The Candy Blitzkrieg is Officially On
How to Work in, Around, and with Sugar
Photo by Branden Skeli on Unsplash
Here we go!
This week, the candy Blitzkrieg is officially on.
As I wrote recently, this week is typically the week that kicks off the weight-gaining holiday season, most of which is weight that most people tend to hold on to forever.
Forever.
So, what are we all going to do? Forego and forsake the Halloween treats?
Yeah, right, but there are some strategies we can stick to that will allow us to have our candy and eat it too.
Is sugar really that bad, though?
If you start dipping a toe into the health and nutrition space, you likely find pretty quickly that there are people with polar positions on this topic, those who think sugar is the devil, and others who think that it’s fine so long as it’s limited in the context of overall healthy eating.
Some say that it is the cause for overweight and obesity, known as the “carbohydrate-insulin model”, which states that it all comes down to nutrient partitioning. When high amounts of carbs are eaten—not just sugar, but all carbs (which are all equal, by the way [*irony*]—so the model says, it “induces endocrine deregulation marked by hyperinsulinemia, leading to energy partitioning with increased storage of energy in adipose tissue resulting in adaptive increases in food intake and decreases in energy expenditure” [1].
All that’s to say, that when carbs are eaten, they’re blasted into fat stores and not metabolized for energy, so we think we’re starving and hunger ramps up, and we continue eating. My favorite part of all this is the bit about how carbohydrates decrease our energy expenditure; whether carbs and sugar consumption cause our metabolic rates to decrease and/or causes us to move less isn’t quite clear, but that’s one potent little macronutrient.
This is the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity, which I too believed when I first heard about it.
However, it just doesn’t hold up in isocaloric and dieting (energy deficit) conditions—that is, studies where calories are equal among different subjects and given different proportions of calories from different foods and macronutrients.
Kevin Hall, whose studies I’ve mentioned before, is a researcher at the National Institutes of Health. In one study, he put the carbohydrate-insulin model to the test. He and his team put 17 overweight or obese men on two diets, aiming for an energy deficit of about 300 calories a day—so calories were equated for both parts—and each phase lasted four weeks. One diet was a high carb diet. The other was a low carb/ Ketogenic diet. And these guys were locked into a metabolic ward, basically an apartment-like dwelling where all their food is provided to them. At the end of each dieting phase, the subjects’ body compositions were measured with DEXA scans (a low-grade x-ray body scan). They also used doubly labeled water to measure metabolic rate.
At the end of it all, the researchers found that “Body fat loss slowed during the KD [ketogenic diet] and coincided with increased protein utilization and loss of fat-free mass.” Increase protein utilization, that is, using protein for fuel, which helps explain why there was a loss of fat-free mass—non-fat body tissue. If we’re using protein for fuel, there’s not as much of it going to tissue maintenance.
Moreover, they demonstrated that “The isocaloric KD was not accompanied by increased body fat loss but was associated with relatively small increases in EE [energy expenditure] that were near the limits of detection with the use of state-of-the-art technology” [2, 3].
Hopefully, this helps assuage any fears that you may have regarding sugar, at least in terms of gaining weight and body fat. It ain’t the sugar per se. It’s the overconsumption of energy, and we can overconsume anything, but it’s just much easier to overconsume sugar-laden, ultra-processed foods. We don’t have to chew it as much; in fact, we can often just drink it. It’s very calorie-dense, and it’s easily absorbed once it’s in our stomachs; in fact, we start absorbing sugar as soon as it gets into our mouths.
So, you can have some candy. The key word is some. You don’t want to make a meal out of it.
Still, to better understand sugar, it’s important to understand it in context of the totality of a person’s dietary pattern, the trends of how they eat over a long period of time.
Let’s compare and contrast two different yet imaginary dietary patterns; let’s imagine that each meal plan is a typical representation of the kinds of foods eaten and that each person eats at energy balance. And then once or twice a week, there might be a couple of pieces of candy, like fun-sized Halloween candy, as a snack or dessert; and/or there might be an actual dessert, like an ice cream cone or a small cup of ice cream.
Imaginary Dietary Pattern 1:
Example typical breakfast: oatmeal with berries; a couple of scrambled eggs.
Example typical lunch: turkey sandwich; piece of fruit; salad.
Example typical dinner: chicken; rice; sauteed veggies.
In this dietary pattern, which is fairly solid—though plenty of areas to improve upon—if the person maintains energy balance, there’s not much I would worry about. Out of the thousands of calories eaten across the week, there would only be a few hundred allotted to foods with added sugar—a small fraction.
Imaginary Dietary Pattern 2:
Example typical breakfast: big bowl of Frosted Flakes [4] (with milk); a tall glass of juice.
Example typical lunch: hamburger and fries; regular iced tea to drink.
Example typical dinner: fried chicken; mac and cheese; buttery mashed potatoes.
