PCOS Weight: Craving the Truth about Sugar

Transcription

1 PCOS Weight: Craving the Truth about Sugar By Dr. Beverly Yates Dr. of Naturopathic Medicine, PCOS Weight Loss Expert & Best Selling Author Table of Contents Introduction... 2 How Sugar Affects PCOS Weight Loss... 3 PCOS and Cravings for Sugary Foods... 4 Stress and how it can Affect PCOS Weight Loss... 6 How to Reduce Your Cravings... 8 How the Different Types of Sugar Affect PCOS Weight Loss... 9 How Artificial Sugars Affect PCOS Weight Loss The Most Important Thing to Know about Sugar in PCOS and Weight Loss

2 Introduction Hi. This is your host Ryan and I am here today with our very special guest Dr. Beverly Yates. Dr. Beverly Yates is an expert on weight loss and women s health in particular including PCOS weight loss. She has 2 decades of clinical experience, she is a caring doctor, and a lifelong athlete. In her former career as an MIT educated electrical engineer Dr. Beverly was a problem solver and now as a doctor she continues to use her problem solving skills to help other women solve their weight loss problems. In today s interview we are going to be talking about craving the truth about sugar specifically as it relates to PCOS weight loss. Dr. Beverly thanks so much for being here with us here today. Hey. How are you today? I am doing very well. How are you? Oh I am fine. I am really excited to talk about this topic because I know that there is a lot of confusion and mythology. I am very excited to talk about this as well. Why don t we dive right in Beverly? 2

3 How Sugar Affects PCOS Weight Loss The question that I have on my mind is does sugar actually affect PCOS weight loss? Yes it does. It makes it much much harder to lose extra PCOS related weight. Eating the sugar causes a rise in the blood sugar and that represents extra energy. Now this rise in the blood sugar makes the body want to store that extra energy that it doesn t need right away as fat and that happens each time to much sugar is eaten at any one time. So here is the key note, this cycle of eating sugar and turning into body fat can be really a tough cycle to break. That is especially true for women with PCOS. Polycystic ovarian syndrome takes no prisoners with this issue. So it can lead to continual relentless weight gain and real problems with having any success frankly at losing weight. The frustration levels are huge here. 3

4 PCOS and Cravings for Sugary Foods Cravings play a role in that correct? Yes it does. So do women and girls with PCOS often have food cravings and especially cravings for food with sugar? Typically they do. In a current online survey that I am leading and from my clinical experience I hear from women all the time and from girls that they are having strong cravings for sugar and particularly in the late afternoon and the evening and this adds to the struggle of weight loss because people feel like they are compelled to have sugary things particularly at that time of day. Once a person weighs more than they should the body begins to want more and more sugar. So here is the key take away, that is an unfair reality but it s a reality. Sugar wants more sugar and basically extra body fat wants to make even more body fat and it drives even further a craving for sugar. This is a vicious cycle. I think that s a really important point and I might even ask you to restate that because I think it s really important. So what you are saying is that when you gain weight and you have more excess fat that actually causes you to crave even more sugar. Is that correct? That is correct, that is right. After a certain point like 5 to 10 pounds overweight is not such a big deal but once you hit 20, 30, 40 or more pounds overweight outside of your healthy weight range your body s biochemistry shifts and the extra fat believe it or not starts to put out all sorts of unfriendly chemicals that literally are toxic, they poison you. One of the ways in which they do that is they feed a cycle that drives food cravings usually for sweets because it really helps to satisfy that need for the fat to make more of itself if you will. So just to keep this really simple eating extra sugar then you need causes it to be stored as fat and when you hit your own personal tipping 4

5 point of too much fat then the fat wants to make yet more fat and so it drives food cravings that really really can make this much harder for people to be successful with losing weight if they have PCOS. 5

6 Stress and how it can Affect PCOS Weight Loss So fat drives food cravings. What about Stress? Does stress affect PCOS weight loss and the sugar cravings? Hugely. You bet. Yes it sure does. One of the things that I think is little appreciated is how much stress alters the body and it s a silent factor, it s like high blood pressure. People don t even realize how much stress is messing up their health. So it can truly affect the best laid plans for weight loss of all kinds and that includes with polycystic ovarian syndrome. So if a woman or a girl has PCOS and she is feeling particularly stressed out especially if it s a longer term stress she is far more likely to have these really upsetting deep seeded strong sugar cravings and they can wreck even the strongest willpower. Now for anyone listening to this I want to be really clear. If this describes your situation don t waste any time please. Don t waste any time feeling bad about a so called lack of willpower. It isn t true. Willpower is not the issue. The changes the body goes through with stress especially chronic stress makes it highly likely that sugar cravings will be an issue to deal with. It s not the same thing as willpower at all. Let me explain. Sugar is a fast source of energy and it helps to immediately soothe and calm feelings of stress. If you are stressed of course you want to eat sugar. It is fast fuel, it gives you fast energy for a short period of time, it s like your body thinks you are running away from a bear or a tiger and so it needs that fuel and it needs it now. So it wants sugar in order to meet that need but you know what that is the trap. The sugar you eat gives your blood sugar a fast rocket ride up and then just after this rocket ride up comes the sugar crash leaving you feeling tired, crabby, and bloated. This is an important part of how the weight gain associated with PCOS builds up over time. Wow. It s funny as you were saying that even as myself as a man thinking about when I am really stressed out that tends to be the time when I will reach for junk food and I always just assumed it was a willpower thing but it 6

