That sugar episode

0:02 A listener production. Hi, welcome to Crappy to Happy with Tip and Cass. Thanks for joining us in this series. We take you through ways to feel less crappy and more happy with really easy, simple tools and tips that you can take on today. Last episode we had a chat about being self critical, and this episode we're going to delve into sugar, how it's addictive, why it's bad for your body and brain, and what you can do to avoid sweet treats. Cass. A lot of people look at me and say, oh, you're a trainer, you look healthy. You have no idea what it's like to have a sugar addiction. Maybe true.

0:48 I grew up in a healthy household, my mom green juices every morning and exercise all of that. But when I joined The Biggest Loser, the producers had this great idea that the trainers should move in to the household with our obese contestants and we should eat and drink everything they eat and drink for the week. Wow, not exercise, and see the repercussions on our health and our weight. And I thought, oh, you know, I've been training for twenty years. What can one week of eating sugar do to me? Wow? How did it go well. I moved in with them and I ate what they ate, drank what they drank, and didn't exercise, And in one week I put on over five kilos. Wow, and I'm five foot four, so that's a lot of weight on my body. And weight comes and goes, and that's very dangerous in one week to put on a kilo in every every day. But what I noticed was my mood dropped.

1:45 I lost all motivation to train, even if I had been able to, I was lethargic, and my immune system just plummeted. I had a chest infection, two courses of antibiotics, and in the end ended up on a ventilin because I was so sick and run. This is after one week. One week of a lot of so that was a lot of sugar. Oh only sugar. I'm talking soft drinks, biscuits, ice cream, fast food, you know, sugary buns in fast food joints and things like that, burgers. And it just said to me, Okay, this is a real issue. I felt what it felt like, and I thought, this has got to change. Now. If you think about your body, your body has five liters or more of blood pumping through its system every single day in order to survive. We only need one teaspoon or sugar for energy in that blood. Okay, and the blood's cleaning itself every day, just one teaspoon. But the average Australian is consuming more than twenty two tea spoons a day and they're not even realizing it.

2:45 So is this sugar, This is teaspoons of sugar in your coffee or are you talking about sugar in. Package added sugar? I'm talking process sugar. Added sugar that you may add to your coffee, but is also added to cereals, to your yoga, to healthy muselely bars. And you know, we went through this fad of fat free where we were scared of fat. Yeah we did, and I grew up in that era. Yes, exactly. Fat free and fat free doesn't taste so good, so the companies laced the products with sugar so it would taste better. And it's actually the sugar that is negative. So when you think about what your body needs to survive, do you know what it needs to survive in terms of nutrition, I'm thinking protein, carbo hydrate, water and fat nutrients spartamin. Yeah, so you've got macro nutrients and micronutrients, But the macro nutrients, which are the big things that we need to survive are protein and carbohydrate and fat, and they come with different energy powers.

3:48 Sugar count as a carbohydrate. No, well, sugar. Natural sugars are found in a little bit of berries and some fruit and vegetable a little bit yep. But processed sugar is not a macro nutrient something we invented, and our body actually doesn't know how to deal with that. So every macronutrient, like protein or carbohydrate or fat, it triggers hormones in our body to tell you you're full, Like leptin, that's the chemical in our brain that says, hey, I'm full. I've had enough fat. So if you have a fat treat like a croissant, you'll feel full. But if you have a sugar treat and you've just deadened those cell receptors from having too much insulin that's come into your blood to try and clean that excess sugar, wow, the insulin actually blocks that I'm full hunger, you know, I'm full hormone, so you don't get that appetite Q saying you've had enough sugar, so.

4:42 You keep wanting more. There's no mechanism built into our body to shut it down. But fat is good. So I always say to people, if you want to treat, have a fat, treat, have something fatty. Don't go for the sugar because you crave you have sugar, you want more. And also your gut health. Your gut is like a second brain. It's full of good and bad bacteria, and that bad bacteria love sugar, and it sends a message straight to your brain to crave more sugar. So these little it's like a zoo within you. Yeah, I'm interested in the gut health. Yeah, it's actually sending signals to your brain. So you may think, oh, I'm a sugar addict. You know what can I do about this? But it's not actually you. It's your gut health. And the more sugar you eat, the more you are wiring your whole body hormonally to just crave more of this stuff. And if you think about some of the stats nowadays, there's up to sixteen teaspoons of sugar in a single six hundred mili liter bottle of soft drink, and some people will have two of those a day, and people.

