What is Making You Put On Weight? Sugar or Fat?

The issue of whether sugar or fat leads to weight gain has been a bone of contention among scholars for a long period of time. 

        When you eat, your food is broken down by enzymes  into glucose  and absorbed through the walls of the small intestine. Glucose is used as energy   however not all glucose are utilized since there are usually excess glucose. Meanwhile, the glucose required by the body on daily basis is usually not as much as the glucose consumed daily by the average person. The pancreas then releases the hormone insulin to move the excess glucose from the blood to be stored as fat. This way, insulin regulates the level of glucose in the blood and the absence of insulin can cause health defects especially diabetes. 

   When you eat sugar or sugary foods, the food is digested very quickly and you will have much higher levels of glucose in your blood, which, in turn, will require more insulin to be released by your pancreas. We can think of insulin as the ‘fat hormone’ of the body.  When it is released, it directs the energy from your food into storage. So the more insulin you produce the more your food is  stored as fat.

 The energy we use daily is from the glucose in the blood stream rather than the stored fat.  This is why people find it difficult to lose weight.  Look at it this way. For breakfast, you are potatoes. When your body digests the food,  it is then broken down into glucose. The body then absorbs the little it needs as energy while the rest is stored as fat with the help of insulin.  By the time your body has been able to use up the glucose in the blood stream, you become hungry again,  then if you take in another carbohydrate or sugary foods, the cycle repeats itself while the fat in the body keeps adding up over over again. 

   This has led to more attention on sugar as a vital factor in weight gain rather than fat in recent times.  It is advised that you caution sugar consumption in your efforts to lose weight to get better results. However remember that moderation is the key not deprivation.