Life, the sweetest thing: by Sharon Stephen

Making healthy adjustments to your lifestyle can be challenging to your existing relationships and routines. You may feel like you’re losing out on some ‘good times’ because your focus is gradually changing from what’s good for your social life to what’s great for your health and body. Inevitably, you will have to make a choice.

I remember this stage in my journey – being caught between partying up a storm or making sure I’m getting the rest and diet required to perform at the gym. I don’t think I would have made any progress with my fitness goals if I didn’t adjust my diet.

Diet–the word that conjures up images of cabbage soup, dry cracker bread, celery sticks and no-fat everything. I didn’t want to be that person who was ‘on a diet’. I also didn’t want to be that person who was taking some diet product to suppress my appetite. Maybe there is some merit in liquids-only diets or pharmaceutical products that promise that you will lose 15kilos in one month (the latter point is an exaggeration – I do not know of any such product which would most likely be detrimental to your long-term health). I didn’t want to subscribe to any diet that offered fast results because these programs don’t offer any solutions for when the desired results have been achieved – I’ve heard of many people who ballooned to their original weight or get even heavier after following a strict diet for a few weeks.

Instead of falling victim to any short-term fad or fantastical formula, I decided to change my lifestyle. It was a slow ascent at first and it started with a decrease in my sugar intake. Now mind you, I have a love of desserts so this was not any easy task for me but the need to change the way I felt about my body was greater than my sweet tooth. My lifestyle choice prevailed.

I began to learn that sugar is present in basically all foods – because there are different types of sugar. The main types of natural sugar are lactose (found in dairy products), fructose (fruit and some vegetables) and sucrose (derived from sugarcane or beet sugar). What this information meant for me was that just reducing the amount of sugar I was taking in my hot beverages was not going to be enough to make a concerted change in my life.

So the question was how would I know what to eat and more importantly what to avoid? The most practical solution was to begin studying the ingredients in all the foodstuff I was consuming and feeding to my family. I read everything including the plastic bread wrappers. I made some interesting discoveries about sugar.

Sugar is included in almost every man made food item available for mass consumption – even some items that claimed to be ‘sugar-free’ actually have sugar as an ingredient. I was being fooled by my own ignorance really.

The consumption of sugar is one of the biggest contributors to weight gain and is also very bad for overall health and of course has dire consequences foy your dental health.

Here are 10 Disturbing Reasons Why Sugar is Bad For You

1. Added Sugar Contains No Essential Nutrients and is Bad For Your Teeth
2. Added Sugar is High in Fructose, Which Can Overload Your Liver
3. Overloading The Liver With Fructose Can Cause Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease
4. Sugar Can Cause Insulin Resistance, a Stepping Stone Towards Metabolic Syndrome and Diabetes
5. The Insulin Resistance Can Progress to Type II Diabetes
6. Sugar Can Give You Cancer
7. Due to its Effects on Hormones and the Brain, Sugar has Unique Fat-Promoting Effects
8. Because it Causes Massive Dopamine Release in The Brain, Sugar is Highly Addictive
9. Sugar is a Leading Contributor to Obesity in Both Children and Adults
10. It Ain’t The Fat… It’s SUGAR That Raises Your Cholesterol and Gives You Heart Disease {authoritynutrition.com}

The bottom line is that just like me, there are many people walking around blind to the truth about making healthy choices and what that means practically. It starts with knowing what ingredients are used in what you’re eating.

Here are the top five items I no longer consume regularly:

1. Jam
2. Soft drinks – even the ‘zero sugar’ variety
3. Hardboiled sweets
4. Biscuits and cakes
5. Grapes, plums and dates

Now I cannot say that I do not absolutely eat any of the above items because honestly when I get that craving every now and then, I do not deny myself – especially in a social setting. I love sharing experiences with people and not everyone is fitness focused like me. It’s good to have a little of everything. This is called moderation. Know what your limits are, don’t avoid social events and remember that you have a long-term goal, the results of which will make life ever more sweeter…

You can always join my bootcamp every Saturday, 7am in Randburg. Check out www.fellowshipfitness.co.za for more details. It’s free by the way.