5:45 Who have like two liters a day, even like think about orange juice. Right. This is the trap, isn't it? Because there are so many foods that we think are actually healthy alternatives. But when you, like you said before, yogats, cereals and. Breathoods, bread absolutely so added sugar. It's a trap for people because I think we all think that if we're not adding sugar, I don't add sugar, like I don't have I don't have sugar in my coffee or anything like that. But I probably I don't drink self drink, but I probably am unwittingly having sugar. I'd be interested to actually see how much in all of that processed stuff. Yeah, so with things like orange juice that you think it's really healthy. If you have one six hundred mili liter orange juice a day, perhaps you're giving it to your kids, there's enough sugar in that to equate twenty three kilos of sugar in a year. Right, So that's a lot of processed sugar. And in Australia now we are in the top ten countries per capita of consumption of sugary drinks. And so look, there's a lot of sugar in health products. There's a lot of sugar in in everything that you find, and I will give you tips later on to decode them. Yeah, decode food labels and.

6:57 Things like that. But I did this experiment with a couple who came to me and they couldn't fit in any exercise. They didn't want to change their diet, but they had to lose weight. And I thought, where do I start with this? And I said, these people exist, Okay, they change. Time change I want it? Yeah? Can I change my body without changing my lifestyle? Tive? Please, I don't want to do anything. And I thought, okay, you know what. I've got the exact thing. I've got something for you. Because once I asked them what they ate, what they drank, they told me that they were having seven coffees a day with sugar in it, and they were also having one can of soft drink, which equates to three hundred and thirty six jelly beans of sugar per week. Okay, and about one hundred and thirty jelly beans is one hundred grams of sugar. So I thought, sugar is a problem here. They're drinking their calories. So for two weeks, I said, all I want you to do is do my water week which is cutting out all liquid calories, your soft drinks, your sugar rejuices, you're added sugar and coffee meal replacements. If you're having it shakes, I mean energy drinks, all of that. Just drink water.

8:10 I mean you can jazz it up with some lemon and herbal tea is fine. Imagine people would find that quite difficult that yes, alcohol, right, they had to cut out alcohol. And in that two weeks, my male volunteer lost eight kilos. Just from cutting out liquid liquid. Calories, and my female lost free kilograms just from cutting out the liquid calories that were really sugar calories. So it just proves that it's not just what you're eating drinking, it's what you're drinking as well. And if we just remember that our bodies don't need that sugar, that processed sugar to survive. You know, I'm not sugar free. I want to say that that's very important to point out.

8:51 I like fruit, there's sugar and vegetables. I will have an odd treat. I mean I love you know, that's what life's about. Having something. Yeah, chocolate, I can't live with that chocolate, But I mean people have trouble living without jocolut exactly. And you just have to be a realist about it, I think, and especially with kids, you can't be like my kids sugar free and then send them off to a birthday party and say, sweetheart, you're not having any birthday cake. I mean, we have to be realistic. But there are things that will come back and talk about that you can do just to be aware about it. Sugar, because it is quite dangerous and it does have negative effects on your brain. It depresses your immune system. It can increase the stress hormone cortisol in your body, which means that affects how you burn fat, and I'm sure casts that it affects the way you think.

9:38 Yeah, well look I'm not the nutritionist. I'm a psychologist and so, but my understanding of the way sugar works on your brain is it obviously gives you a big spike in energy and then a crash, so it sends your mood all over the place, you know, ups and downs in energy. So it's quite makes you quite erratic in your mood. And the other thing that we know about sugar is that it hits your brain's reward centers in the same way that drugs and alcohol do, so it really dopamine is the feel good neurotransmitter. So dopamine is implicated in a lot of these addictive kind of behaviors. Uh huh. So when you get a massive hit of dopamine, you feel great and you immediately you want more. And so what we know is that sugar affects our brain in the same way as, for example, cocaine. In fact, I think somebody has found that that sugar is actually in rats not humans. Uh huh, that sugar is more addictive than cocaine.

10:36 WHOA. So when we talk about substance dependence, the criteria in psychology for substance dependence, we talk about needing more of the thing to have the same effect, So this tolerance, and we know that that happens with sugar. And I think you're talking about that whole wanting more, so you have it, and you keep on needing to have more and more and more to produce the same feel good kind of outcome. And the other thing is withdrawals. So and I know people who have a lot of sugar come off sugar and they physically they go through a physical withdrawal. With our members on tifxo dot com, who stop having added sugar. Headaches, headaches, le g yes, all of that, all of that.