7 makes sense when you say that it s the stress is actually causing the sugar cravings not sort of the lack of willpower. That is exactly right Ryan. I think that a lot of people beat themselves up and feel bad and just make a lot of inappropriate wrong assumptions about themselves. They have nothing to do with willpower or emotional strength or anything like that. It is just called this is how your body works. This is how we are made. 7

8 How to Reduce Your Cravings So listen, this is a really good sort of kind of background information. Good understanding that both fat and stress can be contributors to the cravings. So if you are suffering from PCOS and you have the cravings that you are talking about is there anything that you can do to reduce them or to get rid of the sugar cravings? Yes. Most definitely. You are not trapped. There is help available. There are specific herbs and supplements for instance that I use with my patience. They really help boost their chances for success with this along with certain changes and knowledge about nutrition and diet choices. Also the importance of good sleep habits and other lifestyle pieces that can help a PCOS sufferer to reduce or to get rid of these unwanted and frankly unhealthful sugar cravings. I have put together a helpful guide called the Ultimate PCOS Weight Loss Herbs and Supplements Guide which covers this issue in depth. If you want to sign up for the list or to buy the guide you can go to this website which is for more information. So its pcosweightlosstips.com? Yes. That is right. Great. So that is really good that there are herbs out there. It is nice to know that there is a way to kind of combat some of those cravings. 8

9 How the Different Types of Sugar Affect PCOS Weight Loss One of the other questions I had as you were talking is there are different types of sugar. So I am curious to know do all kinds of sugar affect PCOS weight loss in the same way. Like for example if you drink a fruit juice which naturally has sugar in it, is that a healthy choice? You know that is a great question Ryan. Thanks for asking it. From my surveys recently and in working with PCOS sufferers over the years I have learned that quite a number of women with PCOS make a mistake of thinking that fruit juice even freshly squeezed fruit choice is a healthy choice for their weight loss needs. This is a mistake. Drinking lots of fruit juice really spikes the blood sugar and as we just discussed and directly leads to the weight gain and an unwelcomed increase in body fat percentage. The reason that fruit juice is a problem is not because fruit is a problem. It is because you have now taken the juice part away from the fiber part of the fruit. That is why you get that spike in blood sugar and get onto that cycle that we just described of increasing body fat. So the best way to get fruit into your regular nutrition frankly is to eat fruit in its natural state. So for example this means eat an apple with the skin on, don t peel it. Focus on eating fruits that have a low glycemic index or a low GI index. Sometimes you will see that particularly when you are looking for things online. A low glycemic index means that the food has a lower impact on your blood sugar. For PCOS this is a really good thing to focus on. It s a huge part of getting to success with PCOS weight loss. Fruits that are blood sugar friendly will include the berry family, especially with blueberries and strawberries. They are rich in fiber and other really great nutrients like antioxidants that help slow aging and boost your metabolism. This promotes fat burning instead of fat storage. That is a good thing. So it s interesting. I never would have expected that but it completely makes sense. 9

10 How Artificial Sugars Affect PCOS Weight Loss You have got soda, you have got fruit juice, and then you have got a whole host of beverages out there that are made with what I call like artificial sweeteners, fake sugars. Do those have any effect on PCOS weight loss? Yes and it s really interesting. It s not the affect you would think. I think when these products were first developed people probably thought they could get the joy of sweetness without having to pay the fat tax so to speak and there would be a free ride here. So it s an interesting question with a surprising answer. Check this out. Research has shown that when a person uses artificial sweeteners, the fake sugars, the brain senses the sweetness and the brain gets tricked into thinking hey a bunch of calories are on the way because typically foods that are sweet tend to be higher in calories. Now since the artificial sweeteners do not contain the expected extra calories the brain then sends out signals to the body to want to eat more food in order to get the calories the brain was tricked into thinking were coming. Nasty process huh? That is not fair right. Wait a minute you mean to tell me that diet soda is actually part of the problem? Yes I am saying that very clearly and there is actual research. You can go to any of the Pub Med websites National Institutes of Health kinds of websites and look this up for yourself. This is real. So the very thing the artificial sweeteners were supposed to help with which is lowering the calories from sugar winds up backfiring big time. It causes people to eat more than they otherwise would since the brain is tricked into expecting yet more calories and now wants to eat more food then is really needed. It also ratchets up the sweet tooth right, that sugar monkey climbs even more deeply on somebody s back and now they want even more sugar or sweet stuff. In this case artificial sweeteners. So yikes, this is not good. Wow. So it s really if you have a beverage that is high in sugar you are going to put on the weight because the sugar content. If you have a beverage that is high in an artificial sweetener you are going to put on the weight because you are going to consume more calories or calories that you otherwise wouldn t consume just because you have tricked your brain. 10

