A Healthier Way to Cheat with Sugary Sweets

One of the biggest nutritional roadblocks for people is trying to eliminate or cut down the amount of sugary foods they eat. Some people do better by avoiding all sweets, but a lot of people develop intense cravings and are more successful over the long run when they simply limit the amount of sugary food they consume.

Eating a little sugar here and there is not too bad, but if your goal is to lose fat, then even moderate amounts of sugar can significantly hurt your results. Fortunately there is a simple trick to help you minimize the negative effects of eating reasonable amounts of sweets. The key is to eat the sugary foods at the right time.

In general, the earlier in the day unhealthy foods are eaten, the less the negative impact (less is stored as fat). This is because your body has a better insulin response in the morning and you are more likely to burn off the sugar calories during your daily activities. The worst time to eat sweets is at night, because your body does not have any use for the carbohydrate and fat calories, so they are just stored as fat.

The morning is a decent time to eat sweets if you have to cheat, but there is another time that is even better. The best time to eat sugary foods is actually right after you exercise, especially following a long workout that burned a lot of calories. This is the best time because your body processes sugar and other carbs differently after workouts than it does during the rest of the day.

When you exercise, your body burns calories from a number of different sources, such as from stored fat, carbs (glucose) in your blood, and in some cases by breaking down protein. A lot of energy also comes from carbohydrates stored in your body, which is called glycogen. After long workouts your glycogen level can become depleted, especially if you do not eat many carbs, and you will feel as though your muscles don't have any energy left.

After your workout is over, your body makes it a priority to replenish your glycogen stores, so you have energy for future activities. This means the sugar you eat after workouts will be more likely to be stored as glycogen, as opposed to other times in the day, when sugar will be more likely to be stored as fat. That said, eating sugar, chocolate, or other sweets after workouts is not the ideal thing to do, but eating them at this time will minimize their negative effects on fat gain.

Of course, this does not mean you can eat as much sugar as you want, because your body will only convert so many carbs into glycogen. Also, this trick is primarily for sugar and other carbs, so the high fat content in many sweets can still be a major problem.

Another thing to keep in mind is the level of glycogen needed to be replenished will depend on how much your glycogen stores are depleted from your workouts. In other words, you can't do a quick and easy workout and expect to be able to eat a lot of sugar without negative effects.

On the other hand, knowing you can have a treat after a good workout may be just the thing you need to increase your motivation to exercise on a day when you don't feel like doing anything. Personally, I rarely have sweets around the house (because I would eat them), but when I do, I use this tactic for motivation.

If there is a sugary food I want to eat, then I tell myself I cannot have it until after I exercise. Of course, you still need the willpower to make yourself stick to your plan of waiting, but if you like sweets, this can be highly motivating. Waiting to eat sugary foods until after your workout also works well with other high carbohydrate foods.

If you generally try to restrict your carb intake, but have occasional cravings, you can use this same strategy and eat greater amounts of carbs after your workouts. This will not only minimize the negative effect of eating too many carbs, but it will also replace your muscle glycogen and give you more energy so you can have more productive workouts.

This trick can be useful in many situations, but keep in mind that you should not use your post-workout meal as an excuse to eat unhealthy foods. If you have already made up your mind that you are going to eat something unhealthy, then waiting till after a workout will minimize the negative effects, but you should still try to eat healthy foods in appropriate portions as often as possible.

Source:
14 years of experience and education in health and fitness