My sugar addiction.

Here is a quick post about my experiences with sugar and bad fats and how they made me put on ~6 pounds of fat in 2 weeks.  I deliberately ate much more sugar and trans fats than I ever have before in my life.  The funny thing is that I didn't need to go out of my way to obtain the extra sugar and fat.  In my everyday life I constantly have these foods offered to me but usually I reject them.  I was curious to see how it feels to be in the same boat as the average American who consumes a large quantity of added sugars.  I also wanted to see how my body would react.  I have counseled others on their diets and I wanted to know how they feel eating so much sugar so that I could better help them.  For long-term health the process I went through is detrimental and I don't recommend it to anyone.  Added sugar is the absolute worst legal delicious food product you can put in your body.  I did this over winter break when I had minimal work/school responsibilities.

I increased my added sugar intake from ~40g per day(terrible already I know) to ~80g and sometimes more.  I consumed trans fats from donuts, pies, cakes, ice cream, cereal, and cookies.  Previously I rarely consumed these types of foods so my trans fat intake was negligible.

I still have sugar crashes but now they are worse.  Before I would feel lousy and drowsy but now I can barely keep my eyes open no matter what I do.  I feel more tired now after 8.5h of sleep than I did after 6.5 on a healthy diet.

I have been skinny my entire life and never gained fat in any significant quantities until now.  The one thing I always limited myself on was dessert.  I would occasionally have one or two nights of heavy sugar/fat but that would be the end of it.  Even for someone like me with a "fast metabolism" these kinds of foods can still cause deadly changes.

Sugar is addicting, more addicting than cocaine. (1)  It releases dopamine in a similar way to drugs. (2)  I completely understand why it is so hard to quit sugar and I am not looking forward to it.  I plan on going cold turkey tomorrow 12/29 so my body can regulate itself and get back down to a healthier body fat percentage.  After the first week of eating like this, I noticed how much I craved sugary foods and now if I don't eat them my body feels slight withdrawal symptoms.  I will update this post in a couple weeks to talk about how hard it was to quit and what methods I employed.  We'll also see how fast my body drops the fat pounds.

Update 1/15/15
Cold-turkey is a hard way to quit.  I ended up tapering down my sugar intake gradually and now I am back to a normal weight.

1 Intense Sweetness Surpasses Cocaine Reward
2 Reward system and addiction: what dopamine does and doesn’t do