7 Surprising Sources of Sugar that Hinder Your Weight Loss

Sean Meyer
Aug 9, 2017 · 11 min read

Beware of the “healthy” foods…

Photo by Jade Wulfraat on Unsplash

It’s hard for me to beat around the bush on this one, big food companies piss me off…

Not just because they create amazing food that’s hard to resist, but because they do so at the expense of consumer’s health.

And I had to learn this the hard way….

Eating everything that I thought was “healthy” on my journey to losing weight, but no matter what I did or how little I ate — I continued to gain pounds around the midsection.

So that’s when I really started digging into everything, and to my surprise, all of these “healthy” foods were actually full of sugar and other junk that contributed to my growing belly.

I could talk about this for days, but in this article I wanted to cover 7 surprising foods that most people think are healthy, when in all reality — they’re the worst thing for your health.

Low Fat Yogurt

So to get us started, I wanted to begin with the one that surprised me the most.

Growing up, I was always under the impression that yogurt was a health food. One that you could eat for days and if you stuck to the yogurt diet, you’d simply lose weight.

I don’t know where I got this knowledge from, but I’m sure the continuous advertisements and fancy labels shouting “low fat snack” had something to do with it.

But then one day I decided to actually look at the nutrition label, and my jaw hit the floor.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying they’re lying as low fat yogurt is truly low fat, but they forget to mention one thing — it’s full of sugar…

And as both of us know, that’s what actually makes us fat.

But then to top this off, I soon learned that this snack was a double whammy when it came to the prevention of fat loss.

Not only is it full of sugar and gaining pounds that way, but since it removes all the fat…then well, it fills you up less. As crazy as it sounds, fat is what helps you reach satiety (being full), and when fat is removed — that just means you’re going to eat more…

A vicious cycle that does the exact opposite of what you’d like it to do.

Okay, so how much sugar does this actually have then?

Every food is different, but just so we have an example to get us started, let’s look at my (ex) favorite kind of yogurt, Yoplait Light Strawberries and Bananas.

I ate this yogurt for many months as I took the label at face value and thought it was healthy.

Not only was it low fat, but it was also full of fruit….a win-win, right?

Well I sure thought so, until I looked at the nutrition label and realized that each container had 10g of sugar!

And remember when I said the absence of fat just made you hungrier? Well that seemed to be the case for me as I would average 4 of these a day, meaning this “health food” was pumping 40g of sugar into me on a daily basis…

That’s 9 grams more than an 8oz can of Mountain Dew!

Recommendation: I personally try and stay away from all yogurts, but if I had to pick one — plain Greek Yogurts are your best bet….well, if you’re in glycogen burning mode anyway. If you follow a ketogenic meal plan, then staying away from all yogurts might be your best bet.

Fruit Juice (yes, even 100% juice)

Alright, so moving on to my childhood drink — Fruit Juice.

I was always guzzling this stuff growing up because like most people, my parents thought it was good for you.

I mean, it says fruit, and it’s 100% juice…so why wouldn’t it be?

Seems like a logic that’s hard to defeat, so I continued to drink this stuff as I got older. Hell, to be honest, I’d always stock up on it when I got on my health trend.

I figured that if I drank nothing but water and fruit juice, then I was well on my way to a healthy lifestyle.

But then one day I was reading an article and noticed that the author was actually hating on fruit juice. Saying that it was contributing to obesity, tooth decay, energy crashes, the whole works.

At first I thought it was just another nut job that was trying to gain publicity, but then I decided walk to my fridge and look at the nutrition label, and that’s when I realized he might actually have a point.

Why?

Because the stuff I was drinking (Welch’s 100% White Grape Cherry), had 33g of sugar in every 8 oz serving!

This sounded bad enough, but then I looked up Mountain Dew to get some comparison, and that’s when I realized that Mountain Dew only had 31g of sugar in every 8 oz serving…

Meaning that, from a sugar standpoint, Mountain Dew was actually better for me.

And before you jump through the computer screen to strangle me, I know that it isn’t this black and white.

Fruit Juice does have some antioxidants and you could argue that the health benefits of that offsets the extra amount of sugar, but that’s not my point right now.

