I Removed Sugar From My Diet. Here’s What Happened

I’m not going back.

Alix A.
In Fitness And In Health
6 min readMar 12, 2021

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Photo by Yves Scheuber on Unsplash

White bread for breakfast. Pasta for lunch. A treat around 4 pm. Ice cream after dinner. Refined carbs are often hidden in the foods we crave. The ones we call “comfort foods.” They were part of my daily diet and although I was not overweight, I was bothered by the small amount of fat that has accumulated on my hips.

When you start to examine what the foods you eat are made of, you understand tons of things. And you can’t keep eating the way you used to. It would make no sense. You don’t even want to.

Over the past few years, I have slowly but surely eliminated almost all refined sugars from my diet. One by one. I no longer eat white bread, white pasta, or white rice. I no longer consume sweets or sugary drinks. My diet is built around whole, natural, nutritious foods.

And I’ve noticed several very interesting changes. Here they are.

What exactly did I cut out of my diet?

All white flour products, white rice, white pasta, sweetened yogurt, cakes, pastries, candies, sodas, juices, breakfast cereals… The list could go on and on. It all comes down to one change: no more refined sugars.

There are two types of carbs. Simple versus complex. Refined or complete.

“Refined carbs provide very few vitamins and minerals. The body processes refined carbs quickly, so they do not provide lasting energy, and they can cause a person’s blood sugar to spike.” — Medical News Today

Your body uses refined carbohydrates much faster than complex carbohydrates. This is because complex carbohydrates are made up of long chains of molecules, which forces your body to “work harder” to access the nutrients, which is not the case with simple carbohydrates.

“As a result, refined carbs create a short burst of energy, whereas unrefined carbs release energy more slowly throughout the day. Once the short burst of energy is over, a person may need to eat more food to gain more energy,” explains Medical News Today.

The other consequence of refined carbs can be summed up in one word: insulin.

“Insulin is a hormone made in your pancreas, a…

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