impact pool aerobics and I love it. I go 4-5 days a week. My energy level has been going up and my blood pressure has been going down with the added exercise.
I also went back to MyFitnessPal to track my diet. I had quit before because, believe it or don’t, I was tired of the “you’re not eating enough” messages I’d get a few times a week. I used to skip breakfast and sometimes lunch. It is really easy for me to fast, which is not good. So I’d eat maybe 900-1100 calories and my body thought I was starving. So my metabolism slowed down to compensate and I just couldn’t lose weight.
Now I’m using MyFitnessPal to track my food again. They must have improved it as it now gives me not only calories but protein, carbs, sugar, fat and salt. This way I can make sure I don’t go over my daily allotment of sugar, fat or salt quite easily. I only wish they had a way to automatically lower the salt limit as I would like to set it lower.
I’m not only using it to track what I’ve eaten but plan what I’m going to eat the following day. That way on days I don’t exercise, I can make sure I don’t eat big calorie meals.
Thanksgiving will be a challenge but I don’t beat myself up if I go over one day, I just get on track the next day. MyFitnessPal tells me what I’ll weigh in five weeks if I continue to eat as I am. So one day over my limit won’t kill me. And since I have to note everything I eat, I stop and think seriously about whether I really want to eat it.
The sneaky sugars are in everything so I am a fervent label reader. No HFCS for five years. Limits on not only white sugar but also bread and rice. I make a lot of food from scratch because I can limit not only the sugar but all of the chemical sugar substitutes I may not even know the names of. More importantly, I can not only control the sugars but also the fat and especially the salt.
Thanks so much for sharing your sneaky secrets. You are doing it exactly right. It seems like you’ve figured out what works for you. I love that you felt comfortable putting it down right here!
I love this Ann. Thanks for putting this information out to the world!
Ann, thanks for sharing everyone’s tips … the community approach is so much more do-able than reading a list from a book.
I’m so glad you liked this. It’s a long ago post but I should really send it out again. Thanks for reading it. 🙂
Thanks for sharing a lot of info Anne!
You are so welcome!!
You are so very welcome.