It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways (23 page)

Like all food, fruit is a complex combination of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber, and many other compounds that scientists have yet to identify. Fruit also contains natural sugars (glucose and fructose) and starches in various proportions and amounts. As fruit ripens, the starch in the fleshy part of it is converted to sugar, which makes it taste sweeter.

Fructose is the sweetest of all naturally occurring carbohydrates—almost twice as sweet as sucrose. You consume fructose in a variety of sources, including table sugar (sucrose), honey, fruits, some vegetables, and in processed foods and drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup.

Fructose is different from other simple sugars in the way it’s processed in the body. Virtually every cell in the body can use glucose for energy, but after being absorbed from your small intestine, most fructose is sent straight to the liver, where it is metabolized and either stored as energy (liver glycogen) or converted into triglycerides (fat) and dumped into the bloodstream.

The
effects of a diet too high in fructose
are decidedly not good and may include liver damage, inflammation, atherosclerosis, free-radical damage, and an increased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, and obesity. In fact, many studies show that
diets high in fructose
play a key role in metabolic syndrome.

But let’s be clear—eating a few servings of fruit a day (as part of an otherwise healthy diet) is not going to
create
these conditions. Nobody ever became metabolically deranged from eating fruit! The trouble comes when folks consume more fructose from processed foods than they could ever get from natural sources.

Most fructose in the American diet
doesn’t come from fresh fruit but from the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or sucrose (a form of sugar that is 50 percent fructose) found in high concentration in soda and fruit-flavored drinks. As one example,
a twenty-ounce soda
contains about thirty-six grams of fructose. That’s the equivalent of eating five bananas, nine cups of strawberries, or ninety cherries! Combine our soda and processed-beverage intake with our overconsumption of processed foods (many of which are also sweetened with HFCS), and you’ve got a recipe for massive intakes of fructose, the likes of which you could never consume from real food.

The takeaway?

Just because fruit tastes sweet doesn’t mean it’s an unhealthy choice, and just because diets high in fructose cause problems doesn’t mean you should abstain from eating fruit. Remember, just as whole grains are not
just
fiber, fruit isn’t
just
fructose! The naturally occurring sugars found in fruit are wrapped in a nutrient-dense package—unlike the fructose you’ll find in a soft drink or breakfast pastry.

There
is
one potential issue with fruit consumption. Because of the natural sweetness of fruit (especially in fruit juice and dried fruit, which concentrate the sugar), fruit
may
promote an unhealthy psychological response, especially in folks still battling their sugar dragons. We’ve seen many people use fruit to prop up their sugar cravings, telling themselves it’s OK because fruit is “natural” and healthy. The scenario often looks like this:

It’s 3:00 on a Thursday afternoon. You’re at work, and you’re hungry, cranky, and tired. You’d normally reach for a Snickers bar, a muffin, or some Oreos right about now, but you’re trying to eat healthier and you know those are poor choices. So instead, you eat a dried fruit and nut bar.

There is just one problem with this situation.

As you learned in Chapter 4, your brain doesn’t immediately differentiate between “healthy” sugar like dried fruit and “bad” sugar like a Snickers bar. The only thing your brain knows is, “I craved sugar and I got sugar.” That’s right, the message you just sent to your brain is, “I craved, I satisfied that craving, and I feel better now.”

Sound familiar? This is the same unhealthy pattern we described in the situation with the cookie from the downtown bakery. Except this time, your sugar of choice is “natural” and “healthy,” so you don’t even realize you are a slave to the same unhealthy habit … but we do. So we’ll warn you about this up front and, in later chapters, detail our recommendations for when and how to include fruit in your diet in a way that feels healthy and satisfying (but doesn’t send you running for the nearest bag of candy).

