There is nothing wrong with sugar. By itself, it does you no harm. It is found in many, if not the vast majority of the fruits and vegetables we eat each day; including those that are part of a healthy diet and lifestyle.

Conversely, if you managed to cut out as much sugar as you can from your diet, you’d be taking a major step to a healthier life at a lower weight, and to make your cellulite dimples less noticeable.

So why, if something isn’t particularly bad for you, should you try to get rid of it from your diet? 

Good question. 

This is Why You Need to Stop Eating Sugar

Many people can drink a glass of wine and not feel any real effects of alcohol. But if you were to take the pure alcohol from the wine, and have it all at once, you probably will feel more affected by the alcohol. 

It's a similar story with sugar. If you eat an average apple, you will get about two and a half teaspoons of sugar. But it will have few if any, negative effects on your weight and health. But, if you refined the sugar from the apple, and ate the 2.5 teaspoons it contains (on average), that’s when the negative effects of sugar will kick in.

The sugar in your sugar bowl is essentially the same as the sugar in an apple. But what the apple has that the stuff in the sugar bowl doesn’t is fibre and other nutrients. The fibre in the apple, and in the other foods in which sugar naturally occurs, help slow down its absorption into your system.

So, when we say “sugar” is bad for you, we’re talking about sugar that has had all of its fibre, and any other plant compounds, stripped away from it. It's known as refined sugar or free sugar. It’s the white stuff in your sugar bowl.

So, while you can make foods that have natural sugar in them part of every meal in a healthy balanced diet, having that same amount of refined sugar, without the fibre, would be decidedly unhealthy.

Why Refined Sugar is the Problem

Your body is an incredibly complex organism. Like a complicated piece of machinery, if the operation of one part is not just right, the effects can be felt elsewhere in the machine, and even across the entire operation.

Your body is tuned to get energy from food in a certain way, at a certain rate.  The natural sugars and other simple carbohydrates in foods provide much of your body’s energy. Instead of using that energy all at once, your body and digestive system have ways of regulating it. 

First, the fibres in foods help to slow how quickly the sugars are metabolized into energy. Second, the body saves some of the energy for later by storing it in fat cells.

When you eat processed foods that are high in sugar, but low in fibre and other nutrients, you’re giving your body more energy than it is tuned to use. Without fibre to slow down, its absorption, the energy in sugar is metabolized relatively quickly.

Faced with all this extra energy, your body tries to make you active, (which is the “rush” people often talk about from eating sweets) in an effort to burn it off. Of course, unless you are active enough to burn it all away, which is unlikely unless you’re particularly active, your body then stores it all in fat cells. 

The Other Problem With Refined Sugar 

According to most authorities, including the World Health Organization, you should limit your consumption of refined or free sugars to six or seven teaspoons a day.

One can of Coke has about 10 teaspoons of refined sugar. There are 5 teaspoons in a 100 gram serving of the average breakfast cereal (though sugar content varies widely in breakfast cereals). And about six teaspoons in a chocolate donut.

So, if you have a bowl of cereal for breakfast, a coke with your lunch, and a chocolate donut for dessert, you will have consumed almost four times the recommended amount of free sugars for a day.

So there it is.  Sugars aren't bad for you per se. But, considering how your body consumes energy, and how much sugar we eat every day, they can be a disaster for your weight and cellulite. 

If all you do to improve your diet is to eliminate free sugars from it, it will have similar effects on your health as other initiatives, like an exercise program or diet plan.

Getting rid of free sugars from your diet will help you be healthier, lose weight and improve the appearance of your cellulite. But it will take time and effort. If you want to see some instant results while you wait, Mass & Slim’s shapewear, including our anti-cellulite leggings offer a flattering shape and a gentle massaging effect from the moment you slip them on.

To find out how to keep your shapewear in shape, check out our post “How To Care And Wash Your Shapewear So It Lasts”.