Is Fruit Bad? Is It SLOWING Your Fat Loss?
So you decided to get healthy, you stopped eating those chips and drinking all the soft drinks, and stopped eating all the sweets and you really cut back on the saturated fat. You started eating lots of fruits and vegetables, drinking fruit-filled smoothies once or twice a day because those are magically full of phytonutrients and good things for you. The problem is, over time you haven't really lost any fat, maybe you've even put on some belly fat. Also maybe you notice your bowels aren't behaving the way they are supposed to, your skin is flaring up and your joints are achy. What's going on here?
I'm going to explain 7 facts about fructose and what it’s doing within your body. Is fruit really all that bad for you?? We'll have to see.
Watch the video below:
What I’m going to explain to you is that consuming too much fructose (especially if you are metabolically dysfunctional) its not helping you nor your goal of losing fat.
Fructose is a monosaccharide which means it’s a simple sugar like glucose and is found in pretty much every fruit. Fructose inherently isn't bad as the body can process a little bit of it however if you get too much of it in your diet, particularly through high-fructose corn syrup which is in most processed foods and soft drinks, this is an issue and can lead to these 7 things within the body.
In no way am I implying that you should avoid 100% of fructose from your diet. For instance, I eat a small amount of fruit a few times throughout the week particularly on workout days. For most of you if you occasionally have a small amount of berries like a quarter to half a cup, half a banana or a teaspoon or two of honey, this is going to be totally fine. Some however are very sensitive to the effects of fructose and should limit its consumption even more so. You need to figure out if you are one of those people.
What I will be discussing here though are those who are increasing their intake of fructose because they have been told its "good" for them based on the diet they've been told to follow by either the diabetes or heart association or the Canadian or American Food Guidelines. All of these are going to leave you ingesting way too much fructose for your low carb human physiology. Ingesting a lot of fructose doesn't raise your blood sugar so if you are diabetic and eat a lot of fructose and then check your blood sugar afterwards, it kind of gives you a false sense of security as you didn't have that big of a blood sugar spike but at the same time you ingested way too much fructose for your biochemistry to healthfully handle it.
Here are the 7 things that eating fructose causes in the body. High fructose…
1. Raises your uric acid level
As a result, this can raise your blood pressure, which is also referred to as hypertension, and raise your risk of developing gout. A lot of people think that eating meat and fat causes gout, but this isn't the case. Raising your uric acid also increases joint pain and flare ups of skin conditions like acne, eczema and others.
2. Raises your VLDL and Triglyceride levels
VLDL is very low density lipoprotein and is thought to be the more dangerous LDL and triglycerides are a type of fat (lipid) found in your blood. When you eat, your body converts any calories it doesn't need to use right away into triglycerides. With both of these being high, it increases your risk of having a heart attack or a stroke. As surprising as that sounds, ingesting too much fructose particularly through high-fructose corn syrup, can increase your risk for heart disease and cardiovascular disease. Shocking isn't it!? Check out the research papers I've included in below.
3. Increases your risk of fatty liver and fatty pancreas
Only your liver can metabolize fructose and when it metabolizes a high fructose load from a soft drink, a fruit smoothie or 6 bananas for instance, it has to put it somewhere so it raises triglycerides in your blood which are immediately stored as fat in your liver and pancreas and other inappropriate places. We all need some stored fat but none of us need stored fat in our liver and pancreas. No bueno!
4. Doesn’t trigger your satiety signal
It's much easier to overeat carbohydrates when you have fructose in your diet. The problem is its not signaling your body that its full so you keep drinking the smoothie and eating the fruit and you never really get satiated or full so you wind up eating way too much for your physiology.
5. Increases insulin resistance
If you don't know, insulin resistance goes hand in hand with pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure) and a myriad of other medical conditions.
6. Leads to leptin resistance
Leptin is a very important hormone which signals your body to store fat or not, it also helps you feeling full or not. When you are ingesting too much fructose, you develop leptin resistance which leads to an increase in fat storage and a decrease in full signals so you just keep eating and eating and the cycle continues.
7. Increases gut problems
Consuming too much fructose can lead to an increase in IBS (irritable bowel symptoms) such as gas, diarrhea and sometime constipation. Part of the reason for this is is that certain bacteria in your gut love fructose and thereby you are feeding them and causing them to growth and proliferate when you ingest too much fructose. When these bacteria grow, they produce certain gases which, in turn, cause you gas and bloating.
Bonus: Increases glycation of your cells and tissues!
Glycation is the attachment of a sugar to a protein or lipid (fat). Even though your cells can't use fructose for energy, it glycates your cells and tissues 7 TIMES greater than glucose (the main sugar in the body). This will increase the production of AGEs (advanced glycation end products) within your body which age you. Do you see the word 'AGE' in there? Yeah fructose when it glycates with your cells will actually make your skin age faster, increase degeneration in your joints, and cause all sorts of other problems in your body. So if you are eating or drinking a whole bunch of fruit or consuming high-fructose corn syrup in soft drinks or junk food, you are aging yourself 7 times faster than what glucose would do. Do you want to age faster!? I sure don't.
Hopefully this was helpful on 7 things that fructose causes within the body.
If you think anyone could benefit from this, please consider sharing it anywhere on social media as you may help someone resolve their health issue or at a minimum, drastically improve them.
If you want to learn how to get started on this lifestyle, visit my website at http://www.TyronPiteau.com/newsletter and download my “8 Strategies for Lasting Fat Loss and Optimal Health” guide and receive a free 20 minute online consultation.
Happy fat loss,
Tyron