Losing weight is not as difficult as it is keeping the weight off (you probably know that). But keeping the weight off is not as big of a mystery as you might think. You really don’t have to resort to some crazy diet plan like eating only rice or grapefruit, you do (however) have to change what you are doing. Remember the definition of crazy is trying the same thing over and over but expecting new results. In order to lose weight you have to change what you are doing.

If weight loss is your goal, here are the top 10 tips to lose weight.

1. Stop Short Thinking

Most people think that they can go on a diet and lose the weight that they want to lose and once they achieve their goal they can go back to eating the way that they were eating before their diet (not realizing that the way that they were eating is the cause of their weight gain). When you are looking for a new diet plan, find one that you can live with the rest of your life. Yes, you read that correctly: The Rest of Your Life. The reason why you have a hard time losing weight and keeping it off is because you are eating foods that are not meant to go in a human’s mouth. When you are looking for a diet, pick one that nourishes your body and allows you to lose weight. What does that look like? Read on.

2. You Don’t Have to Spend a Lot of Money

Any plan where you have to shell out a lot of money is a bad idea. Weight loss is simple (well, maybe not so simple to do, but simple to understand). In order to lose weight you simply have to give your body what it needs and your body will respond by giving you what you want: a lighter, healthier body.

3. Don’t Trust Prepackaged Anything

If you want to lose weight, you are going to have to stop letting other people make your food. Both restaurants and food companies want to make you happy and in order to make you happy they are going to fill their food with three magic ingredients: Sugar, Salt and Fat. These three are the deadly ingredients of the dietpocalypse are guaranteed to bring you back to the table over and over again, but also guaranteed to add to your waistline.

4. Remove Food Allergies

Most people don’t know that they are carrying around a lot of extra weight in the form of water weight. Your body holds on to water when you are eating foods that you are allergic to. How do you know if this might be you? Try an allergy elimination diet (see my article: I’m Allergic to Everything). The most common food allergies are probably the foods that you like most: wheat (and gluten-containing foods), nuts, shellfish, dairy, soy, corn and eggs.

5. Eat Your Veggies

You don’t eat enough veggies. How do I know that you don’t eat enough veggies? Because no one eats enough vegetables. You may know that eating enough vegetables is a good thing to do (after all, your mom told you to do it), but veggies are not only good for you but they are also good for your weight loss. Researchers have shown that people who eat a lot of vegetables weigh less than those that don’t.

6. Eat Your Fruits

Remember what I just told you about veggies? The same is true of fruit. If you want to lose weight, find a way to get as many fruits into your body as possible.

7. Exercise

I’m guessing that this is not the first time you have heard that you need to exercise in order to lose weight but I’m going to mention it here because exercise is critical to your weight loss. The only way to get your metabolism back is to make sure you are building new muscle. Get out there today and get some exercise.

8. Cut Out Dairy

While many people are allergic to dairy products (and that can cause weight gain) that is not the main reason why you want to kick dairy out of your life. You want to stop eating dairy foods because they are a major source of fat in your diet. After you read that sentence, you might be thinking that you will just switch to low-fat dairy products but even that won’t work because low-fat dairy products are still high in fat. Read the labels on dairy products and compute the number of fat calories compared to the number of total calories and you will find that even skim milk is around 40 percent fat – those milk producers are tricky when the calculate the total fat calories by volume (this is why they can say skim milk is only 2 percent fat). Worried about calcium? Check out this post: Calcium Myths

9. Reduce Meat

Reduce or eliminate meat from your diet is another great way to kick the fat out of your diet. People who are vegan or vegetarian have a much less chance of being overweight than the rest of us. Try a one-month trial of removing meat from your diet and see what it can do for your waistline.

10. Stop the Sugar

If you want to lose weight, you have to stop the sugar insanity. Sugar is easily turned into fat in our bodies and kicking it out of your life is a great way to keep the pounds off. But let me warn you that if you are trying to stop sugar you also have to stop eating the foods that act like sugar in our bodies.

There you go: Top 10 Tips to Lose Weight.

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Let’s take a look at both natural and artificial sweeteners and see what they do for our health for a complete guide to sugars.

What is a sugar?

The first thing you need to know is what makes a food a sugar. While my book, Sugarettes, has a much more complete description, I will briefly describe what sugars are here.

Sugars are carbohydrates and are the simplest form of carbohydrates; you can think of the sugars as building blocks on which all other carbohydrates are built. Sugars are generally either monosaccharides (mono meaning “one” and saccharide meaning “sugar”) or disaccharides (di meaning “two”) and consist of either one or two molecules stuck together. You have probably heard of many of these sugars: fructose, glucose, maltose, sucrose… From the point of view of your body, these sugars all do the same thing: raise your blood sugar. Your body has a preference for glucose and will convert all the other sugars into glucose so that the cells of the body can use the energy stored in the glucose molecule.

Guide to Sugars

I’m going to break the sugars into two different categories: processed and natural. In truth, all sugars are processed because they don’t appear in nature in such a concentrated form (except for honey – which is processed by bees). You will, however, see many manufactures use the so-called natural sugars as a selling point for their products, so I thought it would be helpful to separate them for you.