11 So it sounds like the only feasible alternative is really to drink some good old fashioned water. Sometimes yeah. Sometimes what is old is new again. I live in California and sometimes we have laws various cities try to pass to ban sugary sodas and I am like people the cheapest option is water. It s just an interesting time in our society that we even struggle with this concept. Is there anything that we need to talk about that we haven t covered in terms of artificial sweeteners and easing the sweet tooth or did we cover everything you wanted to talk about on that subject? Well I think, to just give some more information about it is there is a bigger picture here. So like you said, like we just covered. The artificial sweeteners can be a real set up eating more calories then makes sense. So you say well gee is it ever ok to ever enjoy sweet treats? Listen based on how the brain works when it is tricked into expecting more calories when a person uses the artificial sweeteners you have to ask yourself is it worth it. It is no secret that in general women don t lose weight as easily as men. Just as comparing one group to the other and they work harder in general then men need too at weight loss broadly speaking. Now for PCOS women work even harder to lose weight and can find that their efforts are doomed to fail if they have used the artificial sweeteners and fake sugars to replace the sweetness of sugar. So in this case so called sweet treats are not really a treat if they involve using these artificial sweeteners. Eating more than making sense as a response to the brain s confusion about what artificial sweeteners really mean is never a way to win with weight loss. So for sweet treats that don t have bitter tricks it is better to use the low glycemic fruits in their natural state and let those be your sweet treats, your desserts if you will. Then they don t have any bitter tricks that will sabotage your hard won PCOS weight loss efforts. Got it. This is all very very fascinating to me and very helpful. 11

12 The Most Important Thing to Know about Sugar in PCOS and Weight Loss I am thinking if we just kind of boil this down into simple information that someone listening to this can walk away from. When it comes to reading food labels at the end of the day what is number one most important thing about sugar that women and girls dealing with PCOS weight loss or weight issues really need to know? Sure. So here is the take home message on that. For this particular set of issues it is really important. You got to read all of the labels for the foods and the drinks and the snacks that you consume and read them carefully so that you know what you are putting into your mouth. You would be surprised. Sometimes things that don t taste very sweet have an amazing amount of carbohydrate or sugar in them and some things that taste kind of sweet maybe don t have so much. So get the facts, look at the labels. Look specifically for the carbohydrate content and try to keep the total carbs low so you don t accidentally spike your blood sugar. So to be specific strive to keep your meals at about 25 to 30 grams of sugar or lower with the sugars labeled as carbohydrates on the food labels. Keep the beverages and snacks at 10 grams of carbos or lower. This means if you want to enjoy a soda and you want a soda with actual sugar look for one with cane sugar not high fructose corn syrup and then if a serving size let s say is 10 ounces and its 40 grams of carbs for all 10 ounces you can have 2 ½ ounces. So measure it out and that will keep you at 10 grams of carbs or lower. When I was a kid sometimes soda was sold in smaller amounts like 6 or 8 ounces was common. It wasn t 32 and 64 ounces at a time and people didn t struggle with their weight like they do now. I think the super sizing thing is a disaster for the national nutritional picture. Just as important for our take home message here is to eat plenty of fiber and non-starchy vegetables like kale, chard, and spinach with any of the foods that contain more than about 5 grams of carbohydrate per serving and that should help you to avoid big swings, big spikes in your blood sugar that lead to the classic PCOS weight gain and increase in body fat percentage. Fiber is your friend every day and especially with blood sugar management. 12

13 Beverly this is fantastic. Is there anything that I should have asked you on the topic of sugar cravings as it relates to PCOS weight issues that we haven t yet talked about? No. I think we have covered it in depth here Ryan. I just wanted to make sure we got out both the obvious things, the things that people probably know who are looking for credible information on PCOS as well as some fine point that I don t think are well known at all. I really want to help to spread quality credible information so that the women who are looking for this information can know that there is hope for their situation and that help is available and they should keep working on it. It s worth striving for what they want for their PCOS weight loss goals. Beverly thank you so much for your time today and for being with us. This was really fantastic. It s great. My pleasure as always. Thank you so much. To learn more about Dr. Beverly Yates and her programs as well as to get a free complimentary report containing weight loss tips and secrets which are all geared specifically for women with PCOS visit pcosweightlosstips.com. Once again that is pcosweightlosstips.com. Thanks so much for being with us. Take care. 13