What is a Calorie?

The first thing you need to know is what a calorie is supposed to represent.

When asked, most people will say that calories are the amount of energy that is stored in the food that they eat, and, basically, that is correct. But that it is not the whole story. If you take the common nutritional wisdom about calories as truth, then you would say that every food has energy in it and that certain foods contain more energy than others. For example, by common caloric measurements, both proteins and carbohydrates have about the same amount of energy stored in them (about 4 calories per gram) and fat has over twice the energy (9 calories per gram). This is where the wisdom behind keeping fats out of your diet comes from: there are more calories in fat than in protein and carbohydrates.

Okay, that is all well and good, but let’s stop for a minute and find out how this “energy” is determined.

A calorimeter is a scientific tool that is used to measure calories. To use it, scientists place a food in the calorimeter and then burn that food to ash and measure the amount of energy it took to change that food from its original state to ash. Scientists will tell you that a calorimeter is a good substitution for what happens in the body (but don’t you believe it).

Caloric Consequences

If believed that a calorie was a calorie no matter what, you might make this kind of calculation:

Let’s say that you were eyeing that piece of cake and you found out that the cake contained 300 calories. In your mind you think, “hmm… 300 calories, I think I can burn that off by a little bit of exercise.” So you sit down at your desk and you calculate the amount of exercise that you need to do to burn off that amount of calories. It turns out that if you were running around 9 minute miles (not too fast), you would burn around 775 calories in an hour. [click here to see how many calories you burn per hour] So, you figure that you only have to run for around 20 or 30 minutes to burn off that piece of cake.

If you have ever tried this, you know how crazy this can be. Most people I know who have tried this approach to weight loss stop because they are too frustrated. I’ve had people report to me that they have exercised for one to two hours a day and still can’t lose weight. Shouldn’t that much exercise burn off the calories that they are consuming?

The answer is no, but let’s see why it isn’t so.

It Not the Calories

Using calories as a way to measure what you should be eating can only take you so far. The reason this is true is that you simply are not a calorimeter, you are a living being and not some laboratory tool. Something happens when you consume carbohydrates that is different from what happens when you eat proteins or fats… regardless of calories.

Let me show you why:

Imagine that you have a certain amount of energy your body needs and then you eat something sugary. In the first scenario, you are using exactly what your body needs; you are eating the exact same energy that you are using. If we were to graph that relationship, it would look something like this:

In this first scenario, your body is acting exactly like a calorimeter, you are burning all the energy that is coming your way.

The situation is exactly the same if you are eating sugar energy from carbohydrates and the energy you consume is under your energy needs, like this:

But what happens when you are eating more energy than your body needs at the moment?  This is the situation were your body no longer acts like a calorimeter and calories don’t matter any more:

When you consume energy over your basic energy needs, your body now has a problem: what to do with that extra energy? Well, you probably know the answer to that question. Your body stores those extra calories as fat. This is what makes carbohydrates unique. This is what makes the thoughts about calories obsolete. This is what makes carbohydrates much worse than fats and proteins and this is what no one is telling you: calories don’t matter as much as blood sugar especially when you are talking about weight loss.

To lose weight, yes you need to burn more calories than you are consuming, but you also have to keep your blood sugar from spiking too high and causing your body to store that extra energy as sugar.

I have long said that exercise is a panacea and a cure-all, and recent research has backed up my claim. I find it funny to think that Ponce De Lion, the legendary explorer who went off in search of the fountain of youth, actually found the elixir to long life, only it wasn’t a fountain at all, but the exercise he was getting looking for the fountain. Ponce De Lion would have lived a long life if an arrow hadn’t cut it short.

Exercise is a powerful way to change how you feel and it can actually alter or reverse many diseases. If exercise were a drug, doctors couldn’t keep it on the shelf. Exercise is truly the best drug ever, and the incredible part about the exercise story is that this “drug” is free and it has virtually no side effects.

The importance of exercising is summed up well in this quote:

The Global Burden of Disease Study initiated by the World Health Organization included physical inactivity among the most important risk factors threatening global health. A sedentary life style may be as detrimental to health as smoking.(1)

Read that again! That quote is saying that not exercising has the same bad health effects as smoking. Clearly you have to get up off your butt and start moving it around some.

Let’s take a look and see just how powerful of a drug exercise can be.

Health Benefits of Exercise

The research supporting the benefits of exercise is enormous and the following are just a sample of what is out there.