11:18 So from my perspective, like I'm not a big sugar eater, I probably do have the hidden sugars in the process foods. But I'm really interested in the psychological impact of sugar, So how it affects our brain and mood. And it's addictive. We know it's addictive, so what can you do about that? From the brain perspective, it is just about having it in. Moderation or the thing? Right, do you not light up that reward center? Because when people have a drug addiction, then we promote abstinence, really don't we. I mean, there are people who can drink alcohol, for example, moderately and don't have to become a complete teetotaler. So it depends on the individual and how big a problem it is. Because what you don't want to do, what you want to avoid doing, I think is completely demonizing something and activating that what you resist persists, you know, that wanting becoming fixated and obsessed with I can't have sugar, I can't have chocolate, and therefore all I'm focusing on is how much I really want that chocolate so you do want to try to set up a lifestyle where it's allowed in moderation. But I think you probably first of all, have to break that that addictive.

12:24 Cycle, and you know what, clean out your system, clean out your system, and physiologically your taste buds even regenerate every ten days to two weeks. So if you just set yourself the goal to pull out any added sugar that you can find, maybe it's in your coffee, soft drinks, just basics, then your taste buds within two weeks will have changed completely and you'll have a piece of fruit and think, whoa, that. Is so sweet? That apple just nearly blew my head off. And the same with artificial sweeteners. You have to be careful, especially organa capples. I have to say that, yes sweet, they are gorgeous. I love apples, you know. Or artificial sweetness can be up to three hundred times sweeter than sugar. Artificial sweetness, so chemical sweetness, not like stevia, which is a plant sweetener, They can be up to three hundred times more sweet. Not to mention that toxic, very toxic. So you don't want to be taking the sugar out and putting all those chemical sweetness in and same with diet soft drinks. They're full of chemical sweetemicals you don't want.

13:28 So what I'm really interested in and the other thing I think I know about chemical sweetness is they actually they don't wean you off the need for a sweet flavor. You know, they don't. Actually you're putting swapping out the sugar chemicals, but you're still getting a sweet hit. So I think that they don't really count, do they not? In terms of no, you're not completely get off the sugar. Sweet that sweet sweet hit. And you know, we're not talking about here or I'm not talking about plants that produce sugar as a byproduct of photosynthesis. And that's fine, and fruit and vegetables have an element of sugar fructose, and even avocados and sweet potato have an element of fruit dose in them. But the difference is that the body will break it down more slowly than sucrose, and it will those foods have vitamins. Those foods have vitamins and minerals that fiber, fiber that will nourish your body.

14:23 But when we're talking about processed sugar, refined sugars, they have zero nutrients to support your body, and it actually depresses your immune system, so there's a big difference there. I'm not sugar free completely. I do like an odd traade and all of that, but I do think that there are ways you can pull out that added sugar to your diet which will make a huge difference to your mood, your energy levels as you talked about the high and then the crash in the afternoon, and also your weight and your physical body feeling well. Can I just ask you too quickly? You not this might not be area because I understand you're not a dieto, not a dietician, But what are your thoughts on because I know I've gone through phases of replacing white, plain white refined sugar with for example, rapid dura because it apparently contains more minerals, or you know, coconut sugar, or even things like rice malt syrup.

15:19 Do you have a position on those kinds of substances. I think they're a little bit better, some of them are. Some are also higher in fruit doose, which people have allergies too, and it can cause more bloating and more sensitivity and more problems. So I just think that when we're talking about sugar added sugar, pulling. It out of. The basics, Like if you have lollies on your desk, change it with nuts. That's healthier fat versus sugar. But when you're cooking, if you're using stevia or a little bit of rice melt syrup, or if you're using a bit of coconut sugar in your baking, that is okay, and it is better because there are minerals and there are vitamins, and it is a better alternative. But with all of this, I'm I'm always approaching diet as lifestyle, which trying to get away from restricting things, cutting things out.

16:15 If I were to cut one thing out and change one thing for the betterment of Australia and our obesity epidemic, I would say it is soft drinks. I whah, You're going to say that it is soft drinks. And I just cannot stand it when I'm teaching kids taekwondo at my taekwondo schools and the parents I say, okay, have a drink break, and they run off the mats and they go and the parent hands them a soft drink to have a drink halfway through the class, and I don't know, is it my place to say nobody use some water or rip it out of the parent's hand. You know, it's just education. It really is the devil. So after the break, we're going to give you some tips to break you sugar, have it in an easy way.