In this dietary pattern, which is pretty representative of a standard Western diet, full of ultra-processed foods and sparse on whole foods, micronutrients, and fiber, eating a few hundred calories of foods with added sugar is not going to make much of a difference (though it certainly won’t help) because it’s such a low-quality baseline.
Whereas in the first imaginary dietary pattern, added sugar (as well as the ultra-processed foods) make up a fraction of the total calories consumed, in the second one, most of the calories are ultra-processed junk calories, devoid of anything meaningfully nutritious.
Still, a person can sustain themselves on the second dietary pattern and can even maintain a healthy body weight so long as they are in energy balance. However, again, whereas the first one has a good amount of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that can balance out and combat the junk, the second one doesn’t.
Fortunately/unfortunately, a healthy body weight isn’t the only indicator of health. For example, prior to the 1970s, where body weights started trending up, people were generally very thin, but the number one killer in the US was still heart disease.
So, what does some of the literature on sugar say?
In one systematic review published in 2022, “Association of Added Sugar Intake with All-Cause and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality” [5], the researchers found that “low mortality was observed over the intake range of added sugar from 5% to 20% of energy. Accordingly, a ‘U-’ or ‘J’-shaped relationship was estimated,” meaning that there’s something of a breakout point when added sugar consumption exceeds 20% of our calories, which is when negative health outcomes tend to skyrocket. Still, there’s not much distinction about the energy states (again, deficits, maintenance, or surpluses) of the participants in these studies.
“In addition,” the researchers continued, “the mortality risk from sugary food and beverages was not increased when they contained sufficient nutrients other than sugar.” That is to say that, when sugar is added to something that’s already nutritious, the nutrients and/or antioxidants seem to offer something of a buffer to some of the negative health outcomes expected at higher added sugar intakes.
In another study, “The Impact of Free Sugar on Human Health—A Narrative Review” (another type of study-of-studies), published in 2023, the researchers concluded that:
Very little scientific evidence exists that indicates a benefit of added dietary sugars; however, an overwhelming and growing body of evidence highlights the negative effects of excessive or prolonged sugar intake. This is particularly significant for fructose and high-fructose corn syrup. There may be benefits to glucose supplementation for some individuals in times of increased cognitive requirements. However, glucose can be acquired from healthy dietary sources, such as fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, which all provide nutritional benefits to the body. There is also little evidence that all added sugars must be eradicated from the diet. However, the current guidelines of limiting energy intake consumed as added sugars to 5–10% have so far held up under scrutiny…
Another study sums up their findings in its title: “Long-Term Overconsumption of Sugar Starting at Adolescence Produces Persistent Hyperactivity and Neurocognitive Deficits in Adulthood” [6]. Though this study was conducted in mice (and it has pictures of brain scans, which are interesting), it indicates an important point: overconsumption.
Overconsumption of anything is, frankly and plainly, unhealthy, and if we do it long enough, we should expect negative effects to manifest in some way or form.
So, if you want some Halloween candy or other upcoming holiday favorites, treat yourself, but consider some strategies to help keep things under control:
Try to maintain energy balance. If you add something—some food or candy—you should remove something else from its place. You don’t want to add something on top of everything else you eat. That’ll likely put you in an energy surplus.
Ideally, you don’t want to swap out the healthiest parts of your meals. Consider swapping out something that’s lower on the hierarchy of nutrition. For example, if you sometimes have chips and an apple with lunch, skip the chips and allot those calories for candy if you had some or intend to. You don’t want to replace the apple with the candy.
There’s a lot of candy going around, but we don’t have to have some every day. Consider a day here or there when indulging. If we start including some a few days in a row, we’re starting to build a new habit, a new system, forming a new baseline, which will then become difficult to change or break in itself.
The World Health Organization recommends keeping added sugar intake between 5-10% of total calories, and keeping it around or under 5% to help curb cavities. If you maintain on 2,000 calories, 10% = 200 calories and 5% = 100 calories, which is not a lot of candy. A regular sized Snickers bar (1.86 oz/ 52.7 grams) is 250 calories, a helpful comparison to keep in mind.
Finally, be sure to get some exercise in. As I’ve blabbered about, weightlifting is especially good for glucose regulation as it trains and conditions your muscles to soak up carbohydrate for several hours after training, which are then used in a subsequent training bout. Better yet, if you have some treats, do so before hitting the weights.
The holiday season happens once a year, and eating is one of life’s simplest yet greatest pleasures.
With these strategies, you can treat yourself a little and have yourself a merry little Halloween and not worry about sugar bombing your health into oblivion.
And these are strategies that lend themselves to eating anything at any time of year.
This one study is fairly representative of the types of studies that Kevin Hall does—measuring how different diet compositions in different energy states (deficits, maintenance, overfeeding) have different effects on the body.
I’m not hating on Frosted Flakes. It is one of my personal favs.
