If you’re trying to lose weight and stay healthy, you’re probably obsessing over the calories in your diet. But, as it turns out, counting calories isn’t the most reliable approach to weight loss. [1] Scientists recommend turning your attention to your sugar consumption and lifestyle instead.
The term “sugar” represents sweet-flavored carbohydrates, such as glucose and fructose. Your body needs sugar to survive; however, having too much can cause obesity, organ damage, and early death. [2]
Can You Lose Weight by Cutting Calories?
A calorie is a unit of energy that tells you how nutritious foods are. Some foods have more calories; others have fewer. So, the fewer calories you take from your diet, the more pesky fat you can remove from your body, right? Well, not quite. While counting and cutting calories might help in the short term, it’s not a sustainable solution for weight loss. [1] Many people who lose weight by cutting calories regain it, sometimes even gaining more. [3]
Each person handles calories differently, depending on their body and the type of food they eat. Your gut is home to the gut microbiome—trillions of bacteria (the good kind) that process and absorb ingested foods. The composition of the gut microbiome differs from person to person [4]; this may explain why calories aren’t processed in the same way in any two people.
Your body’s metabolism also plays a vital role. It determines how fast your body absorbs food and how it contributes to your weight. Finally, certain types of food might be preventing you from losing weight. A study from Cell Metabolism found that ultra-processed foods—foods produced by the food industry using additives, such as frozen pizza, fizzy drinks, or packaged ice cream—are especially responsible as they make you eat more. [5]
Does Sugar Affect Weight Loss and Health?
Let’s get back to our palatable protagonist: sugar. Sugar has been branded as a “silent killer”—and rightly so, as it negatively affects your weight and overall health.
Sugar can be natural or added: Natural sugar is found in milk, fruits, and vegetables, while added sugars are used as food additives to sweeten drinks, baked goods, and processed foods.
The body breaks down carbs, fats, and proteins to produce sugar (in the form of glucose), a primary energy source for each cell. Thus, your body doesn’t really need added sugars; they contribute to calories but have no nutritional value whatsoever.
Although a small amount of added sugar doesn’t hurt, the American Heart Association says that cutting added sugars can help you avoid unnecessary calories, improve your heart health, and control your weight. [6]
Understanding Insulin Resistance and Fat Storage
To make sense of how sugar affects weight, it's essential to understand insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone that helps regulate blood sugar. After a meal, the body activates insulin to help move glucose from the blood into the cells, where it can be used for energy. [7]
If you consistently eat too much sugar, your body can become resistant to the effects of insulin. This state—known as insulin resistance—leads to more fat storage, especially around the midsection (the so-called “love handles”). The excess fat builds up, increasing the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and certain types of cancer. [8]
Fructose and Glucose Can Damage Organs
Not all sugars are created equal (despite what the food industry says). But they are indeed toxic to organs when consumed in excess. Glucose is essential to life; as such, it’s produced and processed all over the body. Conversely, fructose isn’t essential. It’s metabolized similarly to alcohol by the liver. [9]
The liver can metabolize a small amount of fructose: about 6 to 9 teaspoons or 12 grams. [10] However, the average person in the US consumes more than 50 grams of fructose daily [11]. This excessive fructose consumption can lead to insulin resistance and weight gain. Preclinical studies suggest it may also cause resistance to leptin, a hormone that tells you that you’ve had enough food. [12]
Additional disorders that arise from excessive sugar consumption include heart failure, liver disease, skin aging, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and dementia. [13]
Sugar Can “Hack” Your Brain Like a Drug
Much like drugs, sugar triggers the release of dopamine from the nucleus accumbens, the brain’s reward center. [14] Dopamine is the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure and reward. Sugar also works on serotonin, the “feel-good hormone.” Eating too much sugar overstimulates dopamine and serotonin receptors, giving you fleeting pleasure but causing brain cell death and receptor downregulation in the long term. [15]
So, next time you crave sugar, you’ll need to eat more to feel good. You can imagine how these effects quickly reduce the intensity of the reward and contribute to addiction—a vicious cycle (as doctors like to call it) of insatiable temptation and unhappiness.
Stress only makes matters worse; it increases the demand for sugar-derived energy in specific brain regions, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, and makes you eat more and gain weight. [16]
How Much Sugar Is Too Much?
Coming up with a “sweet spot” amount of sugar is difficult as the body doesn’t require dietary sugar. The US Department of Agriculture recommends adults consume less than 50 calories (about 3 teaspoons or 12 grams) of added sugar per day. [17] This translates to a 16-ounce glass of apple juice. Any additional sugar may “gift” you extra pounds of weight and make you more disease-prone.
We suggest you think twice before cracking that soda can open. Research says that adding one sweetened drink a day to your diet significantly increases your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and early death. [18,19]
Where Do We Stand?
Sugar consumption has tripled worldwide over the past 50 years. [20] According to the Centers for Disease Prevention (CDC), men consume 19 teaspoons of added sugar daily; women consume about 15. [21] That’s more than twice the (generous) limit mentioned above.
