Science shows why fruit’s the sweetness you need for weight loss

May 16, 2018 Ashley 0 Comments

“If added sugars make you fat, then fruit does too.”

This is a myth I’ve heard over and over.

(“Oh, fruit makes you fat? Tell me more about all the obese people at Dairy Queen ordering oranges and grapes…”)

First off, let’s acknowledge the irony of a candy factory meme… Especially when I’m about to ream refined sugar right in the chocolate pocket. F’real though. Comments like these’ve honestly stopped making me angry. It just makes me sad. Because, if we’re legitimately this ignorant – and clinging to misconceptions – then there’s zero chance for change or the weight loss we want. It should be pretty easy to understand by now. We need some sugar. That said, fruit, unlike your packaged candy and confections has been whipped up in the natural lab (AKA eons of evolution) to harbor the optimal formula for your body. An icing hose, vomiting out fudge sludge onto your cupcake, on the contrary, has a comparably comical calorie count. It’s just too much. It’s also got an excess of sugar – which gets stored as fat. It’s also got a specially concocted flavor combo (AKA heroin for your tongue buds) designed to make you crave more. And it also doesn’t fill you up.

Fruit, simply put, doesn’t just fill you with it’s liquidy-ness and fiber. I mean, that’d be good enough. But mama nature ain’t a quitter. She went for the blue ribbon award when she created fruit. Because it’s got just the right amount of sugar to power your daily to-do’s without making you crash like that bag high fructose corn syrupy whatevers will. And you know what makes fruit reign supreme in the kingdom of your favorite tastes? Taking said bag of chocolate covered excrement, lighting it on fire, and never buying it again. No, seriously. This truth transpired a few years back for yours truly. Within a couple weeks of eschewing sugary faux food (and subsequently subbing in some’ve nature’s straight-outta-garden, O.G. earth candy), I knew I’d never miss that bag of lies again. It’s kinda like when I dropped pharmaceuticals – and suddenly a cup of Tulsi or Kava tea could put me on my azz. Once you metaphorically Lysol your system clean, everything natural tastes better and feels more intense. Fruit tastes sweeter. The salt content in leafy greens is detectable. Everything seems clearer.

And, while it doesn’t take a pair’ve pepper specs to see that, don’t go by my admittedly hippie sounding logic.

Go by the mindblowing study done that I just read that proves science’s got my six on the subject of fruit. The experiment was on people who quit refined sugar – versus those who quit refined sugar and fruit. Now, you’d think that the people who quit both fruit and added sugars would lose more weight, wouldn’t you? Yeah, you would. But you’d be wrong. See, the group who only cut added sugar – but kept PacMan’ing the plant candy – lost more weight than the bunch who cut both. Those who cut everything, lost less. About 2.5 pounds to be exact. (Doesn’t sound like much? Try cuffing even just one pound weights to each ankle. See if it doesn’t make ambling through the tasks of your every day duties significantly more difficult.) Now, this might’ve surprised me a few years ago. But, having gone plant based, I know exactly what happened. First, the group eating the fruit wasn’t storing any added sugar as fat. They had just what they needed. But you know what advantage they also had? The fact that, a few hours after eating their flawless little blobs of watery and fibery delight, they still felt full. We shouldn’t underestimate this in our weight loss paths. Especially now that science has done an exemplary demonstration of it. The fruit-only group had the perfect dose of sugar fix and fiber and hydration to keep ’em energetic and their bellies content. That means they had the zest to sweat off what they needed to, and the satiation to turn down calories they didn’t need. It also means they lost weight ’cause they weren’t going all face Dyson on five course meals later, while their bodies tried compensating for the macros and calories they were lacking. But you know what?

I bet you a massive sack of organic raspberries that the “no fruit” group sure was.

Just kidding.

You can’t have my raspberries.