The Doctor's Diet: Dr. Travis Stork's STAT Program to Help You Lose Weight & Restore Your Health (24 page)

As I said earlier, The Doctor’s Diet is different from many of the other eating plans out there because it builds in a healthy assortment of complex and healthy carbohydrates including fruits, whole grains, beans, and fresh vegetables.

I’ll tell you more about this, but before I do, we’ve got to pay some attention to the big, white elephant in the room: sugar. Don’t worry, I’ll be as sweet about it as I can.

The most notorious simple carbohydrate—and one of the major causes of excess weight and poor health—is sitting in a bowl in your kitchen. It’s pure and white, sparkly and sweet—but don’t let its innocent appearance fool you. No matter how benign it may look, sugar is just plain bad for you, and cutting it out of your diet—if not completely, then mostly—will not only help you lose weight and cut your risk of disease, but it will probably make you feel a whole lot better, too.

Most of us eat way too much sugar. The American Heart Association recommends limiting added sugar to no more than 100 calories a day for women and 150 calories a day for men. But we Americans consume, on average, 355 calories from sugar each day—that’s about 22 teaspoons of sugar daily. Over the course of a year, that’s enough calories to pack on 37 extra pounds!

But we’re not sitting around munching on sugar cubes or spooning the white stuff into our mouths from our sugar bowls—rather, we’re consuming it in the food we eat and the beverages we drink. Sugar is found in the expected places, such as cookies, candy, cakes, muffins, ice cream, sugary cereals, and pastries. And it’s in foods we don’t necessarily think of as being very sugary, such as breads, pastas and many sauces and dressings. And of course, it’s in soft drinks—soda, sweetened iced tea, sports drinks, fruit punches, lemonade, sugary coffee drinks, and other kinds of “liquid candy.”

Our bodies are biologically programmed to seek out the taste of sweetness. Back when our cavemen ancestors were roaming the forests, seashores, and prairies, sweetness equaled safety—in general, if something tasted sweet, it was unlikely to be poisonous. A sugary taste was linked with good health and long life, which is a bitter irony when you consider how many modern lives are shortened because of our desire for sugar.

Today we’ve still got that physiological urge to eat sweets. But now we live in a world in which sugar is everywhere. We can’t just go by what our bodies want. We’ve got to change the way we think about sugar, root it out of our diets, and break what is, for many of us, an addiction.

Nutrition experts disagree over whether the constant, overwhelming craving for sugar that so many of us have is an addiction—meaning a true physiological dependence—or just a bad habit. My view is that it’s an addiction, an actual physical craving, and that a sizeable number of people truly are addicted to sugar.

When an overweight person with life-threatening heart disease and type 2 diabetes hides candy bars around the house, eats them when nobody’s looking, and then weeps with self-hatred afterward, I call that an addiction.

Here’s my thinking. When you’re addicted to something, you have trouble controlling your use of it. You continue to use it, take it, or consume it despite realizing that it’s harmful to your health. Even when you try to give it up, you may find that you can’t. Powerful cravings leave you thinking of it constantly, but consuming it gives you only fleeting satisfaction.

When we think of addictions, substances like alcohol, nicotine, and recreational drugs come to mind, as do gambling and sex addiction. But for some people, sugar can be just as addictive.

Eating sugar causes your brain to release serotonin and dopamine, brain chemicals that make you feel good. These same neurochemicals are produced when you fall in love, have sex, or experience any kind of pleasure. And, not surprisingly, they are released in the brains of people who use drugs such as cocaine and heroin.

Eating high-sugar food actually stimulates an entire region of the brain that’s known as the reward center. Not all foods do this—in fact, an impressive 2013 study published in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
found that foods that are high on the glycemic index (in other words, foods that are high in sugar) stimulate the brain’s reward and craving regions significantly more than foods that are low in sugar.

It’s a simple equation. You eat sugar, you feel good, your brain fires off “pleasure” signals, you eat more sugar—and the cycle goes on and on.

Blood sugar plays a part as well. Again, the equation is simple: you eat sugar, your blood sugar skyrockets, your blood sugar plummets, your brain turns on a low blood sugar alert, and before you know it you’re craving sugar again.

