Arvind Ashok: Fitness & Nutrition Simplified

I want you to meet a friend of mine — he’s decided to eat healthy.

Break­fast: 1 cup Muesli in non-fat milk; with a side of toast (no but­ter) + a glass of orange juice

Lunch: Sub­way sand­wich + oat­meal cookie (coz hey, it is oats, and thus healthy — an actual quote, not some­thing am mak­ing up)

Pre-Workout Snack: A Clif Bar

Dur­ing and Post-workout: 500ml gatorade, coz we need those elec­trolytes yo!

Din­ner: Roti (Indian bread) + dal (lentils)

You wanna know how much sugar* there is in a “healthy” day like this — A grand total of 80g of sugar in a sin­gle day! On a “healthy” diet, no less! For­get macro-nutrient ratios, for­get grain intake — focus on the 80g of sugar! High sugar con­sump­tion leads down a path where the star attrac­tions are car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, fatigue, dia­betes, obe­sity, and their friends. It is esti­mated that Amer­i­cans con­sume about 90g of sugar every day, and looks like my “healthy” friend is a lot closer to being tubby than healthy. I hope his ques­tion of “Where’s my six-pack at?” is answered now.

*  not carbs, even though carbs are sugar. You get what am try­ing to say

The Sugar High

We eat so much sugar today that our senses are blunted by it, and we require more sugar to be stim­u­lated. It is an addic­tion! Sug­ars have a high reward value asso­ci­ated with them, by increas­ing dopamine and sero­tonin lev­els. And once these lev­els go down, your body starts crav­ing more sugar, to get back the same “sugar high”. Next time you get up to get your fix, think about that.

I stopped eat­ing sugar “cold turkey”. One month after doing that, I was able to taste so much more flavours in every­day foods, and other foods that I had reg­u­larly con­sumed tasted way too sweet and inedible.

The pur­pose of this post is to show you that many “healthy” foods that we con­sume are any­thing but! I will illus­trate this point by com­par­ing the sugar con­tent of those foods, side-by-side with foods we (hope­fully) know are not that good for us. And once you’re alarmed enough, and ready to put down that cookie (or jalebi), I’ll help you get your facts straight and get you started on your path to a health­ier rela­tion­ship with your favorite mon­ster — sugar!

Just to be clear — both sets of foods are sugar mon­sters that don’t do you much good. Eat Real Food instead, and you’re golden.

If a serv­ing of food con­tains more than 15g of sugar, it is closer to dessert than to food. If you want to know why sugar ain’t a great thing, watch the video below.

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Let’s look at sugar con­tent in some food items, at a reg­u­lar serv­ing size. The foods in the “healthy” cor­ner are — your pro­tein bar, your morn­ing cereal, your awe­somely healthy sand­wich at lunch. The evil guys over at the unhealthy cor­ner are — the oh-so-delicious gulab jamun, and India’s favourite snack — Good Day biscuits.

Warn­ing: Graphic con­tent follows.

A Clif Bar, or sim­i­lar protein/health/cereal/whatever bar has 25g of sugar per bar, which is more than the amount of sugar in a sin­gle jamun! Isn’t that ridicu­lous? And your healthy lunch (a Chicken Teriyaki or any sim­i­lar “guilt-free” sand­wich at Sub­way) has about the same sugar as eat­ing a few Good Day Bis­cuits! Most “heart-healthy” cere­als aren’t that much better.

In case it wasn’t obvi­ous, every food item here is above the 15g=dessert bench mark.

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Same thing now — let’s look at some beverages.

About 300ml of freshly squeezed orange juice con­tains 30g of sugar — more than a 330ml can of Coca-Cola. Gatorade and Com­plan aren’t any bet­ter — and in fact, have higher sugar con­tent than beer!

Again — way above the 15g=dessert benchmark.

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You know my meth­ods, Wat­son.

• Pro­tein bars = candy bars. Stop eat­ing them. Eat an apple instead.
• Read the nutri­tion labels for all the foods you buy. Cere­als con­tain a lot of sugar — be care­ful when you pick one. And yes, there are cer­tainly health­ier options than cereal for break­fast.
• Try to eat fruits in a form that closely resem­bles how it looks on a tree. Juices, jam etc., just fruit-flavoured sugar.
• Yes. One really fat dude lost a ton of weight eat­ing at Sub­way. This dude lost 27 pounds eat­ing twinkies — wanna give it a go?
• I’d rather eat a gulab jamun after my post-workout meal, over a Clif bar pre-workout!
• Bis­cuits. Oh bis­cuits. Why do I wanna punch you in the face and stuff you in my tummy at the same time? Did you know dia­bet­ics are told that it is okay to con­sume bis­cuits reg­u­larly?! Ridicu­lously stu­pid peo­ple like this are the rea­son my dia­betic mom stocks bis­cuits as a snack — I get my sis­ter to throw them out when she can.
• Coconut water > Gatorade. Hands down.
• Liq­uid foods are an easy way to over-consume calo­ries. Stick to solid foods when­ever possible.
• Not a rec­om­men­da­tion to drink beer over Gatorade. But hey, if you skip the gatorades, the beer might go down even more guilt-free, if that’s possible :)
• Stop drink­ing soft drinks, if you haven’t done so already. Sugar-free or not, they are crap for you.
• If you are a Com­plan boy/girl, it is about time to grow up. Doubt if Bourn­vita, Boost etc are bet­ter. Do your homework.

Tips to Avoid Sugar Cravings

• Reduce stress
• Eat just one table­spoon of coconut oil, or but­ter, or ghee. This might work for some peo­ple, and sati­ate their sugar craving.
• Eat more pro­tein, and fats in your meals. A well-balanced meal will keep you fuller for longer, and stop you from reach­ing for that cookie jar.
• Reduce car­dio, and aer­o­bic work. This makes you crave sugar, as you are deplet­ing your sup­ply of glyco­gen. Switch to resis­tance train­ing instead.
• Eat more starchy veg­eta­bles. Starchy veg­gies are your best source of carbs!
• Eat Real Food!

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This post is inspired by a sim­i­lar post over at Sum­mer Tomato. I am going to use the same bench­mark as her, the 15g of sugar. A rel­e­vant excerpt from the post,

In her book What To Eat, Mar­ion Nes­tle, pro­fes­sor of nutri­tion at NYU and blog­ger at Food Pol­i­tics sug­gests that any food that con­tains more than 15 grams of sugar per serv­ing is closer to dessert than any­thing else. Though this num­ber is arbi­trary, it is a good bench­mark for eval­u­at­ing food products.

Note: How I came up with the num­bers for the graphs: Some are straight­for­ward — via the nutri­tional infor­ma­tion. For some, I picked a recipe that is rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and cal­cu­lated the sugar. And I am not using the serv­ing sizes that the box rec­om­mends, coz that is nowhere close to the actual serv­ings one eats. The box serv­ing size is sim­ply there to fool you.

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