The Sugar Smart Diet: Stop Cravings and Lose Weight While Still Enjoying the Sweets You Love (39 page)

When you’re writing a book about sugar, people seem to feel the need to confess their “sugar sins.” One of my coworkers, a paragon of healthy eating, admitted that she plows through package after package of “kid candy”—gummy bears, Smarties, Twizzlers—when she’s on deadline. Friends have told me that they soothe themselves after a hectic day by plopping down in front of the TV with a pint of ice cream, a bag of cookies, or a bar (or two) of chocolate. When you understand what’s happening biologically, it really doesn’t come as any surprise that we tend to reach for sugar (and fat) when we’re under pressure.

Stress raises your body’s production of the hormones adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones prepare your body to react to a threat: to fight or flee. Your heartbeat increases, your digestive system slows down so more blood and oxygen flow to your muscles, your vision becomes acute—and your insulin levels rise, triggering the body to store fat rather than burn it, in case you need extra energy in the future. So with all that going on, your appetite increases, specifically for sugar and fatty foods, which of course are concentrated sources of energy.

What’s more, cortisol triggers the storage of belly fat. That’s because belly fat is the first fat your body draws on for fuel when it’s needed. So if you’re under fire, it makes sense that your body would want to make sure you have some fat in reserve for the future. If the stress response happens occasionally, like when you need to run from an attacker, jump out of the way of an oncoming car, or escape a burning building, no big deal. But when stress is chronic, you end up in a cycle of cravings, eating, and belly fat storage.

Here’s where a relaxing mind-body exercise like yoga can help. The deep breathing, muscle relaxation, and focus involved help to shut down the stress response. That’s why Michele and I thought it was so important to include yoga routines in the Sugar Smart Workout. Do them regularly and they can train your brain to respond less frantically to day-to-day pressure. As with our strength routines, we have two yoga options for you.
Energizing Yoga
improves circulation and wakes up your brain and body. It helps you feel calm, strong, and ready for action.
Relaxing Yoga
is more peaceful and is perfect for unwinding after a long or tough day.

You’ll be combining cardio, strength training, and yoga into workout sessions that total 45 minutes of exercise a day, 6 days a week. The most important thing is that you get your workouts in, but if you want to fine-tune your results, you might want to think about the timing of your sessions. Studies have shown that longer morning workouts can help control cravings and appetite, while a 15-minute exercise session performed about 30 minutes after each meal (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) has a more favorable impact on blood sugar levels.

Those daily protein-packed breakfasts should be putting a huge dent in your sugar cravings. However, if you always feel hungry no matter how filling your meal, add a brisk 45-minute walk or a 30-minute walk paired with a 15-minute
strength or yoga session to your morning routine. It may help rein in your appetite for the rest of the day.

In a study published in the journal
Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
, researchers wanted to examine the effect of a single exercise session on what scientists call “food motivation” and what everyone else calls “the desire to eat.” So over two separate days, they measured the neural activity in the brains of 18 average-weight and 17 overweight women as they viewed images of food on computer screens. (Neurons in the brain do things like “talk” to each other and process information. Those things are called neural activity, and that’s what the team was measuring.)

On the first day, the women walked briskly on treadmills for 45 minutes. Immediately afterward, electrodes were attached to their scalps, and an EEG machine measured their neural activity while they looked at pictures of food and flowers. (The flower pictures served as a control.)

The same experiment was conducted a week later at the same time of the morning, but without the vigorous walk. The women logged what they ate and how much they moved, on both days.

The results? The areas of the women’s brains related to attention and emotion were less “turned on” by the pictures of food after they walked, the researchers found. In other words, they had less interest in food following a workout. And in case you were wondering, the logs the women kept revealed that exercise
didn’t
lead to overeating later in the day. While more research is needed to determine how long a reduced interest in food can last after exercise, the findings seem to stand the “exercise makes you hungrier” claim on its head.

Does your after-dinner “nightcap” consist of curling up on the couch and firing up Netflix? That’s totally understandable, but taking a 15-minute post-meal walk or doing some strength moves while you watch TV—especially after your evening meal—can help regulate your blood sugar and reduce your risk of type 2 diabetes, research has found.

In the study, published in the journal
Diabetes Care
, 10 healthy seniors spent three 48-hour spans in a lab. During each session, participants ate the same foods and followed one of three exercise routines: They either walked at an easy-to-moderate pace on a treadmill for 15 minutes after each meal, walked 45 minutes in the morning, or walked 45 minutes in the afternoon. In each of the three scenarios, the participants’ blood sugar levels were tracked 24/7 with “continuous glucose monitoring,” in which a tiny sensor inserted under the skin kept track of glucose levels.

The short post-meal walks were more effective at regulating blood sugar levels for up to 24 hours, the study found. This is key, because typically, your body can handle the normal blood sugar fluctuations that occur about 30 minutes after you eat. But as you get older (or if you’re inactive throughout the day), your body doesn’t react as efficiently, which leads to prolonged high blood sugar levels. The same thing happens if you are insulin sensitive or if you have diabetes. Over time, as you’ve learned, chronically high blood sugar can heighten your risk of getting type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

The study found that the most effective time to go for a postmeal walk was after dinner. The exaggerated rise in blood sugar after this meal—often the largest of the day—can last well into the night and early morning. This was curbed significantly as soon as the volunteers hit the treadmill. So, if you can only wedge one of the three “bursts” into your day, make it the evening one.

What if you want to control appetite and lower your blood sugar level? You can mix and match your workout routine on different days.

Lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat on the floor. Hold the dumbbells by your shoulders, elbows pointing out to the sides
[A]
. Straighten your arms and press the dumbbells up over your chest
[B]
. When your arms are fully extended, lift your shoulders off the floor to press the dumbbells a little higher
[C]
. Hold for a second. Lower your shoulders, keeping your arms straight, then bend your arms to return to the start position. Do 10 times.

Make it easier:
Skip the shoulder lift.