• Cardiovascular Disease: Exercise improves heart function, blood flow to the whole body, nervous system control over the heart, and a technical measurement called endothelial function in patients with heart disease.(2) It appears from a large number of studies that exercise can help prevent heart disease. Exercise even helps people who have had a heart attack, reducing symptoms, complications, trips back to the hospital, and longer life. Not only that, but their quality of their life is better, they have lower depression, and they return to work or active life quicker than people who don’t exercise.⁽³⁾
  

• High Blood Pressure: The good news is that high blood pressure appears to respond best to moderate exercise (as opposed to strenuous exercise). With as little as 30 minutes of continuous exercise a day, patients are able to reduce their high blood pressure. It is important to note that the kind of exercise is important: continuous. Continuous exercise is walking, running, biking and not tennis, golf or even soccer or basketball.⁽⁴⁾ The jury is still out if weight training or high-intensity exercise will help high blood pressure.

• Rheumatoid arthritis: Moderate exercise has been shown to improve the symptoms (less pain) and the functional ability (they can do more) in people with rheumatoid arthritis.(5)

• Diabetes: Exercise has been studied in diabetics for a long time and has been shown to improve blood sugar control and reduce the need for medications. In a new study on the effects of exercise in diabetics, researchers were able to prove that long-term blood sugar control (by measuring hemoglobin A1c) is much better in diabetics that exercise than those that don’t, even when there they didn’t lose weight because of the exercising.(6)

• Weight Loss: As you can guess, exercise and weight loss has been extensively studied. A new study on overweight children showed that exercise helped them (more than adults) maintain their weight loss over a long period of time.(7) This study is so important and demonstrates that exercise can become a habit if introduced early enough in someone’s life. While normal-weight people should exercise at least 30 minutes (moderate intensity) on most days; overweight people should exercise 60 to 80 minutes a day.(8)

• Cognitive function: There is pretty good evidence that exercise will help maintain brain function, including memory, cognitive function, and attention in older adults. Since Alzheimer’s (and dementia in general) are becoming such a health disaster, it is good to know that exercise can be preventive.(9)

• Depression and Anxiety: A prescription for exercise often works better in people with depression and anxiety than taking a drug. New research suggests that this effect may be due to the ability of exercise to help us deal with stress.(10) Who couldn’t use a little stress and anxiety reduction?

What Else?

Exercise has been show to:

• Improve self-esteem, especially in children.(11)
• Reduce the risk for colon cancer.(12)
• Improves our quality of life, especially in older people.(13)
• Reduce back pain.(14)
• Prevent osteoporosis.(15)

Move Your Buns Around

Okay, I didn’t quite tell you the truth above, there are side-effects from exercise and you can hurt yourself; luckily, though, most of the damage you can do is only temporary (unlike some drug damage).

Here is what you need to know to get started on your own exercise program:

• Always check with your health care provider before starting an exercise program.
• You don’t have to kill yourself; moderate exercise is what has been shown to be the most effective for most conditions.
• Start slow and build up to 30 minutes every (or most) days. You’ll want to do more if you are overweight.
• Pick a continuous exercise: this means your heart rate is up for a sustained period. Choose exercise like running, walking, cycling, cross-country skiing and others.
• Consider adding weight lifting into your program.

Most of all, you want to have fun and stick with it. Yes, it can be a drag putting on clothes and getting out the door in the rain and snow, but most people love their exercise once they get going. If you can’t exercise outside, I recommend that you “pay” for the television that you watch by putting an exercise bike or a treadmill in front of the TV.

Take advantage of the best drug ever and start your exercise program today!

Citations

1. Erikssen G. Physical fitness and changes in mortality: the survival of the fittest. Sports Med. 2001;31(8):571-6.

2. Humphrey R, Bartels MN. Exercise, cardiovascular disease, and chronic heart failure. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2001 Mar;82(3 Suppl 1):S76-81

3. Ades PA, Coello CE. Effects of exercise and cardiac rehabilitation on cardiovascular outcomes. Med Clin North Am. 2000 Jan;84(1):251-65, x-xi.

4. Pescatello LS. Exercise and hypertension: recent advances in exercise prescription. Curr Hypertens Rep. 2005 Aug;7(4):281-6.

5. Metsios GS, Stavropoulos-Kalinoglou A, et al. Rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease and physical exercise: a systematic review. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2008 Mar;47(3):239-48.

6. Boulé NG, Haddad E, Kenny GP, et al. Effects of exercise on glycemic control and body mass in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a meta-analysis of controlled clinical trials. JAMA. 2001 Sep 12;286(10):1218-27.

