Eating Excess Sugar Increases Your Risk Of Disease
Eating sweet stuff is fine on occasion, but when you make sugary foods part of your daily diet, you increase your risk of a variety of cardiovascular diseases, as well as type 2 diabetes.
Research shows a strong link between high sugar consumption and:
- Weight gain/obesity
- Fatty liver disease
- Poor oral health, including cavities and tooth enamel damage
Eating less sugar is one of the best things you can do for your weight, heart, brain, and teeth.
How Long Does It Take To Get Back Into Ketosis
You may wonder how long it will take to get back into ketosis after falling off. The answer is, it varies. It depends on how metabolically flexible you were before you started, how insulin-sensitive you are currently, how many carbs you were accustomed to consuming before you increased your carb intake there are a lot of factors. The vague answer is, it wont take long to get back. Start now, and youll get to where you want to be before you know it.
Do I Have To Quit Sugar On Keto Not Entirely And Here’s Why
When you start a keto diet you learn about increasing your fat and lowering your carbs. But sometimes there are questions about sugar. Do you have to quit sugar entirely?
You might be surprised at the answer. No, you dont have to quit all sugars.
Sticking to your keto macros will definitely lower the amount of sugar in your diet. And the less sugar you have, the less likely you are to crave it so its a win-win.
Some type of sugars are usually a no-no, like honey, white sugar, brown sugar, and agave syrup. But you still can have small amounts if you budget them in to your daily macros.
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High Fasting Blood Glucose
What happens if you follow a low-carb diet and your fasting blood glucose remains high? According to experts, in some cases, this is likely to happen. But it is not necessarily cause for concern. If you follow a strict low-carb regime, you may experience a condition called “physiologic insulin resistance,” also called adaptive glucose sparing.
People who are on ketogenic diets or other very low carbohydrate programs train their bodies to use fat, rather than sugar, as fuel. If you do this effectively, your muscles start to reject sugar when it is available. That means more sugar stays in your bloodstream, even when you consume very little of it.
If this happens, work with your healthcare provider to adjust your testing regime. Testing for fasting insulin levels along with a fasting blood glucose test may provide more insight to help you manage your condition.
How To Cheat On A Ketogenic Diet The Right Way
Cheat days have become a popular theme with many diets and for good reason. In fact, many experts have embraced diet cheats as a way to teach a more balanced approach to healthy eating.
Besides the fact that we are humans, not robots, and it can feel pretty impossible to stick to your keto diet perfectly, research says there may actually be some benefits to going off your diet. Including a strategic diet cheat may have some psychological benefits like reduced cravings and the ability to stick to your meal plan better overall .
Done right, cheating on your diet can help you stay motivated, and teach you how to have moderation as you build sustainable long-term health habits. Plus who doesnt want to learn how to have their cake and eat it too?
Heres how to include cheats without going off the rails.
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Sugar Alcohols And Keto
Sugar intake is limited on a keto diet, as eating it causes your blood sugar levels to rise.
This is an issue, as raised blood sugar levels can make it difficult for your body to remain in ketosis, which is key for reaping the benefits of the keto diet .
Given that sugar alcohols have a much less significant effect on blood sugar levels, theyre commonly found in keto-friendly products.
Furthermore, since they arent fully digestible, keto dieters often subtract the sugar alcohols and fiber from the total number of carbs in a food item. The resulting number is referred to as net carbs .
Still, due to the variation in GIs of different types of sugar alcohols, some are better for the keto diet than others.
Erythritol is a good keto-friendly option, as it has a glycemic index of 0 and works well in both cooking and baking. Plus, due to its small particle size, erythritol tends to be better tolerated than other sugar alcohols (
15 ).
As such, if youre on a keto diet, you may want to limit your intake of maltitol and choose a sugar alternative with a lower GI.
Summary
Given that they negligibly affect blood sugar levels, most sugar alcohols are considered to be keto-friendly. Maltitol has a more pronounced effect on blood sugar and should be limited on a keto diet.
How Carbs Impact Blood Sugar
Carbohydrates have a direct impact on blood glucose. All foods with carbohydratewhether juice drinks, jelly beans, or watermelonbreak down into simple sugars in the body. Even foods that we don’t consider “sugary” break down into simple sugars. The carbohydrate in most starchy foods is simply a collection of long chains of glucose, which break down into sugar in the body.
These simple sugars turn into glucose through metabolic processes. As a result, our blood glucose levels begin to rise. When this begins to happen, beta cells in the pancreas sense the increase and release insulin.
Carbohydrates are converted into simple sugars in the body. Even carbs that aren’t sweetsuch as starchy foods are converted into sugar and raise blood glucose levels.
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What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Healthy & Cut Out Sugar
Homestead-Life, Lifestyle
If you’re looking at how our ancestors ate, when the foods they could grow, hunt, or forage were available, you’re looking at a very seasonal diet.