16:57 You're listening to Crappy to Have You with Tipp and Cat. Welcome back to Crappy to Happy with Tip and Cass. We're talking sugar and sugar addiction. Yeah, so, Tif, we've heard a lot about why it's bad and why we should cut out at sugar and break our sugar habit. So I'm really keen to hear from you from your experience. What would you recommend? How do we go about this given the addictive nature of sugar. Well, I don't know about you, but I'll go to the supermarket and I'll pick up a product and the food label is so complicated and they try and mess with us. It's not one hundred gram serve. Maybe it's two hundred and fifty gram serve. And you know there's tricks there and I can tell them being tricked. And a lot of mums come up to me and say, how do I know if this is a good cereal for my child.

17:47 How much sugar is too much? Well, I think a really simple way of keeping it in your head when you're going shopping, one teaspoon is four grams, so keep that in mind. And when you're looking at a serving of how much sugar is in a product, try and keep it under six or five grams of sugar. Okay, so keeping it to less than a teaspoon. Yeah, I think that's really healthy, and it's realistic. Per serving or per hundred grams, because they always give you the serving or one hundred grams. I say per one hundred grams, per hundred grams less one hundred grams, So that's what I would recommend, and then from there getting a little bit creative with your cooking not adding sugar. You can sweeten things with spices. So I will buy full fat products, and on tifxo dot com it's all full fat products. That's about things fat, you know, free, so we're taking the sugar out of it for you don't have to worry about it. But if you have some natural Greek yogat and you want some sweetness, I will add blueberries or you know, you can add some cinnamon.

18:46 You can do it yourself. Yeah, No, spices are fantastic. Removing the added sugar from your coffees. I know it can be hard at first, but a little dash of stevia, which is a natural plant sweetener, can help. I think actually it just takes a little bit of an adjustment. I can put one teaspoon of sugar in my coffee out and it tastes so ridiculously sweet. Because it's just what I've got used to. Your taste buds have changed. Yeah, So I think that we need to recognize that. It might take a few days, but we eventually we all adapt and it just becomes the new normal. It does, it does, and that's what we have to try and do here. And then when it comes to soft drinks, and there are a lot of people addicted to soft drinks. You know, maybe you're in the car a lot or at your desk and you need energy, and I know soft drinks are happening out there, but I would encourage you to try that water a week I mentioned before, where just for seven days you cut out the alcohol and you cut out the soft drinks, and you see the difference to your energy levels and your weight. And a lot of people say tip that is too hard. I can't do it, but many of my members try it, and after seven days they do a water a week again, and then all of a sudden, they've done a water month and they never go back because they're feeling so great. And water regulates your appetite when you're hydrated completely, it helps with fat burn, and so you're suddenly getting better results in your training, in your performance at work, and your energy levels. And it's just a simple swap of what you're drinking.

20:18 Yeah, that's a great tip. Would you say that even if people think it's too hard to cut out all of the liquid calories, if they just focus, if they know what they're one weak point is like say it's a milky three milky coffee a day, or if it's the soft drink, to just hit one exactly, like one little change. One little change. And also, you know, if you're looking at things like fruit juices, and when you're having a fruit juice so full of sugar, you're missing out on the fibers. So go for the whole food. If you love orange juice, have an orange instead with all the vitamins and the fiber, or go for a vegetable juice instead of a fruit juice if that's your morning routine. But then we can also do healthy swaps.

20:59 And I'm a big believer in this because on my program at twfxo dot com, we don't expect that you're not going to ever have ice cream again. We don't want you to every now and then have some ice cream. But we also offer a banana healthy soft serve. Yeah, you can make out a banana, it's so young. There's healthy muffin options, healthy pizza options. We do a chocolate trail mix. There's snacks that you can take to the movies to avoid lollies. That's a hot chocolate which is not chocolate super food hot chocolate. You know, there's healthy swaps and you can't often taste the difference. It's really great. So it's just about finding those recipes to make those healthy swaps, and then a little bit of tricking your taste buds as well, because if you think you've got ten days ahead of you to regenerate those taste buds, and you're thinking, oh, how am I going to get through this? Well, I love coconut oil pulling, which is really great because swishing some coconut oil around in your mouth for ten minutes and then spitting it out. That will cleanse your palette for the day, so you won't crave the sugar as much. And also, if I love chocolate, I do have a sweet tooth. I no, cast you don't so much, but I have a sweet tooth. And so if I'm craving too much chocolate, I will go for some anti sweetness, So I will have lemon water because the bitterness takes that away from my taste buds. Yeah, that's really disciplined. Yah, you've craving sweet to go for sour, Yeah, I will do it. Or a little bit of apple sided vinegar which is very bitter in a glass of water,

22:30 which has a lot of gut benefits as well, a grapefruit, just something bitter that will trick my taste buds. It cannot cleaning your teeth. You tell people to go clean their teeth. And you can clean your teeth and have a fresh mouth, and that can help too. So they're tips that can get you out of that moment of feeling like sugar and physiologically tricking your taste buds or having something healthier, healthier option, or just breaking it down. If you're having three coffees a day with three sugars in each, just going for that one. Yeah, that's a lot, and it can just be coffee calories. I think too. From my perspective, just as you're talking, I'm thinking that we want to do notice when those emotional cravings hit.