7. Sothern MS. Exercise as a modality in the treatment of childhood obesity. Pediatr Clin North Am. 2001 Aug;48(4):995-1015.

8. Leermakers EA, Dunn AL, Blair SN. Exercise management of obesity. Med Clin North Am. 2000 Mar;84(2):419-40.

9. Angevaren M, Aufdemkampe G, Verhaar HJ. Physical activity and enhanced fitness to improve cognitive function in older people without known cognitive impairment. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008 Apr 16;(2):CD005381

10.  Salmon P. Effects of physical exercise on anxiety, depression, and sensitivity to stress: a unifying theory. Clin Psychol Rev. 2001 Feb;21(1):33-61.

11. Ekeland E, Heian F, Hagen KB. Can exercise improve self esteem in children and young people? A systematic review of randomised controlled trials. Br J Sports Med. 2005 Nov;39(11):792-8

12. Trojian TH, Mody K, Chain P. Exercise and colon cancer: primary and secondary prevention. Curr Sports Med Rep. 2007 Apr;6(2):120-4.

13. Stewart KJ. Physical activity and aging. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2005 Dec;1055:193-206.

14. Hayden JA, van Tulder MW, Tomlinson G. Systematic review: strategies for using exercise therapy to improve outcomes in chronic low back pain. Ann Intern Med. 2005 May 3;142(9):776-85.

15. Hingorjo MR, Syed S, Qureshi MA. Role of exercise in osteoporosis prevention–current concepts. J Pak Med Assoc. 2008 Feb;58(2):78-81

We do a lot of strange things, and unfortunately for our health, they often lead to illness. As a whole, our memories are short, we think that the things we do every day are the things that humans have always done, but this is just not true.

To determine what we should do, we often look to other people for help; scientists call this “social proof”. Social proof is fine when everyone around you is acting in accordance with their health and their happiness, but as you might guess from all the unhealthy people you see every day, this just isn’t the case. We have slowly moved from healthy living habits to destructive habits and the movement has been so slow we have barely noticed it. I’ve gathered together some of the weird things humans do that can seem perfectly normal because everyone else is doing them, but are not.

If you are looking to improve your health, you might want to steer clear of what everyone else is doing.

• Not Sleeping When We Are Tired: Look around you: dogs, cats – even the mice in your walls – all lie down and sleep when they are tired. We don’t do that. What do you do if you are tired? If you are like a lot of us, you reach for coffee. Animals don’t do that, they lie down and sleep when they are tired. There are actually two issues here: the first is that amount of sleep you need and the second is sleeping during the day. It can be a bit hard to determine what is normal for the amount of sleep we need, but looking at animals, they are sleeping much more than we are and they tend to break up their sleep into smaller chunks. You might need eight hours of sleep, but maybe your number is six or ten hours. You should also consider adding a nap into your routine. Next time you think you need a pick-me-up from your coffee cup, try a short nap. I’m a big fan of the nap and try to catch one every day; it is the best way I know to “reboot” my brain for an afternoon in front of the computer. Here is a great page for information on napping and a no nonsense guide to napping.
  
• Not Relaxing: You relax don’t you? You go home, sit in front of the television and relax. Right? That is not what I’m talking about. You, your body, your mind, and your soul need a time out. I’m not talking about sitting in front of the television, but true relaxing, just hanging out and doing nothing. To understand what I mean by relaxing, try picturing a day at the beach. The beach seems to be one place in our society where it is okay to just sit and do nothing (if you didn’t pack in toys, radios…). Try to set aside a small portion of your day for pretending you are on the beach. Just sit and stare at the clouds or your ceiling or whatever. Do nothing, just let your mind wander. If you are into prayer or mediation, this is a great time to practice that.
  