For the winter months, the ketogenic diet is very similar to what we would have ate in an ancestral time, when you ate the fats, moderate protein and smaller amounts of carbs because fresh fruits and vegetables weren’t available.
As self-sufficiency, modern homesteaders, and people who just plain care about the natural way of doing things, it’s important to understand how our foods fuel and work with or against our bodies so we can make the very best choices for us.
Our genetics and lifestyle all play apart in this, including if we have health conditions already, such as hormonal imbalances, thyroid disease, diabetes, heart and cardiovascular issues, and stomach issues. The good news is, you can reverse a lot of things with your food and we’re diving in deep today with Dr. Hillary Lampers from Hunt Harvest Health and the Stealthy Hunter Podcast to find out which route is best for you.
This is Part 3 of healing your body naturally, if you missed any of the other parts in this series, go back now and catch:
Part 1 How to Heal Stomach Acid Naturally My story, how I got off of taking prescription stomach acid medications
Part 2 How to Find Your Trigger Foods how to do food testing to find out what your trigger foods
Does The Type Of Sugar Matter
In the last few years, alternatives to white sugar have become more and more popular. A lot of healthy recipes use coconut sugar, agave syrup, molasses, and other sweeteners that they claim are better for you than standard table sugar.
Many of these sweeteners are high in fructose, which doesnt have the same impact on your blood sugar that table sugar does. Because fructose is low-glycemic, some people think that its better for you. The same argument has been made in support of high-fructose corn syrup.
However, excess fructose is still bad for you you just process it differently than you do table sugar.
Your liver processes and stores fructose, which keeps it from getting into your blood and spiking your blood sugar levels. But fructose is especially hard on your liver.
It causes your liver to synthesize and store fat a process called de novo lipogenesis. Over time, you develop fat build up in your liver, which can eventually lead to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Table sugar does this as well, but to a lesser extent.
Whether youre eating ice cream sweetened with white sugar, having a sugary drink that contains high-fructose corn syrup, or eating a vegan energy bar sweetened with dates and agave nectar, the short-term and long-term impacts on your body are similar. Eating too much sugar in any form is bad for your health.
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What Alcohol Is Best For Keto
Keto-Friendly Drinks For instance, pure forms of alcohol like whiskey, gin, tequila, rum and vodka are all completely free of carbs. These beverages can be drunk straight or combined with low-carb mixers for more flavor. Wine and light varieties of beer are also relatively low in carbs usually 34 grams per serving.
Why Do People Take Cheat Days
No matter how you slice it, everyone is searching for a path to greater happiness. This basic principle explains why people take cheat days.
If you take a cheat day on Keto, you believe it will bring you more satisfaction than adhering to your normal regimen. Its that simple.
This logic applies to most any Keto cheating scenario. Here are four examples:
But just because you intend to increase your happiness , it doesnt mean the net result of cheating will be positive. The net result on your health, happiness, and overall well being depends on the actual consequencesof the cheat meal or cheat day.
So lets examine the consequencesboth good and badof taking cheat days on Keto.
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Eating Carbs After Keto: What To Expect
Any time you make a drastic change to your diet, you can expect some changes in your body as well. Every body is different so we cant tell you exactly how your body will react to eating carbs after keto. But we can tell you some of the more common experiences that people have when reintroducing carbs after keto:
- Your Blood Sugar Might Be A Little Wacky| Its possible that youll experience some blood sugar spikes after you first carb-laden meals. Spikes and crashes in blood sugar may make you feel jittery, moody, or fatigued.
- You MIGHT Gain Some Weight| Its true, its possible youll gain some weight back. But its not a sure thing! A lot of this weight could also be water retention, not actual fat gain! So try not to stress!
- Bloating Is A Maybe| Temporary bloating is a possibility when eating carbs after keto. Bringing fibrous foods back into your diet can be a small shock to the system. But dont worry, the bloating should go down as your body readjusts.
- More Energy| Now heres one we can get behind. Lots of people experience more energy and mental clarity after reintroducing carbs to their diet long or short term.
- Youre Hungry| The keto diet is higher in fat and protein, which makes it SUPER filling. When you go back to eating carbs after keto, you might feel hungrier after your meals because of the foods youre eating. An easy solution? Combine those carbs with some protein and fat to keep you full!
Complete Keto Diet Food List: What You Can And Cannot Eat If You’re On A Ketogenic Diet
Make eating keto a lot easier with this comprehensive keto diet food listplus learn if it’s the right diet for you.
