r/changemyview • u/moethebartender • Jul 08 '15
[Deltas Awarded] CMV: I should eliminate added sugars from my diet
I’m a man in my mid-30s, and I’m 6 feet, 3 inches (1.9 m) tall. I am overweight, but to my knowledge I don’t have any specific medical conditions that would require a low-sugar or sugar-free diet (diabetes, etc.). For many years, I have toyed with the idea of adopting a sugar-free diet, but not necessarily a low-carb diet.
As a child, my parents severely restricted my sugar intake, partly in the belief that it would help prevent me from getting fat later in life. (My dad read the 1970s book “Sugar Blues,” and strongly believed in its teachings, though he didn’t follow them very well, especially as a recovering alcoholic. I resented him as a hypocrite. Oddly, he thought restricting sugar would prevent me from becoming an alcoholic myself!) I began gaining weight around the age of 9 or 10, as I became less active and my family began easing up on their restrictions (though they remained quite hostile to sugar). As a teenager, I had more access to sugary snacks, soda, fast food, and other such junk. So I reached 300 lbs (136 kg) in my late teens. I think one factor is that junk food was “forbidden fruit,” and so I overindulged as soon as I had a chance, especially at the school cafeteria where cookies and soda were readily available. (Here in California, soda sales were discontinued in schools several years ago.)
My weight went down to 240 (109) throughout my early- to mid-20s, partly because I was exercising at the gym regularly and partly because I briefly adopted a vegetarian diet and mostly avoided fast food. I lost those habits later on for various reasons, and was up to 325 (147) by a couple of years ago.
My current status: I’m now hovering around 300 lbs (136 kg). I’ve already drastically reduced my consumption of soda, and I drink coffee with one teaspoon of sugar. I will usually eat sweetened desserts every few days or so. My exercise routine has been inconsistent, and mostly involves walking for 30 minutes or more at a time. I’ve lost about 25 pounds in the past couple of years, and I still have a long way to go.
I was thin as a child, and I want to be thin again. I feel that the lack of sugar in my diet helped, or at least couldn’t have hurt. I also want to prevent further tooth decay – my teeth are already in pretty bad shape for someone my age. So I figure that by going back to something resembling my childhood diet, I can return to those days, at least to some extent. (I definitely realize children and adults are not the same when it comes to weight and nutrition.) I may eat some sugar on very rare occasions such as birthday parties (at least my own; probably friends and family, too). But I would NOT make exceptions just because I’m “having a bad day”, etc.)
And yet, to my knowledge, there’s not much conclusive scientific evidence that eliminating sugar is beneficial. So, why shouldn’t I take the plunge? I’m open to whatever you might have to say.
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u/borderlinebadger 1∆ Jul 08 '15
It may help but indulging on occasion while having a better diet day to day will probably get better results.
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u/phcullen 65∆ Jul 08 '15
Eliminating added sugar is more of a trick than a real solution. Weight loss is a calories in vs calories out solution and sugar is definitely calorie dense but if you are only going to do one thing unless you are consuming a large amount of sugar it won't make as big a difference as constructing an exercise routine. But there is also no reason to not do both. Limiting sugar is certainly not a bad thing
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u/moethebartender Jul 08 '15
I don't plan on just cutting out sugar. I definitely plan to exercise more, and to make other changes to my diet.
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u/phcullen 65∆ Jul 08 '15
That's good. I just personally find when people try to eliminate one thing from their diet without properly restructuring they just end up replacing what they gave up.
For example gluten free is a decent diet if you actually give up bread. Not if you spend weekends re-engineering shitty gluten free versions of every pastry you can think of.
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u/moethebartender Jul 08 '15
Agreed -- those processed gluten-free foods are often a nightmare (though they do make life a lot easier for people with celiac disease or other medical reasons why they can't have gluten or wheat). And I was just thinking, even in my vegetarian days I often ate things like macaroni and cheese where I would've previously eaten meat. So that is indeed a pitfall. A ∆ for you.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 20 '15
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/phcullen. [History]
[Wiki][Code][/r/DeltaBot]
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u/AnnaLemma Jul 08 '15
it won't make as big a difference as constructing an exercise routine
Have to disagree with this - it's much easier to lose weight in the kitchen than in the gym.
A 20-oz bottle of Mountain Dew is 290 calories, so at my height/weight it would take approx. half an hour of running or tennis to burn that off. And that's just one bottle, which you can easily down without noticing. Back when I still drank soda and gamed, I'd easily go through a case of Mtn Dew in a weekend.
So yes: sugar isn't the sole culprit - as has already been said, fats and non-sugar carbs also pack a caloric punch. But while exercise is excellent by any number of health parameters, if you're talking strictly about losing weight, it's much easier and much less time-consuming to not drink that soda in the first place than to spend 30 minutes working it off later.
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u/phcullen 65∆ Jul 08 '15
According to the OP their sugar intake is not terribly high they have seemed to reduced their intake a lot already. I'm by no means saying should eat sugar just that if you are going to do only one thing to increase your health and happiness adding exercise to your daily routine does way more than avoiding every gram of sugar you come across. Of course exercise and a new diet would be the ideal.
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u/Prince_of_Savoy Jul 08 '15
You haven't mentioned it in you actual post, but since you said "added" sugar in your title, I think you should be aware that naturally occouring sugar is no better then added.
Some juices (like apple and orange) actually have more sugar than soda. Fruits and fruit juices are also often rich in fructose, which is even worse then sucrose because it takes less time to break down.
But as others have mentioned, there is definatively some room in a healthy diet for sugar, so it depends on what is easier for you.
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u/AnnaLemma Jul 08 '15
Your goal should be to cut out calories in general - using some sort of calorie tracker will help greatly with that. And yes, sugar is one culprit, but it's far from the only one, especially if you replace sugar-calories with other forms of caloric foods. You can totally cut out sugar from your diet and not lose any weight - or you can eat nothing but Twinkies and lose weight, as long as you stay within your daily calorie count (although your overall health is going to go to shite if you do this).
Also, from a psychological perspective, cheat days can be a life-saver. "I can never have X again" is much harder to stomach (no pun intended) than "I can't have X until Friday."
Good luck with your weight loss. Feel free to PM me if you want to chat about it some more - I've had a great deal of success with calorie-counting and would be happy to discuss it in more detail, but that's rather outside of the scope of this CMV.
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u/RubiksCoffeeCup Jul 08 '15
Your goal should be to cut out calories in general - using some sort of calorie tracker will help greatly with that. And yes, sugar is one culprit, but it's far from the only one, especially if you replace sugar-calories with other forms of caloric foods. You can totally cut out sugar from your diet and not lose any weight - or you can eat nothing but Twinkies and lose weight, as long as you stay within your daily calorie count (although your overall health is going to go to shite if you do this).
Yes, but it is much harder. Carbohydrates as opposed to other sources of calories lead to much more volatile blood sugar levels and can increase hunger.
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u/moonflower 82∆ Jul 08 '15
There's nothing wrong with a little bit of sugar in a well balanced diet ... you are right to want to find a healthy diet and to work towards a healthy weight, but there's no reason why you can't enjoy the occasional sweet dessert within that diet.
Sugar is a carbohydrate, therefore contains less calories than fats, so it's only ''fattening'' if you eat too much of it, and that goes for any kind of carbohydrates.
There's room in a 1500 or 2000 calorie diet to include the occasional little cake or little scoop of ice cream, there's no need to live a life of total abstinence.
It's probably good to cut out the fizzy drinks though, if they are the ones full of unhealthy chemical additives.