My point is that sugar is still sugar, and from a metabolic standpoint…it has similar effects on your weight loss, so it doesn’t really matter if there’s “no added sugars”, that’s just a vague term that’ supposed to make you feel better.

And after going through their website, it looks like Welch’s is full of these. Here’s one of my favorites:

From Welch’s website

When the real truth is:

Myth: Welch’s Cares About Your Health and Wants You to Know the Facts

Fact: They use vague terms like “moderation” to hide behind the fact that their juices cause weight gain. Of course moderate amounts isn’t linked to obesity, one sip of Mountain Dew isn’t going to kill you either…

Recommendation: Stay away from fruit juice altogether, even if it’s 100%

Milk (yes, even skim)

Alright, moving on to number 3 — the king of strong bones, milk.

So like fruit juice, I always thought milk was a superfood growing up. I thought the more milk you drank, the stronger bones you’d have…

And while that might have some truth, that doesn’t mean it’s the best food for you either.

What do I mean?

Well I actually discovered this when I started to dig into yogurt, trying to figure out why it had so much sugar, and that’s when I realized that milk is full of a sugar known as lactose.

At first I thought this had to be some form of “good sugar”, mainly because I loved milk, but as I soon learned — it’s just like fruit juice.

Sure it might be better for you than drinking soda and sure it might have some health benefits, but at the end of the day — it’s still sugar, and that still adds weight to the belly.

Okay, so I think we understand that milk has sugar…but how much sugar does it actually have?

Well, it does vary by type, but to give you an example — Land of Lakes 2% Milk contains 12g of sugar in every 8oz serving…

Which may not be as bad as fruit juice or Mountain Dew, but that’s still a lot of sugar…and when you combine that with cereal, you can easily find a week’s worth of sugar in one bowl!

Okay, so I know I can’t hate on milk without mentioning the benefits of calcium. I’ve told this discovery to a lot of people and after a little bit of thought, they always ask the same question, “but what about calcium?”

And calcium is still essential for you, I’m not saying it’s not, I’m just saying there’s much better ways to get it…like:

  • Eating kale (245mg per cup)
  • Eating cheese (224mg per oz)
  • Or even sardines (217mg per 2 oz)…

All foods that give you plenty of calcium, without the sugar.

Recommendation: Another great alternative is Almond Milk, just make sure you grab the unsweetened kind (1 cup contains 45% of your daily calcium needs….with 0g of sugar)

Protein Bars

So a few weeks after I started to eat healthy, I figured it was time to pick up my first gym membership.

I had no idea what I was going to do there, but I knew exercise was a great complement to a healthy diet, so I pushed forward with it anyway.

I went down to the nearest gym, went through all the paperwork, and after I finished all of that, I started to get the grand tour.

The head trainer started showing me all of the equipment, rooms, and all that good stuff…but then we got to the final stop, the great wall of protein.

And when I say great wall of protein, I mean a wall literally packed full of protein products.

At first I was amazed with how much variety there was, but then I started to realize how important protein was to healthy eating, so right when I left the gym I went to the grocery store and stocked up.

Looking back now, I probably should have done some more research, but I knew Clif build a good brand, so I instinctively stocked up on Clif Builder’s Bars.

When I got home I decided to tear open my first protein bar, and holy hell did I fall in love.

The bar tasted absolutely amazing, and I thought it was a health food, so I was pleased with my new purchase.

So I continued on with this trend for a few months, living off protein bars and hitting the gym…

But every time I stepped on the scale, I noticed an increase in my weight. At first I thought it was muscle, because you know what they say, muscle weighs more than fat — but the mirror was saying differently.

I was starting to lose fat around my face, but I could tell a noticeable increase in the size of my belly.

This was around the same time where I started doing a deep dive on my diet, and that’s when I looked at the nutrition label on my protein bars…only to discover that they contained 21g of sugar in each bar!

Now I was easily eating 4 bars a day, so it was no surprise that I was actually gaining, not losing, weight.

Moral of the story, don’t focus on the main ingredient (protein), focus on everything in totality (a lot of protein mixed with a lot of sugar is still not good)

Recommendation: Eat Protein Bars by Quest Nutrition, they’re very low in sugar.

BBQ Sauce

Ever since I was little, I was always the weirdo that’d replace normal condiments (like ketchup and ranch), with BBQ sauce.

