Many people I meet these days are trying to lose weight.

Some say they are going to exercise.

Some don’t have time.

Others want to eat less…

And then, there are those that try to drink one glass of lemon cayenne water, per day for a week while the rest of us think “I could never do that, I would starve to death.” and to those who succeed, you have my respect.

Another approach is to learn a little about which foods you eat, that cause most of the actual weight gain.

Some people don’t eat much, but they still gain weight. When you look you find that they have their 1 Coke per meal (or per day) and then wonder why they have love handles or slightly plump thighs. There is a reason!

My question to you is this:

How many sodas or sources of added sugar, granola bars, coffees, cookies, do you eat/drink per day?

Here are some interesting facts about what it is exactly that helps us make our little meals pack on so many pounds.

According to data from the U.S. in 2008, the average person consumed over 60 pounds of sugar per year, not naturally occurring sugar and not including fruit juices.

The average intake was 76.7 grams of sugar per day or 19 teaspoons per person, per day (basically 306 calories worth of just straight sugar added to your meal, all this in one day!)

To put this in perspective, one author writes that the maximum calories your body can burn (use up), per meal per day, for an average human is about 400 calories per meal and anything over that gets stored.

You can have a few snacks in between, depending on your body type, age and job, but that’s about it.

More makes you fat, less makes you thinner, you get the idea.

So a minimum of 1,200-1,400 calories per day on average would be good.

In the current day and age, Per Forbes.com, the average American currently consumes 41 teaspoons of sugar per day (double 2008’s consumption), which adds up to roughly 3 pounds of sugar per week, per person.

I’m no mathematician, but on a wild average that means that around 600+ calories (out of your 1,200 to 1,400 or more) that you consume per day, is just sugar.

And if you stretch out the math a little further, it means you eat about 130 pounds of sugar per year.

The consumption of added sugar accounts for 600+ calories per day and can cause a weight gain of 1 pound of fat per week.  

And yes, folks that is cumulative weight. No going back to 0 at the beginning of the week.

Per the American Heart Association, the maximum amount of added sugar your body can tolerate in a day is about 7 spoons (not 41):

• For Men: 150 calories per day (or 37.5 grams or 9 teaspoons).
• For Women: 100 calories per day (or 25 grams or 6 teaspoons).

So, if over half of the average daily diets calories are made up of sugar and not actually a usable sugar that becomes energy, then, yes, that is a lot of what your body converts into good old fashioned fat (love handles, your spare tire, thunder thighs or a “cute” belly, etc).

From a quick review of the current american diet, two of the highest commonly consumed sources of sugar are:

SODA and COFFEE

Here are some facts and figures:

1 tsp of sugar is roughly 4.2 grams of sugar

Just take the grams of sugar on any bottle and divide it by 4.2 ( the number of grams in a teaspoon of sugar), to see how many spoons of sugar you consume when you drink a soda.

This glass holds about 3 cubes more than the sugar that’s in a Pepsi, Coke or Mountain Dew. Just imagine adding fizzy water and drinking that!

Some of the most popular sodas and their sugar content:

Mountain Dew (20 oz) 77 grams of sugar =  18.3 tsp’s of sugar

Pepsi (20 oz) = 69 grams of sugar =  16.4 tsp’s of sugar

Coke (20oz) 65 grams of sugar =  15.4 tsp’s of sugar

Sprite (20 oz) 64 grams of sugar =  15.2 tsps of sugar

7 up (20 oz) 62.5 grams of sugar =  14.8 tsps of sugar

Starbucks Mocha Frap (with whipped cream) tall =  42 grams of sugar =  10 tsps of sugar

Starbucks Café Mocha (with whipped cream) tall =  28 grams of sugar =  6.6 tsps of sugar

Red Bull (8 oz) 27 grams of sugar =  6.4 tsps of sugar

Now most people have a drink in addition to the meal. So you see how this adds up.

If you were to imagine the human body like a car which takes a certain type of gas to make it run.

We could say for the purpose of this example, that the sugar that is in soda, coffee and a lot of our daily snacks, is actually the wrong type of gas for our body (or car).

The human body does use a kind of sugar to make it run, but it is not the same kind as in our sodas and snacks.

The sugar we eat in our food actually gets treated similar to poison in the human body.

We eat the wrong types of sugar everyday, so what does the body do with it?

Some of it becomes fat, some gets converted by your body into usable sugar we need for energy and the excess, goes out in our waste (when it doesn’t make up tired or depressed).

What does our body use to change this bad sugar into usable sugar?

The answer is B-1 and B Complex vitamins. We get it in small amounts from our food, but no where near enough compared to the amount of sugar we consume!  

And, what does the body need to help handle the excess sugar that goes out in the waste?

Vitamin C !

As with many types of poison, the body uses vitamin C to help handle toxins.

So, if by reading this you noticed that you are eating too much sugar and are tired alot, cranky or are gaining too much weight, or are depressed and want to cut back or be a bit healthier, then yes, the answer is to eat less sugar.

But, in addition to that, you can simply start taking more B-1 and B complex per day (with protein) to help your car change that wrong type of “gas” into the right kind for your car (body).

For great discounts on B-1, B Complex and C check out our website:
 http://www.vites.com    

Just type in "B-1", "B Complex" or "Vitamin C", and you are there!

Happy weight loss everyone!
Peter Gillham