• Eating Grains:
  I know what you are thinking when you read this: of course it is normal to eat grains; the government recommends that grains make up most of our diet, it has to be normal. But, once again, eating grains seems normal because everyone is doing it, but grains are not optimal food for humans. Humans have only been munching on grains – in any large amounts – for the last 7,000 years. Sure, that sounds like a lot of time, but it actually is not. Our bodies have not adapted to the large amount of carbohydrates we put into them. High blood sugar which results from eating grains is responsible for more ill health than smoking cigarettes (see my book Sugarettes). Try replacing grains with fruits and vegetables at every meal. You will be astonished at how much better you feel.
• Wearing Shoes: Putting shoes on your feet seems pretty normal, right? Actually, your foot is incredible complex and wearing shoes all the time can be harmful to your feet. I suggest you spend at least part of the day waking around without shoes. A great trick is to get a plastic bucket and fill it with small stones (like pea gravel) spend ten or 15 minutes just standing in the gravel. It gives your feet a massage and rebuilds many of the muscles that have atrophied due to shoe wearing. There are also shoes from Terra Plana called Vivo Barefoot shoes that have a Kevlar bottom so that your feet can have the barefoot experience while still looking like a normal shoe.
• Being Inside: We live most of our lives inside and this is just not healthy. Not only is the air pollution inside a home or office often much worse than outside, we are also not getting enough sunlight. We have grown afraid of the big bad sun and have forgotten that it has a lot to do with our health. Yes, you should not be out in the sun long enough to get a bad burn, but skin cancer has a lot less to do with our exposure to sunlight than previously thought. It appears that skin cancer may have much more to do with the lack of essential nutrients than sun exposure; some research suggests that it is the lack of sunlight that causes cancer. We get vitamin D from sun exposure and that vitamin is so essential to our health that you should consider supplementing if you are not getting enough (I like cod liver oil for vitamin D supplementation).
• Drinking Calories: If you think, like I do, that eating foods as close to the way that they are presented to us in nature (non-processed) is the best way to eat, then you have to question consuming calories in liquid form. Think about it, if you go back 10,000 years, how many drinkable foods were available on the planet? Only water (okay, and, breast milk). Drinking calories only becomes a problem when those calories are mostly sugars. Sugars in liquid form are absorbed rapidly into our bodies and create all sorts of havoc including: weight gain, diabetes, heart disease and maybe even cancer. Our bodies are woefully unprepared for calories to come in a liquid form. If you are going to do only one thing for your health, I strongly urge you to stop drinking soda and fruit juice.
• Stretching Before Exercise: Okay, I don’t count this as a major health hazard, but there is a great recent article that shows stretching is not such a good idea for athletes.
• Not Moving our Buns Around: We sit a lot! We sit in cars, we sit at work, we sit on the couch… humans are professional sitters. Our ancestors had far more muscle mass than most of us do today. Muscle mass is one of the keys to not only how long we live, but also to general health and weight loss. You need to get up and move your buns around every day and build up your muscle mass. Walking is perhaps the best exercise you can participate in, but swimming, cycling, running, hiking and anything that gets your heart rate up, are all great. Exercise is so important that you should prioritize it over everything else that you do: exercise is a vitamin, exercise is a drug, exercise is the fountain of youth. There are hundreds of research studies that show that exercise helps with weight loss, depression, anxiety, heart health and works as an anti-cancer activity. Get off your buns and move them around a bit every day.
• Not Going to The Bathroom When We Need to Go: Once again, look to the animal world and find one animal that will stop its urges to go to the bathroom. Ignoring the urge to urinate has been associated with a higher rate of urinary tract infections, but it is especially harmful when you hold on to a bowel movement. Constipation is a major source of illness and increases the risk for hemorrhoids and even certain cancers. Constipation often leads to more constipation. I know it is hard, because of how we live our lives, but try and not ignore your body’s urges.
• Cooking Foods: As I mentioned earlier, it is best to eat foods as close to the way that they are presented to us as possible. When we cook foods, they lose vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients. The most grievous of losses are the loss of essential fatty acids, or EFAs. Most of us don’t get enough essential fatty acids and EFAs are one of the few supplements that I think everyone should take (one again, I would recommend cod liver oil to get your EFAs).

Well, there they are: the Weird Things Humans Do. I’m sure I missed a few; feel free to add them into the comment section. When you look at all the strange things we do you start to realize just how un-normal normal can be. Health is a matter of breaking free of the things most people do and charting a way through the world that prioritizes your health.

Do you find yourself scratching your head when you read the latest news? One headline suggests that coffee is good for you and the next reads that it is not good for you; another headline says alcohol is great for your health and then another tells you that it is not. What about a high protein diet, or a high carbohydrate diet, or an all-grapefruit diet? Do you choose bottled water or filtered water? What about using a microwave?

If you are confused, you are not alone.

One of the problems we have is that there is so much health information out there that it is often hard to decide what is good for you. The other problem, and one that I think is the root of all this confusion, is in understanding what is truly important versus what is not. What health advice is worth investing your time and effort in and what it just simply good advice.

Since we are all busy, let me try and give you some guidelines when dealing with health information, let’s start with alcohol and coffee.

