Does Sugar Make You Gain Weight?

The foods we eat all affect our bodies in different ways and sugar is known to be very fattening.

High fructose corn syrup and sugar (sucrose) both contain two molecules: fructose and glucose.

Glucose is essential to life and is a vital part of our metabolism. It’s produced by our bodies and there is a constant supply of it in our bloodstream as well.

All the cells in the human body can utilize glucose for energy.  If our bodies don’t get it’s glucose from our diets then it produce what it needs out of fats and proteins.

Fructose on the other hand is quite different. It is not a natural part of our metabolism and humans do not produce this molecule.

As a matter of fact, not many cells in the body can utilize it except for the liver cells.

Whenever we consume a lot of sugar, a majority of the fructose gets metabolized by the liver. Once it has been metabolized, it gets converted into fat which then gets secreted into the bloodstream.

1. Fructose Messes With Your Hormones

Fructose leads to weight gain due to its effects on the hormone leptin.

This hormone is secreted by the fat cells and the bigger each fat cell gets, the more leptin is secreted. Your brain then use this as a signal to determine the amount of fat it has stored for rainy days.

When we consume food, some of it gets deposited into the fat cells. These deposits make the fat cells increase in size resulting in more leptin secretion.

When the brain picks up on the increased leptin, it determines that the body has enough fat in storage and tells us to stop eating.

Nature has designed this elegant mechanism to prevent us from being hungry and consume less when the body has plenty of fat stored in our cells, as a result this prevents us from becoming obese.

Here’s how simple it is: more fat = more leptin secretion = enough energy = no more eating.

Also, an increase in leptin makes the cells release more fat from storage and raises the metabolic rate.

So this is how the whole mechanism is to work, however, if the brain develops a resistance to leptin, then the whole regulatory process will not work.

If the brain does not see increased leptin being secreted then it will not know that your fat cells are full and so no signal will be sent to the brain that it needs to stop eating.

Simply put: low leptin secretion = not enough energy in stores = need to burn less and eat more.

The brain will think the body is starving so it will signal us to use less energy and eat more. This is how leptin resistance can make us fat.

At times we try to exercise more willpower over the leptin-driven starvation, but find it near impossible. As such, most people are not able to just “move more but eat less” and expect to live a long healthy life.

For us to be able to eat less, we would need to

In order to be able to eat less, we have to divest the body of its leptin resistance, that way our brains can see all the fat that the body has stored.

A diet high in fructose can result in leptin resistance. What happens is that fructose raises triglycerides levels in the blood and this blocks leptin from being transported from the blood to the brain.

It’s by this means that too much sugar consumption will throw body fat regulations off course, so the brain will think it needs to continue eating.

Note: Fructose leads to the brain being leptin resistant, that is, the brain does not see all the body’s stored fat and thinks that it is in starvation mode.

This will then result in great leptin-driven biochemical urge to keep on eating even at times when we don’t need to.

2. Its Causes You To Eat Out Of Control

Our brains and bodies regulate foods consumption in a way that is particularly complex and involves neural circuits and a variety of hormones.

The region of the brain where all these signals are sent to be interpreted is called the hypothalamus.

In the hypothalamus, various neurons and hormones such as leptin (previously discussed) are able to function.

A study published back in 2013 examined the effects of glucose versus fructose on food intake and satiety.

In this study, they had 20 volunteers drink either a fructose-sweetened drink or a glucose–sweetened drink, then had their brains scanned while they asked them a lot of questions.

The results were that the glucose-sweetened drink had lowered activity in the hypothalamus (food intake is controlled here) and lowered their blood flow while the fructose-sweetened drink did not.

The fructose drinkers were not at all satisfied and were still hungry while the glucose drinkers felt more full and less hungry.

The implication of this is, despite the fact that both drinks had the same amount of calories, the fructose-sweetened drink did not increase satiety as much as the glucose-sweetened one.

There is another important hormone called ghrelin, which is the hunger hormone.  The more ghrelin is produced, the hungrier we feel.

Another study found that glucose reduced blood levels of ghrelin more than fructose did.

These studies proposed that fructose doesn’t make you feel full after consuming a meal in the same way that glucose does, even if both meals have the same amount of calories.

Note: Fructose will lead to an increase in your overall calorie intake because it does not make you feel as full as glucose does after a meal.

3. Fructose Contributes to Insulin Resistance

Are you familiar with the hormone insulin?

Insulin is one of the main hormones that regulate human energy use and metabolism.

It gets secreted by the pancreas, then it travels in the blood to peripheral cells such as muscle cells.

Insulin will then signal these cells that they should put on their surfaces transporters for glucose, which will allow glucose to get into the cells where it can be utilized.

When we consume a high carb meal, our glucose levels rise. A surplus of glucose is toxic to the body so insulin rapidly increases in order to remove the glucose from the bloodstream and into the cells.

If insulin isn’t functioning properly or we didn’t have it, our blood glucose levels would increase to toxic levels.

This mechanism works really well in healthy people and it allows them to consume meals that are high in carbs without their blood glucose levels getting too high.

However, this mechanism has a tendency to break because cells become resistant to the effects insulin should have on them, which pushes the pancreas to secrete even more so as to drive the glucose into the cells.

So basically, once you become insulin resistant, more insulin will be in your blood all the time. That is, until the entire process breaks and develops into type ll diabetes, which could happen eventually.

Insulin also serves other purposes. One such purpose is sending signals to the fat cells in the body. It tells the cells to collect fat from the bloodstream, store it and to avoid burning what fat they already carry.

When there are chronic elevations in insulin levels, most of the energy in our bloodstream are selectively deposited and stored in the fat cells.

Consuming excess fructose is known to cause elevation in insulin levels in the blood and insulin resistance.

When this occurs, the body has a difficult time gaining access to the stored fat which results in the brain thinking that it’s hungry. This makes us eat more.

Note: Consuming too much sugar will chronically raise the insulin levels in the blood. It will store energy from foods into the fat cells.