My cup of warm coffee is the highlight of my morning. I wake up
looking forward to it. The comforting taste in my mouth, the warm
feeling in my body and the satisfaction knowing that my mind will
slowly start to awaken, brings me incredible pleasure.
I feel like I deserve a treat for being up early, getting to work,
and having so much under control(or at least looking like I do) so
early in the day.
That helped satiate my sweet craving. I used to add one pack of Splenda
and a low-fat(heavenly)vanilla creamer in my moring coffee.
"Can't i just have a little sweetener in my coffee?" I would think. felt
like i was already giving up so much. i knew not to go overboard with
brownies, cakes and cookies. There were so many times when I would resist
a pastry at work or say no to a cupcake or donut.
I wondered if my sweetener would help me lose weight because it wasn't officially
sugar-it was a sugar substitute and didn't have any calories.
Sweeteners are low-calorie substitutes for sugar-and many of them are not unsafe
nor hazardous to our health in the typical amounts you would use.
"While they are not magic bullets, smart use of non-nutritive sweeteners could
help you reduce added sugars in your diet, therefore lowering the number of
calories you eat".
_Dr.Christopher Gardner, associate professor of medicine at Stanford
The biggest prevention to our weight-loss in not that artificial sweeteners
have less calories than sugar.
I challenge you to think bigger than if your artificial sweetener will help
you lose weight because it has less calories than sugar...
Sweeteners prevent weight-loss because of the effect they have on your brain.
Here are 3 major effects sweeteners have on your brain-and why they are
preventing your weight-loss:
1. Your sweet craving drives overeating
From a Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine article:
"Experiments generally have found that sweet taste, whether delivered by
sugar or artificial sweeteners, enhanced human appetite. Animals seek food
to satisfy the inherent craving sweetness, even in the absence of energy
need."
This means that even if your body does not need energy, or calories, from
food , it is seeking to satisfy its sweet craving.
You may think,"Why not give your body its sweet fix though a no-calorie
sweetener?"
Here's my take-as a longer-term solution, why not reduce your dependence
on sweetness so you don't need any kind of fix?
It's possible(I did it after being a sugar addict until i was in my thirties)
2. Sweeteners prevent enjoying the real taste of healthy, unsweetened foods
One of the biggest effects of adding sweeteners is that it"changes the way you
taste food."Sweeteners are more potent than sugar, and though you are using a
lower quantity than you would of sugar, it over stimulates your sugar receptors-
and as a result, may "limit tolerance for more complex tastes " says Dr.Ludwig,
Weight -loss Specialist at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children's Hospital.
"That means people who routinely use artificial sweeteners may start to find
less intensely sweet foods, such as fruit, less appealing and non-sweet foods,
such as vegetables, downright unpalatable"-Harvard Medicial school article
Artificial sweeteners make it very difficult for you to eat healthy, filling
foods because you don't like their taste as much and crave food that is sweet.
3. Sweeteners reduce your brain's association of sugar with high calories
Since artificial sweeteners are low in sugar, they can prevent you brain from
associating sweetness with high-calorie intake." As a result, we may crave more
sweets, tend to choose sweet food over nutritious food, and gain weight. Participants
in the San Antonio Heart Study who drank more than 21 diet drinks per week were twice
as likely to become overweight or obese as people who didn't drink diet soda. "
Try cutting the amount of sweetener you use un half staring today, and slowly staring
to take them out of you diet so that you can lose weight faster and easier. Some of
the most popular sugar substitutes are Splenda, Stevia, Nutrasweet,honey and maple
syrup, among many others.
Once you start the process of taking sugar out of your diet, your body will rapidly
respond. Though you may feel some withdrawal symptoms like sharper cravings, these
will fade if you stick with the plan. You will lose weight quickly, have shinier
skin, and even start to look younger.
When you take time to actually taste real food and drinks, you'll find they're pretty
damn good! Taking pleasure in them makes losing weight and having the body you dream of
so much more attainable,no matter your genetics or busy lifestyle.
I still savor my moring cup of coffee. I just actually enjoy the taste of the coffee
itself and the feeling it gives me-it's no longer masked by the sugar and heavy sweet
cream. I enjoy the realy deal now as well as a healthy relationship with food and my
own body. Care to join me?