Sitting on a Fence

There is something I call the Health Fence that a lot of health advice falls under. If one day you read that alcohol is the fountain of youth and the next day you read that it has the potential to do harm, then it belongs on the Health Fence. What you have to understand about the items that end up on the Health Fence is that they are both good and bad for you, often depending on the dose.

On the Health Fence are things like coffee, wine, and sunshine. Coffee is good for you, but not if you are drinking 3 or more cups a day. Wine, likewise, has health benefits, but not if you are drinking more than a glass or two a day. Sunshine is essential for your health, but if you are out in the sun long enough to have a severe burn, then it is not so good for you.

Don’t be confused by conflicting studies with items on the Health Fence; just understand that all of these items can be either good or bad for you depending on how much you use or are exposed to them.

Other Health Confusions

Besides items that end up on the Health Fence, let me give you an idea of how important the rest of the confusing health questions.

• Obesity: Being overweight or obese has received a lot of attention in the last few years, with a few popular books suggesting that weight has little to do with health. The truth, though, is that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that associates increases in weight with many diseases including diabetes, insulin resistance, heart disease and some cancers.
• Smoking: There is no confusion about smoking; it is bad for your health and you should stop yesterday if you are a smoker.
• Sugar: Sugar is every bit as harmful as cigarettes and I describe the extent of the damage in my book Sugarettes. While the medical community says little about the harm done by sugar, very soon they will realize what a health tragedy sugar is and reverse their stance.
• Fast food: Eating fast food means, for the most part, that you are eating processed foods that are often overcooked and that are full of additives, preservatives and colorings. There are, however, healthier choices when picking up something quick. Some fast food restaurants serve made-to-order burritos, or Asian-style foods, or even sushi, which are all relatively healthy. Choosing from these healthier fast food restaurants is much better for your health.
• Chocolate: Chocolate itself is healthy; the sugar that usually surrounds it is not. If you must eat chocolate (and, yes, I know for some of you it is a MUST), find a low-sugar alternative to your typical high-sugar chocolate treat.
• Artificial Sweeteners: There is no question that these are bad for you and you should avoid them. There are many good books about this subject; educate yourself before you ever put these chemicals in your body again.
• Bottled water: There is no doubt that bottled water is not your best choice when you are thirsty. From the plastic chemicals that leach into the water to the environmental problems with dealing with the plastic, using filtered or even tap water is often your best choice.
• Margarine: Thank goodness that the truth about margarine is finally out! Avoid this plastic-non-food as it is very bad for you and your health.
• Exercise: There is no question that exercise is good for you, so stop reading this right now and get out and move your buns around. Exercise has so many health benefits that it should be called the fountain of youth. Exercise has been shown in research studies to improve insulin resistance, heart disease, depression, longevity, insomnia and a long list of other conditions.
• Microwave cooking: Microwave cooking falls in that sort of in-between space. Yes, microwaves destroy vitamins and other nutrients, but so does almost every way of cooking. Microwaves have the potential to alter the structure of proteins and fats, but it is unclear how harmful this may be; once again, it is probably a matter of dose. I generally recommend eating foods as close to their original state as possible, but cooking foods occasionally in a microwave shouldn’t be a problem.
  
• Dietary Fat: Is fat good for you or bad for you? The answer to that question depends on the type of fat you are talking about. The good fats are essential fats found in fish oil and flax oil and in many foods. The bad fats are artificially hydrogenated and trans fats (such as margarine). The lack of good fats in most people’s diet is a major cause of illness and you should consider supplementing with fish oil if you don’t already.
  

What Else?

Do you have any other health concerns that you are confused about? I’ll keep updating this post as your questions come in. Use the comments at the end of the post, or submit a question using the question link.

I’ve created this list of top Health Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make because it will give you an idea where to best focus your energies. Yes, you should consider which bottled water you should be drinking (if you should be drinking any bottled water), but the areas Health Mistakes below are where you are going to get the most bang for your buck. Some of them are not easy (actually most are not that easy), and the reason why most people don’t do them. But choosing to take care of you requires a bit of dedication because we live in a world that supports our ill health and not our good health.

Take a look the following Health Mistakes and see how well you are taking care of yourself.

Not Investing in Yourself

Most people will throw money at a new car, new TV, or new cell phone before they will spend the extra money on their anything to do with their health. You, by the way, are worth spending money on; once you’ve lost your health, you’ve lost everything (including your new cell phone). Investing in yourself means not only making sure you visit your naturopathic doctor, chiropractor or other health practitioners, but that you also you consider your health a priority and invest in yourself by buying supplements, reading books about health, getting massages and exercising.