The impact of sugar and processed foods on health begins even before birth. Studies from multiple countries have shown that birth weight at term has increased over the past decades [22], possibly due to environmental factors. DEXA scans have shown that this additional weight is primarily fat, indicating neonatal obesity.
A considerable part of the blame for the current added sugar-related practices lies on the shoulders of the food industry. A study analyzing 40,000 packaged foodstuffs in Canadian markets found that two-thirds of these products contained added sugar. A similar pattern exists in the US, too. [23]
What’s the Best Way to Lose Weight?
Losing and managing your weight involves cutting sugar from your diet and making changes to your lifestyle. This approach improves insulin resistance and promotes fat burning. Here’s how to start.
Know Where Your Sugar Comes From
Identifying added sugar sources is the first step to improving your diet. Let’s lay down some relevant facts.
More than 24% of dietary sugar comes from soda, energy drinks, and sports drinks. Other sources include grain and dairy desserts, cereals, and candies, among others. [21]
Food labels don’t typically tell you they contain added sugar. Instead, look for certain terms [24] like:
- Agave Nectar
- Barley Malt
- Beet Sugar
- Brown Sugar
- Cane Juice Crystals
- Cane Sugar
- Coconut Sugar
- Corn Sweetener
- Corn Syrup
- Corn Syrup Solids
- Dehydrated Cane Juice
- Dextrin
- Evaporated Cane Juice
- Fruit Juice Concentrate
- High-Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)
- Honey
- Invert Sugar
- Juice concentrate
- Lactose
- Malt Sugar
- Malt Syrup
- Maltodextrin
- Maple Syrup
- Molasses
- Palm Sugar
- Raw Sugar
- Rice Syrup
- Sorghum Syrup
- Syrup sugars ending in "-ose" (dextrose, fructose, glucose, lactose, maltose, sucrose, saccharose)
- Treacle
- Turbinado Sugar
Food labels often present the sugar amount per serving instead of total sugar. This might mislead you into eating more.
A study from Public Health shows that people love adding sugar to coffee or tea. [25] Try enjoying their natural taste for a change.
Be Picky About Your Diet
As the old saying goes: “You are what you eat.” Cut processed foods and drinks. Opt for lean meat, whole grains, and food and vegetables. Fiber in foods plays a crucial role in promoting a healthy gut microbiome, which contributes to metabolic health and prevents systemic inflammation.
Consider trying a lower carb or ketogenic (keto) diet. A keto diet relies on ketones—products of liver fat breakdown—to produce energy for the body. They differ from ordinary diets in that they don’t use dietary carbs like glucose or fructose at all. A keto diet helps conserve mitochondria and the gut microbiome. [26]
Improve Your Lifestyle
Fixing bad habits is another key step to losing weight and improving your health. Here’s what you can do:
- Exercise regularly
Take up a sport. Go hiking. Step into the gym. Try to get at least an hour of challenging exercise a few days a week.
- Reduce stress levels
Stress is a major problem in our society; it increases inflammation and wreaks havoc inside your body. Weight gain is just one of the many consequences of stress, as mentioned. You might want to give meditation or yoga a try.
- Don’t sleep on sleep
We often tend to sacrifice sleep to make time for other activities and obligations. Bad sleep habits disrupt your circadian rhythm—the body’s natural daily pattern—potentially leading to weight gain and a variety of health problems.
- Check with your doctor
Some medications can cause weight gain; others might make you lose weight but cause various side effects. If in doubt about what you should or should not use, always seek advice directly from a medical professional.
Follow The Four C's for Contentment
According to Professor Lustig from the University of California [27], constantly seeking pleasure from sugar is pointless. He proposes following the four C’s technique, which represents the words connect, contribute, cope, and cook.
Professor Lustig argues that connecting with others face-to-face generates serotonin. Contributing to others with purpose, such as through volunteering, also boosts serotonin levels. Coping mechanisms like sleep, mindfulness, and exercise help reduce cortisol levels, while cooking diets rich in tryptophan (found in eggs, chicken, and fish), low in fructose, and high in omega-3 fatty acids can help balance dopamine and serotonin levels.
Bottomline
References (URLs)
- https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2161831322003994
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00655-y
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5639963/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41430-020-0607-6
- https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1550413119302487
- https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/sugar/sugar-101
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459280/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009829971200115X?via%3Dihub
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3649103/
- https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0026049587902046
- https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Dietary-fructose-consumption-among-US-children-and-Vos-Kimmons/923a67d659343e3ac2c830907ea486dd8174451a
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2584858/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9966020/
- https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2018.00545/full
- https://www.imrpress.com/journal/FBL/23/12/10.2741/4704
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3658316/
- https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/healthy-eating/eat-smart/sugar/added-sugars
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8402166/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45537957_Sugar-Sweetened_Beverages_and_Risk_of_Metabolic_Syndrome_and_Type_2_Diabetes
- https://www.nature.com/articles/bdjteam201745
- https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/data-statistics/pdfs/be-sugar-smart-2022-h.pdf
- https://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(24)00431-9/fulltext
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5378500/
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-sweet-danger-of-sugar
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S003335061630453X
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6678592/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DWKf5RqU-s
