Weight Loss With Sugar Or Sugar Substitutes?

Grocery stores and processed foods are full of artificial sweeteners, but should you be consuming them or just plain sugar. Does it matter how much you consume a day? Read on to find out what is best for your weight loss efforts.

There is so much weight loss advice out there about eating fat-free, low-fat, counting calories, cutting carbs, etc… and I honestly don’t agree with any of them, and here is why – I don’t think they are what is best for weight loss.

Fat is not a problem, just the wrong fats (fats like canola and vegetable oil). Fat-free and low fat usually mean they load the product with sugar or a sugar-substitute (artificial sweetener). Counting calories is time consuming and no one is going to stick with it long-term. I don’t believe cutting carbs is realistic long-term either. Who is really going to give up carbs forever?

So what do I believe is the real problem? Sugar and sugar substitutes.

Most of the sugar substitutes on the market are artificial man-made chemical sweeteners. Does that even sound like something you want to eat on a regular bases and fill your body with? Most of the products like High Fructose Corn Syrup (with they are now changing the name to Corn Syrup), Aspartame, and Sucralose are surrounded in controversy and are believed to cause long-term damage to your body and encourage weight gain. Do you really want to continue being a guinea pig and find out if it is safe or not?

Not only that, but artificial sweeteners are much sweeter than regular sugar, so once you have something like a diet soda and then eat something with regular sugar, you eat more of the food with regular sugar to achieve the level of sweetness you are use to getting from the artificial sweeteners. Isn’t that crazy?

Real sugar or natural sugar substitutes like Stevia, are your best bets, but that doesn’t mean you are free to eat as much as you want. Sugar is a main cause of weight gain and especially belly fat, so watching how much you consume on a daily basis is key to your weight loss efforts.

If you really want to lose weight, you are going to have to start reading labels to check for sugar grams. You should aim to eat no more than fifteen to thirty grams of sugar a day, total. Read that again. The closer to fifteen grams a day you get, the more weight you will lose and of course the faster you will lose. The closer to thirty, the less you will lose, and you will lose slower.

So here is my advice: pay attention to the type and amount of sugar that is in your foods and aim for fifteen to thirty grams total a day and you will experience weight loss. If you really want to lose weight and get healthy, create a lifestyle of getting your sugar from fruits, and little, if any, from regular sugar. That’s what I do, with room for treats here and there of course!

Jeanne Ewen is a lifelong thin, fit, healthy woman who has a passion for learning and talking about health, nutrition, exercise, weight loss and personal development. See her website at http://www.tipsbyjeanne.com/