The ketogenic diet is a high-fat, moderate-protein and very low-carbohydrate diet. Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of energy, but on a strict ketogenic diet, less than 5 percent of energy intake is from carbohydrates . The reduction of carbohydrates puts the body into a metabolic state called ketosis. Ketosis is when the body starts breaking down stored fat into molecules called ketone bodies to use for energy, in the absence of circulating blood sugar from food. Once the body reaches ketosis, most cells will use ketone bodies to generate energy until you start eating carbohydrates again.
Traditionally, the ketogenic diet was only used in clinical settings to reduce seizures in children with epilepsy. “Now there is a lot of interest in the diet’s effectiveness in helping with other neurological conditions, cancer, diabetes, PCOS , obesity, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease,” says Emily Stone, M.S., R.D. People also eat keto to lose weight .
Even if you know that you need to eat a very low-carb, high-fat, moderate protein dietit can be confusing to know which foods to eat. Here’s our guide to foods you can eat, foods you should avoid and foods you can sometimes have when you’re following a ketogenic diet.
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How Much Sugar Can You Have On Keto
As a general rule of thumb, its best to keep your added sugar consumption to a minimum. Ideally, this number would your sugar intake would be 0 grams, but as long as you stay under your daily carb limit, then you should be fine.
The best way for you to determine the maximum amount of sugar is to test yourself. Since every individuals biochemistry is unique, you likely wont tolerate the same number of carbs as a person next to you. Try consuming different foods of various carbohydrate contents and testing your blood to see how they affect both your blood glucose and ketone levels. While ketones are a direct indicator of being in the metabolic state of ketosis, how your blood glucose levels react will give you insight into overall metabolic health and insulin sensitivity.
Ways To Control Carb Cravings On Keto
8 Ways to Control Carb Cravings On Keto
Posted 2 years ago
Tony ONeill, PT, DPT, MSc, RDN
Scientific Reviewer
Carb cravings are inevitable on Keto. We want what we cant have.
But carb cravings arent just psychological. There are physical reasons we crave carbs, especially the sweet class of carbohydrates called sugar.
Dealing with carb cravings requires a comprehensive mind-body approach. It also requires a bit of patience.
In this article, youll learn eight tipsboth psychological and physicalfor controlling carb cravings on Keto. Before getting there, though, lets talk about what causes them.
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You Won’t Get ‘hangry’ Anymore
When you go too long in between meals, you start to feel shaky, easily irritated and overall, blah. This results in a state of ‘hanger‘ that requires you to eat something ASAP. This symptom is a sign of poor metabolic health and can be helped by adopting a keto diet, according to Tara Garrison, a ketogenic diet specialist and personal trainer.
“When you go through a phase of the ketogenic diet, you train your body how to easily tap into its own fat stores for fuel when incoming food supply is short. That way, your body doesn’t hit the panic button when blood sugar starts to drop,” says Garrison. “It just easily transitions into a state of nutritional ketosis and doesn’t negatively impact your mood. This also significantly increases your ability to make good food choices when you are hungry.”
Brain Health May Improve
Danielle Abermon, RDN CHWC, is a dietitian who specializes in using the keto diet for people with neurological diseases such as migraines. She recently told me it’s a “targeted therapeutic diet for migraines and the brain fog that is commonly experienced with frequent and chronic migraines.” She states that after being keto for a few months, many of her patients are able to reduce medications used to treat these conditions.
But it’s not just for migraines. It can help improve memory and cognition for people at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. A 2012 study found that after just six weeks on a low carb diet, memory scores of people with mild cognitive deficits improved, compared to those on a high carb diet. It’s believed that the improvement of insulin and blood sugar levels, as well as a decrease in inflammation from eating a low carb diet, may be what improves memory.
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Can I Eat Sugar On A Keto Diet
We all know keto diet for being a low-carb meal plan, so where does sugar fit in and can you still eat it on this diet? Do you have to say goodbye to it forever doing keto, or is it ok to keep eating the sweet stuff?
How does the keto diet work?
When you start a keto diet you stop using glucose as energy, and instead start using fat, which is a state called ketosis. This is where our body converts fat into ketones, a group of molecules that work as a fuel for your body.
Getting into ketosis is not easy, and it can take a while to reach this state, and then maintaining it can be lot harder – and just one high-carb food can be enough to stop the process of burning fat, taking you out of ketosis and switching your body back to burning glucose instead of fat.
So that said, I wouldn’t recommend eating sugar on a keto diet, since it’s going to stop the ketosis process, and won’t allow you to burn fat like you intend to.
There is a great guide to the keto diet for beginners here.
Don’t let sugar addiction hold you back
If you are considering the keto diet, you need to make sure that sugar isn’t going to be the thing that holds you back. You might want to look at your current diet and see how much sugar you’re eating beforehand, as it’s addictive stuff and can cause quite powerful cravings.
Once you are in ketosis, you’ll be mainly eating protein and fat, with very few carbs and sugar, and so just in case here are a few tips on dealing with sugar:
The bottom line