Eating Sugar and Foods that Act like Sugar

This is probably the toughest one on the list and the topic of my book Sugarettes, but there is not a single thing you do every day that will cause more harm to your body than eating sugar and foods that act like sugar. When your blood sugar rises, your body pays the price.

Not Getting Enough Sleep

Sleep is so important; it should be considered a vitamin in itself. There is good research that shows that not getting enough sleep harms memory, concentration, mood and poor sleep even has been linked to heart disease. How much sleep should you get? The answer is individual to each person, but it is generally recommended to get somewhere between 7 and 9 hours of sleep.

Not Exercising

Outside of the food that you put into your mouth there is nothing than can have a bigger impact on your health than maintaining a lifetime exercise program. Exercise improves blood sugar control, can help with weight loss, improves mood, reduces anxiety… exercise is so powerful it is almost a panacea. Walking is enough, but cycling, running, swimming and other forms of exercise are great.

Not Relaxing

Here is the funny thing, we all know how to keep busy and get things done, but very few of us know how to truly relax. In order for the body and mind to rejuvenate, we all need a rest period. This can be as simple as taking a 15 minute walk after lunch. Better yet, try taking a week off every year to focus on relaxing; this is not a typical vacation where you are running around, but a time to just hang out and do nothing.

Avoiding the Sun

If you are typical, you are probably a bit sun-phobic, but you shouldn’t be. The dangers of the sun have been highly overblown. Yes, you should avoid being burned, but we need sun like we need water and food. We tend to live and even travel in boxes that block out the sun and fresh air. Get out of your boxes and see the real world.

The Best Investment You’ll Ever Make!

Focusing on your health is well worth it; especially as you age. Some of the above tips are hard, but working on your health will pay great dividends. When asked what they fear the most, older people tend to fear having to have someone take care of them in their old age. Do you really want someone dressing and feeding you? You can avoid this kind of fall into ill health by making a small investment in your health over time. Start Today.

Here is a short video that shows the changes in the amount of people who are overweight and obese.

Hard to believe but true.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaAt8gfRF5A[/youtube]

Almost everyone I know says that they are addicted to sugar, but is sugar addiction a real addiction? What I mean is: how does sugar addiction compare to other known addictions such as alcohol, cigarettes, or even drugs like morphine? Let’s take a look and you can decide for yourself.

While each addiction has its own unique features, they all share some things in common. It doesn’t matter if you are addicted to Jack Daniels, Marlboros or even heroin; once addicted, they are all very similar.

Let’s say you are addicted to any of the above substances and you decide to quit, here are the typical stages you will go through.

• The first stage is deciding to quit. This stage can go on for years. There are smokers who wake every morning for years determined not to have another cigarette, but then start smoking right after breakfast. The tipping point for change comes when the cost of the habit becomes more than the cost of continuing. For example, a smoker may begin coughing and become worried about cancer, a drinker may blank out or miss work, or a heroin addict may end up the emergency room. However it happens, the addict makes the decision to change their life and quit their addiction.

• Quitting: The second stage is actually quitting the addiction. Typically this is very difficult and many people experience withdrawal symptoms such as tremors, nervousness, paranoia, anxiety, sleeplessness and intense cravings for the drug of choice.

• Improvement: If the addict makes it past the quitting stage, which is generally a few days to a few weeks, they usually feel much better. Typically, they have more energy, sleep better, have a better outlook on life, and feel much better.

• Temptation: All addicts are tempted to return to their drug. It may be a week, month, or even years later, but they will all be tempted. Many people mistakenly begin to think that they have control over their addiction and can use just a small amount and not have any problems. This is usually a mistake because once someone tries their addiction again; they usually end up binging and taking even more. Binging when returning to an addiction is very common.

But is Sugar Really an addiction?

Read through the above, doesn’t that sound exactly like what happened the last time you went on a diet?

• Deciding to quit: First you decided to eat differently. You may have spent weeks thinking about it before you finally were able to make a commitment.

• Quitting: You took many sugary foods out of your diet, but it hurt. You might have had the shakes, changes in mood and intense cravings.

• Improvement: After a few days on the diet you began to feel much better.

• Temptation: You were pretty good following the diet, but then you decide to take a small taste of something sweet and soon, you have eaten more than you even thought you would. You continued binging until you now weighed more than you did when you started a diet.

Sugar is a real addiction and there are scientific studies to prove it (a later blog will review these), but most people recognize that sugar addicts behave exactly like all other addicts.