It didn’t matter if it was dipping sauce for fries or a topping on my burger, BBQ sauce was always a staple in my diet.

And as I got older, I started to like spicy more, so I started to be a huge connoisseur of Famous Dave’s Devil’s Spit.

I loved the taste of this and I’d always heard that spice helps increase metabolism, so as crazy as it sounds, I actually thought this BBQ sauce was good for my diet.

Then I started to do my deep dive into nutrition, and that’s when my life changed forever…

BBQ sauce was actually terrible for me, coming in at a whopping 10g of sugar for every 2 oz!

Now I guess I never weighed out my portions or measured how much I was using, but using the eyeball test…I’d say that BBQ sauce was easily putting an extra 50g of sugar into some of my meals, no wonder why I couldn’t lose weight!

Recommendation: Make sugar-free bbq sauce

Special K Bars

So I’ve always been a snacker, and since my new diet didn’t allow for potato chips or crackers, I had to settle for the next best thing — Special K bars.

I guess I wasn’t exactly sure why these were healthy, but I’d watched a lot of commercials that stated how great these were for you and how the Special K diet had helped a lot of people lose weight, so I took it at face value and made this my new snack.

I can’t say I didn’t miss my Ritz Crackers, but I will say that these Special K bars did a great job of lessening the blow.

They tasted absolutely amazing, and they only had 100 calories in each bar!

Now at this time I was trying to eat 5 small meals (500 calories) per day, so that meant I could completely supplement one meal with 5 of these bars…

Man, this whole dieting thing actually isn’t that bad.

So I continued to do this for a few months, but then I did my deep dive and about passed out after seeing what these bars were doing to my body.

Not only was I doing damage by eating a meal full of processed foods (a concept I learned about later), but I was also eating 40g every time! (each bar has 8g).

Now how in the hell are these considered healthy if every 500 calories contains 40g of sugar?

Excellent advertising, that’s honestly the only reason I can think of…another reason to always check the nutritional facts and never trust the front label.

Recommendation: Stay away from all Special K products

Canned Fruit

Have you ever went to the grocery store, stocked up on a bunch of food, and then ended up throwing most of it away 2 weeks later?

Yeah, this was always me with fruit.

I knew it was good for me and I knew I enjoyed it, so I’d always stock up…

But no matter what I did, I’d always find myself throwing most of it away.

This was discouraging at first, but I always liked to have some fruit on hand as a snack and didn’t want to quit buying it, so that’s when I had my great idea — I’ll just start buying canned fruit.

I figured this was a win-win situation as it was still fruit and it lasted for a long time, so I’d always stock up on it when I went to the store.

And the funny part about this food is that it’s the one thing that snuck past my healthy “deep dive”.

I was pretty detailed in my journey about finding the right foods to eat, but for some reason — I didn’t think to check on my canned fruit.

It’s probably because I just chalked it up to fruit and didn’t think about it, but either way, I continued to eat this canned fruit for many years.

Then one day I was watching a documentary and they mentioned something about the harmful effects of syrup. Now I’m not talking about maple syrup, even though that’s not good for you either, but I’m talking about syrups that preserved foods — something that made canned fruit last longer.

So after watching that documentary I decided to go take a look, and sure enough, this canned fruit was absolutely terrible for me…consisting of 73.5g of sugar in every can!

(In case you’re interested, I always ate Delmonte Fruit Cocktail, even though all canned fruit is in this range).

Now I was shocked and stopped eating canned fruit immediately, but that just further strengthened my new approach….

Don’t trust anything at face value, always look at the nutrition label (or just eat whole foods).

Recommendation: Stay away from canned fruits, and try to stick with berries. Most tropical fruits (i.e. pineapples or bananas) are high in sugar.

What I’m trying to say is…

This is always a subject that I try to be careful with, because there’s an absolute overload of information when it comes to health.

It doesn’t matter where you turn or who you ask, science has come out with a new study that shows how everything is bad for you.

This can be discouraging at first, but on the bright side, that just makes it even more important to read the nutrition labels and not trust advertising.

Just remember, sugar is what makes you gain body fat, and as counterintuitive as it sounds…it’s found in most foods that “big food” considers healthy.

Sean Meyer

Written by

Sales/marketing consultant.

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