PROCESSED SUGARS

• Glucose: when we talk about blood sugar, this is what we are measuring. While it would be nice to be able to measure all sugars in the blood stream, this is all we can currently measure. Glucose is easily taken up by the cells of the body and used as a fuel source for all energy production.
• Fructose: Fructose is the twin brother to glucose and is the so-called “fruit sugar” because it is found in many fruits. The chemical structure of fructose is identical to glucose, it just has a different shape. That small difference is actually a big deal. Fructose tastes much sweeter that glucose and is used by the body differently.
• Sucrose: Sucrose is white table sugar and is a glucose molecule and a fructose molecule stuck together to form a disaccharide.
• Maltose: is two glucose molecules stuck together. It usually forms in the gut when starches are digested and is an important step in the creation of alcohol. Manufactures do use maltose in foods, but it is about 1/3 as sweet as sucrose.
• Lactose: Lactose is the sugar found in milk and milk products.
• High fructose corn syrup: High fructose corn syrup is the sweetener of choice for many food manufactures. It is cheap and tastes sweeter than sucrose. There are many scientists who are starting to question the health hazards of high fructose corn syrup.
• Maltodextrin: Maltodextrin is a polysaccharide (larger than a disaccharide) that is easily broken down into glucose on digestion. It is generally used as a sort of “glue” when food manufactures are looking to hold a product together.
• Dextrose: This is the same as glucose.
• Dextrin: Dextrins are larger chains of glucose molecules stuck together, an example is maltodextrin.
• Brown Sugar: Brown sugar is either slightly unrefined white sugar or white sugar that has molasses added back into it.

NATURAL SUGARS

• Turbinado sugar:  Turbinado sugar is made by pressing sugar cane and then evaporating the water from the juice.
• Raw Sugar: There are many forms of raw sugar (including Turbinado) and they are all mostly the same: made from sugar cane and then evaporated.
• Honey:  Honey is the original processed sugar it is about 1/2 fructose and 1/2 glucose.
• Agave: Agave come from same plant that gives us tequila. It is said to not raise blood sugar, but what they mean is it does not raise blood glucose because agave is mostly fructose.
• Maple Syrup: Made from tree sap and is not a significant source of nutrients besides iron and zinc.
• Molasses: Molasses is byproduct of sugar manufacturing. It does contain iron in significant amounts, but much better to get iron from other sources.
• Evaporated Cane Sugar: The same as raw sugar or Turbinado sugar.
• Fruit juice concentrate: This sugar is mostly fructose made by concentrating different juices (usually grape).
• Xylitol: Xylitol is almost a fiber as it is derived from the fibrous portion of corn husks and peanuts. It is less sweet than sugar and can actually inhibit cavities. It shows up in a lot of natural chewing gums.

Which Should you be Eating?

Looking over all of the sugars above, which do you want to put into your diet? The answer is that, no matter the name, no matter the source, no matter if they are “natural” or not, they all behave the same in your body. So while food manufactures get a lot of mileage off of stating that they are using natural sugars, there is no health benefits to honey, Turbinado or other sugars.

If you are looking to avoid sugars, none of the above will work for you. If you are looking for a substitute, I suggest Stevia.  Stevia, an herb, and has actually been shown to improve insulin sensitivity.

There you go: a complete guide to sugars. I’m guessing that I have missed a few, feel free to add them to the comment section below.

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You know when you are eating sugar, don’t you? You see it, you taste it… don’t you?

It turns out that many times you are eating sugar and not even aware. There are many hidden sugars in our diets and they show up in crackers, coffee, peanut butter, salad dressing, sauces, salsa and many other foods.

If you take a peek at a label, it is often hard to determine if what you are reading is a sugar. One of the best ways is to look out for the OSE ending; many sugars have an OSE ending: glucose, fructose, maltose… This is not a guarantee, but it take care of a lot of them. Take a look at the list below and see how many ingredients are actually sugars.

Here is a list of Hidden Sugars

· Beet sugar

· Brown sugar

· Cane sugar

· Concentrated grape juice

· Confectioner’s sugar

· Corn sweeteners

· Corn syrup

· Crystallized cane juice

· Dextrin

· Dextrose

· Evaporated cane juice

· Fructose

· Fruit juice concentrate

· Galactose

· Glucose

· High-fructose corn syrup

· Honey

· Invert sugar

· Lactose

· Malt

· Maltitol

· Maltodextrin

· Maltose

· Mannitol

· Maple syrup

· Molasses

· Powdered sugar

· Rapadura

· Raw sugar

· Sorbitol

· Sorghum

· Sucrose

· Table sugar

· Turbinado sugar

· White sugar

· Xylitol

Other Hidden Sugars

Of course, the most hidden of the hidden sugars are the foods that foods that act like sugar. These are foods like grains, starchy vegetable and some fruits that act just like sugar in your body. If you are looking to make the plunge into a sugar-free diet, remember to include the removal of these foods that act like sugar.

While it is hard to lead a completely sugar-free life, this little guide should help you on your way to a healthier you.

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