“I have always been an active, healthy girl, but in my thirties (after a bout with severe exhaustion followed by two pregnancies) I found myself a good hundred pounds over the limit. Something had to be done, as ‘just eating well’ was not doing my body any good. I was inspired by a close friend who had had great success doing a Whole30, and started my journey in February 2011. The first month, I lost ten pounds. And within the next two weeks, five more. In the last year, I have lost seventy pounds and over forty inches from my body. I am still a work in progress, but with the Whole30 on my side, I am making it closer to my goal every day! Thank you for changing my life.”

—Heidi M., Bozeman, Montana

The last big category on our “makes you healthier” list includes many different foods with one thing in common—they’re all good sources of fat.

We’re discussing good fats for a number of reasons, some of which we’ve already talked about. First, fats are an excellent energy source. And one major goal of this dietary shift is to make your body more efficient at using fats (from your diet
and
your fat stores) for fuel. Fat is also critical to many metabolic processes, and ensuring that your diet includes adequate healthy fats means you’ve got the right building blocks for vital organs, cells, and hormones.

In addition, fats provide both satisfaction (via palatability) and satiety (via gut-brain hormonal pathways). A meal with a healthy amount of fat
suppresses hunger longer
than a meal that’s primarily carbohydrate—so we don’t run to the cookie jar between meals. Finally, there is another, more practical reason for including a healthy amount of fat in our meals—
calories
.

We want you to eat enough calories to maintain a healthy body weight and activity levels. But think about the way you used to eat versus the way we’re recommending that you eat. You used to eat lots of calorie-dense carbohydrates (like grains, legumes, sugars, and processed foods). Now, you’ve replaced those with vegetables and fruit, which are comparative caloric lightweights. Which means your new diet is missing a bunch of calories—and we’ve got to supply them somehow.

We’re not going to add more carbohydrates to the diet—you couldn’t (and don’t need to) eat enough veggies and fruit to fill the hole, and we’re not about to resort to unhealthy food choices just for the calories.

We’re not going to add more and more protein, either. We want you to eat only as much protein as you need to maintain muscle mass and support recovery from activity. (And it’s not like doubling your meat consumption will double your muscle mass.) Too much protein might be just as unhealthy as not enough, so we’ll outline just right protein recommendations in the next section.

So what’s left?

Fat, that’s what.

We’re going to supply energy with good, healthy fat sources. And that’s easy to do, since fat has more than twice the gram-for-gram calories as carbohydrate and protein. See—it really
is
a great source of energy!

Fat is a dense and abundant source of energy, and with time and the right eating habits, we can create a healthy situation in which our bodies can use fat to fuel low-intensity activity (like hiking, gardening, playing with our children, or cleaning the house).

There are some major benefits to being “fat adapted,” able to efficiently utilize fat as energy. First, you’ll no longer need to eat every two hours to avoid the raging hunger, crankiness, or brain fog that comes with relying on glucose to fuel your energy needs. When you’re fat-adapted (as in our Good Day example), you can go many hours between meals feeling and performing just fine, as your body has learned to mobilize your fat stores for energy.

In addition, once you’re fat-adapted, you’ll be able to start whittling away at your fat stores—something you are unable to do when your blood sugar and insulin levels are chronically elevated. (Remember, chronically elevated insulin levels impede glucagon’s energy-access function!)

Finally, when you’re fat-adapted, you’ve got the best of both worlds. Your body will still be able to run on carbohydrate for fuel when you really need it, during high-intensity activity like interval training or chasing after your runaway dog. But you’ll also have an alternate energy source—fat!—for life’s lower-intensity occasions (which make up the bulk of your twenty-four-hour day).
^*

The key to becoming fat-adapted can be explained simply enough:

Of course, not all fats are good fats. (Sure, we all know that … but we’re also certain that our roster of “good fats” may surprise you, so stay on your toes in this section.) In addition, even some “good fats” need to be consumed in moderation, because while
some
is good,
more
isn’t always better. So let’s talk about good sources of each of the three different categories of fats—monounsaturated, saturated, and polyunsaturated.