That’s what happened to me when I was a kid. I grew up drinking tons of sugar, and I truly believe I was addicted to it because I felt like I couldn’t live without it. What a relief it was for me to break that addiction and not have to feel so beholden to all those bottles of soda.

The problem with sugar is that it’s ubiquitous—it’s all around us. Alcoholics who get off booze can avoid bars, nightclubs, and parties where it’s served, and recovering drug addicts don’t have to worry that there’s cocaine in their spaghetti sauce! Not so with sugar. It’s in the vast majority of processed foods—as well as just about every kitchen, restaurant, coffee shop, and convenience store—so it’s nearly impossible to avoid it completely.

You
can
break your addiction to sugar. Once you decide that you really do want to end your psychological dependence on this life-threatening food, you can end sugar’s control on your body and your taste buds. Then, once you’re free of the constant desire for sweetness, you’ll find it much easier to enjoy the naturally delicious taste of whole foods that are better for you and that help you burn excess fat.

Ending your psychological reliance on sugar isn’t easy, but it’s absolutely doable. I’ve created a five-step process that will help you end your sugar addiction.

I’m not sure if it’s because of genetics or just the way we’re raised, but it definitely seems that some people are more likely to become addicted to sugar than others. How do you rate? Are you someone who wakes up in a sweat after dreaming of chocolate cream pie? Are you immune to sugar—can you easily say “no thanks” to candy, cookies, and desserts? Or are you, like most people, somewhere in the middle? Take this quiz to find out where you stand. Circle the answer that most closely fits each question.

1. Do you eat sweets even when you’re not hungry?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

2. Do you go overboard on sweets, eating three or more servings of cake, cookies, candy, ice cream, or other sweets at one time?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

3. When you’re eating something sweet, do you continue to consume it even after you start feeling full?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

4. Do you become defensive when friends and family comment about your intake of cookies, candy, cake, and other sweets?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

5. Do you lie to others about your intake of sugary foods? For example, if you eat a bunch of cookies and another family member is wondering why the cookie box is empty, do you fib to cover up the fact that you ate them?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

6. Do you experience withdrawal-type symptoms (irritability, moodiness, depression, anxiety, etc.) when you try to give up sweets?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

7. Do you have candy and other sweets stashed around the house where others can’t find them, and do you eat them when nobody is watching?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

8. Do you feel ashamed, guilty, or angry at yourself when you eat/over-eat sugary foods?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

9. Do you find yourself thinking about sweets throughout the day and night, counting the minutes until it’s “time” to eat them?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

10. Do you automatically reach for something sweet after finishing a meal?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

11. Do you feel panicked or desperate when you don’t have something sweet in the house for dessert?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

12. Do you
think
you may be addicted to sugar and sweets?

Very frequently   Somewhat frequently   Occasionally   Never

Scoring: Give yourself the following points for each answer you circled, then use the chart that follows to determine the likelihood that you’re addicted to sugar:

Even if you’re not loading up on cake and pie or drinking can after can of soda, you’re probably taking in much more sugar than you realize. That’s because sugar is added to so many foods—even the ones we don’t think of as being sweet, such as spaghetti sauce, frozen dinners, and salad dressings. Sugar boosts flavor, tones down bitterness, and balances the sharpness of high-acid foods such as tomatoes and vinegar. It also helps preserve foods, which is one of the reasons it’s in so many processed products.

To find the hidden (and not-so-hidden) sugar in the foods you eat, start reading labels. The Nutrition Facts section of the label gives you total grams of sugar, but that includes natural sugars as well as added sugars. For example, according to the food label, a cup of skim milk has 12 grams of sugar. But that all comes from lactose, a natural sugar in milk. Although some people think you need to cut out lactose and other
natural sugars in order to break your addiction to sugar, I don’t agree.

So when you’re looking at food labels, consider the total amount of sugar grams, but more importantly, look at the food’s ingredients. If sugar is one of the food’s first ingredients, consider avoiding it.

But you have to be on your toes. When sugar is added to a food, the word “sugar” may not even appear on its label. That’s because on food labels, sugar often hides behind a range of different names. When you see these words on labels, sugar alarm bells should go off in your head:

agave nectar

barley malt