What is your one degree of change? Since healthcare is such a big issue these days, it would only make sense to focus on our well care, not disease care. In Florida the two counties that are home to my offices are Lake and Orange. The 2012 numbers register these counties as 64% of the adult population being overweight and obese. In my own offices these numbers are accurate. We are required by the powers that "Be" to record vital statistics. My patients seem shocked when I test their body fat and BMI and they are in the overweight category or they have tipped into the obese stage. How did this happen? I eat well, I exercise and I try to get enough rest. This is what they tell me.
"Eating well" means what? They are trying to do the right thing. After a few questions it is clear that they just really don't understand what foods to eat. For example, a patient responds to the question, "What did you eat for breakfast?" The menu was yogurt with granola and fruit, slice of toast, and OJ. Healthy enough? Well not exactly. All of those items contained sugar, maybe not spoonful's of sugar, but foods converted to sugar. And it is the sugar that makes you fat, not necessarily the fat.
Your liver is responsible for managing all that you eat and drink. It has to manage all that sugar you eat. It breaks it down into glucose. Your blood sugar raises in the form of triglycerides. Then your LDL (the bad cholesterol) has to raise in response to the high triglycerides. So this is why you hear about sugar causing heart disease. And if that is not bad enough, the liver communicates with the pancreas to distribute insulin to manage the sugar in the blood. It becomes challenged to manage the extreme amount of sugar in the system. Now you have diabetes.
How much sugar should you have in a day? According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the maximum amount of added sugars you should eat in a day are: Men: 150 calories per day (37.5 grams or 9 teaspoons). Women: 100 calories per day (25 grams or 6 teaspoons). A Coca-Cola (20 oz) has 16 teaspoons of sugar! There are 1.7 billion cans of Coca-Cola sold worldwide each day. Now you understand why our world is soooo fat!
Your one degree of change: eliminate all sodas, including diet sodas from your diet. If you drink three a day, drink one less. And decrease over the next month. I'm not saying you can never have another soda for the rest of your life, but now that you know better, you have to do better!
Remember, if you don't take care of your body, where will you live?!
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