Not All Sugar Is Created Equal: Part 1

This is the first in what is going to be a 3 part series of blogs. Sugar is a complicated topic that warrants a long-winded explanation. Since no one wants to read a long-winded explanation, I am splitting it up into parts for you.

This post is all about what a sugar actually is. It will set you up for understanding sugar metabolism better. Its science-y, so bear with me while I nerd out on bonds and molecules.

To be clear, I will not be talking about artificial sweeteners here. Artificial sweeteners such as sucralose, aspartame, cyclamate, saccharin and sugar alcohols (sorbitol, xylitol, etc) are chemically altered sugars that have a whole host of different health and metabolic implications.

All carbohydrates break down into simple sugar molecules. The most basic sugar molecules are glucose, fructose and galactose. Each of these molecules has the same chemical formula C₆H₁₂O₆ but they have slightly different shapes, which allows them to interact differently with the cells in your body.

In foods, sugars are combined with each other to make longer chains of carbohydrate.

• sucrose — common table sugar = glucose + fructose
• lactose — major sugar in milk = glucose + galactose
• maltose — product of starch digestion = glucose + glucose

Starch is made up of long chains of linked glucose. When they form a straight chain, it is called amylose. A highly branched glucose chain is called amylopectin, which is the chief energy storage unit in plants.

In animals a molecule similar to amylopectin is used to store energy. It is called glycogen. Glycogen has more frequent branches in its glucose chain than amylopectin.

Here is why all of this is important. When your body uses sugar for energy -- actually when it uses anything for energy -- it breaks it all the way down to carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms. The process of getting down to these tiny atoms is long and complicated involving many enzymes and cellular checkpoints along the way.

The SHAPE and SIZE of the different sugars, as well as the way that the sugar molecules are linked to eat other will directly affect what enzymes will break the sugar down, how quickly the sugar is broken down and how easily your body can use the sugar for energy.

All of these things affect your blood sugar. Blood sugar impacts insulin levels. Insulin, in turn, affects all of your other hormones including cortisol, leptin, glucagon, ghrelin, thyroid hormone and sex hormones. All of these hormones impact fat storage and metabolic rate.

How you metabolize sugars will also determine whether or not they cause an inflammatory response in the body. Certain sugars or products of sugar metabolism can cause oxidative damage in your body and inflammation.

That is enough science for today.

Next week, we will start to talk about why some sugars are better and worse for you.

How we determine if a sugar is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is by looking at how the sugar impacts hormones, metabolism and if it does or does not cause oxidative damage and inflammation. Lastly, we will factor in the nutrients that come along with some sugars in their natural forms.

Goals or Results?

The idea for this blog came as a ‘thought baby’ from a conversation that I was had with Dr. Jenna about goal setting.

The gold standard idea for writing good goals is that they are supposed to be SMART.

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Realistic

Timely

The epiphany (moment of sudden and great realization) that came out of the conversation was this:

“The problem with goal setting is that most people do not set goals, they set results.”

“What is the difference?”

“Well, if it is a SMART goal, a real goal, you have control over it. You cannot control results.”

Boom!

This is huge folks. Think about it. Results are like symptoms. You cannot control how the things you do to your body will manifest as symptoms. Smokers do not always get lung cancer and people who eat grains do not always have stomach pain. Similarly, seeing your chiropractor may not make your back pain disappear, and eating healthy food does not always result in losing twenty pounds.

Let me use an example to illustrate the difference between goals and results.

If I am athlete and the result I am aiming at is to go to the Olympics, I need to set certain goals.

My goals could be:

Follow a certain training protocol to the letter for the next year.

Hire a coach who has trained other Olympic athletes sometime in the next six months.

Eat protein and vegetables at every meal during my training period.

Go to sleep every night at nine o’clock and wakeup every morning at six o’clock when training.

See how all of these things qualify as SMART goals.

If my goals are appropriately aligned with the result that I am trying to achieve, it will drastically increase the possibility that I will achieve the result (going to the Olympics) that I want to achieve.

The thing is, I could achieve all of these goals and still not qualify for the Olympics. There may be people who are better than me. I have no control as to whether or not I qualify for the Olympics. All I can do is continue to set and achieve goals that will stack the odds in my favor.

The beauty of having goals that are actionable and 100% within my control is that I have a way of analyzing my performance. Did I do everything that I could do? If not, I know how I can change my actions to bring me closer to producing a desired result.

That is better for your self-esteem! If you have achieved all of the things that were within your ability to achieve, that is a huge accomplishment, even if you fall short of your desired result.

Now lets apply this to eating By Design and health. We often hear that people’s goals are to lose weight, lower their cholesterol or lower their blood glucose levels.  These things are all results.

You do not have control over the exact number of points that your blood glucose will drop if you stop eating sugar.

You do not have control over exactly how many pounds of fat your body will metabolize if you start eating 100% By Design.

You do not have control over how many pounds you will be able to deadlift if you start training.

So if your blood glucose only improves by two points instead of three, you lose eighteen pounds instead of twenty-five, you deadlift 290 pounds instead of 305 pounds, does that mean you failed? Does that mean that since you did not get the result that you were looking for that it was a waste of time, energy and effort? Many people feel that way.

How often have you seen a kid play a great game and still cry because they lost? Sometimes the other team just plays better.

Sometimes your hormones do not tell your body to metabolize fat the way you hope it will.

Sometimes having a clear brain-body connection does not mean pain-free.

It is time that we all start looking at what we are capable of instead of the arbitrary number we want to see on the scale.

Consistently doing things that are healthy for your body is good for you, even if the look and feeling you want does not come to fruition.

Keep at it! Write SMART goals that are aligned with your desired results. It will feel great to tick off those boxes, even if you never hit the perfect result.

Do you actually want to? Or do you just think you should?