23:14 Because it's so important. Oftentimes when there is something like a sweet or sugar, I'm really feeling, like a chocolate, it's not a physical hunger, it's an emotional craving. We're going for a self soothing kind of thing, Like. It happens to me when I'm at my desk and I'm stressed. Feeling stressed, or or even when you're feeling tired or bored, like we'll reach for something. And so I think that recognizing be able to stop for a minute. Again, I'm about the mindfulness, but being able to stop in that moment and just before you instinctively automatically reach for the thing, the sugar, to go what am I actually feeling here? What am I really needing? And if it is an emotional need, work out what it is and find out another way to meet that need that doesn't involve something that's going to be bad for you and spike your energy and make you feel crap later. You're only delaying the negative, yes impact, aren't you so looking for something else?

24:08 And I also I'm a big I'm a massive evangelist for sleep, and I think sleep deprivation really drives up sugar craving. That's that's scientifically proven, isn't it. So I think you know, obviously, sometimes we deal a lot with mums with young kids, and sometimes you can't get the sleep that you need. But making sure that you're well rested and taking opportunities to slow down. We've talked about busyness, slow down, time out, recharge, ensure that your body's rested so that you're not looking for an artificial hit of energy from sugar. Yes, and you're actually nourishing and replenishing your body, giving it the rest and giving it the proper nutrition. And yeah, and then meeting those emotional needs is. So important, and that can come from people who even overtrain or you know those corporate athletes or you know business black belts who are out there working them without any downtime or off season. You know, you really do have to look at this holistically. So when you said, Cass, feeling bored and you're emotional and you're just reaching for that sweet treat. Immediately, I was thinking of watching TV and it recalled one of our clients and I went through their fridge and their pantry and it was perfect, and they had put on a lot of weight and they wanted help. And I'm like, well, your nutrition's on track, you've got a personal trainer. You guys are killing it.

25:27 So I don't know why this weight's coming on. And the husband said, oh, it's a snack box. I said, what is a snack box? And go and get it. And they brought out this huge plastic tub and it was full of sugar bar, chocolate bars and chips and all this nasty stuff. And they said, at night, one of us will go get the snack box and we just sit here and we are bored and watching TV and we mindlessly eat from the snackbox. So I confiscated the snackbox. But of course you did part of. You know, eliminating added sugar. I think is not having it in the house, Like if you can get yeah, if you know, if you're trying to make a change, talk to your partner, talk to your family and try not to have that sugar there. Or if your partner doesn't have a problem, they're one of those people who can have one score of chocolate at a time and leave the whole block. Then say just hide it from me, Just hide it from me, don't have it. But yeah, I think it's helpful.

26:28 You also just raised a really good point with that snack box. It's about identifying where your weak points are, because everybody will have a different one. For some people it's the three pm you know, that afternoon kind of crash and they go. For a lot of people it's the nighttime. It's relaxation, TV eating. Yeah. So I think part of the issue and part of the process for changing the behavior is to recognize where the behavior shows up, like in what circumstances whereabouts you know, even the people, the things that you associate with as meet your friends for coffees and cakes, yes, and can you change that around to meeting your friends for a walk down the river. Things like that, like changing those habits which are associated with the sugar or the sweetness.

27:14 You know that, you know, whatever it. Might keeping your hands busy, whether that's my mum likes to knit in front of the television, or you may be painting your nails, or you know, perhaps you're on social media at that time instead of the mindless snacking. It is so important and I think, yeah, get it out of the house, don't see it. Clean your teeth and go to bed. Yeah, clean your teeth and go to bed. And also, like you're saying with sleep, if you're having a lot of sugar before sleep, it does stimulate you, so it will impact the quality of your sleep, the quality of your sleep, which is really dangerous too. So we hope there's some tips there for you to do sugar your life and find a sweet spot without the negative impacts on your health. On the next episode, we're talking about how to set great goals. It's a big topic.

28:03 Thanks for joining us. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tiff and Cask. We'll talk to you then. Produced by Daves Velenski. Audio production by Nick Slater. Listener