In the 5 Steps to Eliminating Sugar From Your Life,
we started with Step 1 - Know That The Odds Are Against You. I have already outlined that sugar is addictive. It may help you to know WHY it is addictive. To do that, we are going to have to talk a little biology and introduce two players in the game - Insulin and Leptin, and one VERY unpopular concept.
WARNING - UNPOPULAR CONCEPT - WARNING: Obesity is NOT a lifestyle "choice." Obesity is the result of addiction and metabolic dysfunction.
When you do something that causes feelings of pleasure, it is because two areas of your brain (the ventral tegmental area, VTA, and the nucleus accumbens, NA) are working together. When appropriately stimulated VTA orders the NA to release dopamine which causes the sense of pleasure. This stimulus / reward system is part of what is called the "Hedonic Pathway."
Food intake is a single meter of this pathway. It appears to mediate what you eat based on palatability rather than actual NEED for the food. For example, you've just finished a large turkey dinner... but that bourbon chocolate pecan pie looks SOOO good! When the hedonic pathway is working correctly, it functions to dissuade you from eating additional food when you've already eaten enough. When it's not working correctly, increased food intake is the result, leading to obesity.
So how does sugar figure into this? Leptin is the hormone that, when everything is working, tells you that you are done eating. It orders the VTA to stop the call for dopamine release which, in turn, reduces the "reward" for eating more. If you are leptin resistant, the reward response does not stop, and consequently, you habitually over-eat, which leads to obesity.
Normally, it's insulin's job to clear the dopamine that the NA releases. When you eat, insulin levels start to rise. Insulin and leptin act together to tell you that you've had enough.
But when you are RESISTANT to insulin the entire pathway stops functioning. Insulin resistance leads inevitably to leptin resistance which causes increased food intake. Not just any food intake, by the way, but foods high in fat, carbs, and SUGAR. (Cheese Cake Factory, Chocolate cake, Cinnabons, etc.)
Obesity is NOT a lifestyle "choice."
Obesity is the result of addiction
and metabolic dysfunction.
It is SUGAR that causes insulin resistance, which causes leptin resistance, which causes the increased need for more and more sugar. If you've ever heard the cycle of drug addition where the addict continuously chases the "high" they once got, but can't get due to tolerance to their poison of choice, you might recognize the same for food. Sugar causes that "tolerance" through insulin resistance.
We will be talking about this a great deal on Death To Sugar.
SOURCES:
M. L. Pelchat, “Of Human Bondage: Food Craving, Obsession, Compulsion, and Addiction,” Physiol. Behav. 76, (2002): 347– 52.
I. S. Farooqi et al., “Leptin Regulates Striatal Regions and Human Eating Behavior,” Science epub, August 9, 2007/ science. 1144599 (2007).
L. Carvelli et al., “PI3-Kinase Regulation of Dopamine Uptake,” J. Neurochem. 81 (2002): 859– 69.
Insulin and Leptin – The Hunger Twins