Are there certain changes in your life that you often think, about or talk about doing, but then never take actions to achieve? Does your diet change always start tomorrow? Did you buy a gym membership that is going to expire un-used? Maybe you play lip service to the 5am Club but then hit the snooze button 7 times – every morning.

I will be honest, I have often been guilty of that last one.

I made joining the 5am club my goal for the 30 day Life By Design challenge that began this past Monday.

In the past, I have made a thousand excuses as to why I cannot seem to get up at 5am. 

I do want to spend an hour on self-development each morning and set each day up for success. Yet I have failed to actually do it consistently enough to call it a habit. For this reason, I spent some time doing significant self-reflection about this goal before the challenge started.

This blog is a product of that reflection.

The limiting factor for me is not the 5am wake up, it is the 9pm bed time. Since I do not function well with less than 8 hours sleep, if I do not get to bed on time, a 5am wake up is not likely.

I am not lazy. I do not lack motivation or discipline. I know this because I consistently achieve other goals. I used to LOVE bread and pasta, but I have not had either in YEARS. I get my body into the gym an average of 4 days per week. I get my spine checked regularly and I paid full price for getting checked even when I was a struggling student. I read and listen to pod casts and work hard on my new business.

So what the heck? How is it that something as simple as getting out of bed at the same time everyday could be so hard. Other people do it. I refuse to believe that all these 5am’ers are somehow genetically inclined to wake up early.

Finally, I arrived at the blatant answer. I do not actually want to get up at 5am. I just think that I should. If I was actually ‘sold’ on getting up at 5am and truly valued it, I would do it.

(*** Key point here folks: If your values are not aligned with your goals, you are setting yourself up to fail.***)

So the problem is that I fail to get up early because I fail to go to bed early. Therefore I need to go to bed earlier to achieve my goal. Why has that not happened?

I LOVE cooking. I find it relaxing and I make food that makes me healthy and happy. I also deeply value companionship and my close relationships. 10 times out of 10 I stay up late either cooking or spending time with (or on the phone with) someone I care about… Or both.

I am staying up late because I value these things MORE than I value going to bed early and getting up at 5am.

Boom! Reflection successful! Problem solved!

Wait a minute... why did I keep my goal for the 30 day challenge to get up at 5am?

I sold myself on the value of it.

Spending more time on developing myself will allow me to create more value in the world. Creating more value will improve the quality of my life, my relationships and allow me to buy better ingredients to cook with.

It FINALLY clicked when I realized, it is not just 5am. It is not just this one morning or one hour or one podcast. It is my career, my life, my ability to impact the world and achieve my purpose. In that context, it is my highest value.

The reason you may not be achieving your goals is likely because you have not built the value of your goals for yourself.

When you tell yourself that just 1 cookie will not make a difference, you truly do not understand or believe the significance of putting toxic food into your body. Or you love cookies more than your health.

If you routinely skip workouts, you do not believe that training is valuable.

If you do not get your spine checked, you do not know or understand that unhealthy neural function is possibly compromising the health of many organ systems in your body. Or you do not value your health.

We ALWAYS do the things that align with our highest values. People go to jobs every day that they hate because they believe that it will allow them to buy things that they value for themselves and to provide for their families that they value.

So if you are struggling with your goals, it is time to either give up on them because they do not really matter to you or to build the value. You will have to build enough value that achieving your goal trumps the things that you are doing that are keeping you from achieving it. You will also likely have to remind yourself frequently of WHY it is valuable, until you develop new habits.

Eat That Frog!

I recently read a great book by Brian Tracy called Eat That Frog! The book is about prioritizing important tasks in order to get the most important things done in the limited amount of time that we have. 

The title comes from an old saying that if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you can get on with your day knowing that you have probably done the worst thing that you will have to do that day.  It’s a metaphor for taking on the most challenging tasks that you are faced with first. Then everything else seems easy.

With the next Life By Design 30 Day challenge fast approaching, I have been thinking about how this metaphor applies to all areas of Life By Design.

For every person, there are parts of Life By Design that are more difficult than others. Maybe you are great at staying on track with Eat By Design but are having trouble developing a good routine for your Move By Design. Or maybe those 5am wake ups and morning Think By Design Power Hour are a real struggle. Maybe you are getting up regularly and have the Move By Design down but have not yet started to get your spine checked. 

If you are completely new to Life By Design, it can be a overwhelming to think about doing ALL of these things.

The purpose of the 30 Day Challenge is to push yourself to be better. No one is perfect. Even the people who have been living By Design for years have slip ups, off tracks, missed work outs and sleep ins. That is life.

Instead of shooting for perfection in all areas, for this challenge, I propose that you think about swallowing your ‘frog.’

My frog is the 5am power hour. I go through a few days of consistently doing it and then a week will go by where I just can not seem to make it happen. My alarm magically is not loud enough, I betray myself by hitting the snooze button 30 times, there are events in my schedule that run until midnight and I would rather die than get out of bed after 4 ½ hours of sleep… Excuses, excuses and very little excellence. This is my frog.

When I DO get up at 5am though – MAN! What a difference. I feel accomplished for just getting that out of the way. Then I have a great focus hour, set my goals for the day and by noon I feel like the most purposeful human being on the planet. Do you know how good it feels to check off all of those little boxes I draw for myself? SO GOOD!

So this 30 day challenge, I am going to stay on track with my Eat By Design, I am going to get checked every week and I will do my best to stick to my training schedule. But my main focus, my ONE big goal is to Eat That Frog! by getting up at 5am everyday.

What is your frog?

Pick the ONE thing that you know is hardest for you to do and put all of your energy into mastering that over the 30 days between November 11^th and December 11^th.  Write it down. Put it somewhere that you can see it every day to keep you focused.

You can do it!