Sugar: friend or foe?

By Dr. Samefko Ludidi

One of the most discussed topics in nutrition is sugar. Judging by food advertising, sugar-free always seems to be better. So is it an evil you should avoid as much as possible, certainly as an athlete?

Sugar plays a very important role in the body. You need it to live. Your blood always requires a minimum amount of sugar. It is an important fuel that keeps the brain functioning. If your brain receives too little sugar, you fall into a coma.

There is also an upper limit. If you structurally exceed it, you may develop diabetes, also known as sugar disease. Your body then becomes dysregulated. It can no longer reach a balanced blood sugar level on its own. From then on you have to correct this by administering insulin.

Muscles can also use sugar to function and perform. Sugars are a convenient fuel that is easily absorbed. Your body thrives on it, but not for very long. It does not provide enough energy to perform over a longer period. If you want your body to run on sugar, you have to keep refuelling. That is why you see cyclists constantly eating gels and drinking litres of sports drinks. They choose to keep the engine running on sugars. Your sugar supply runs out relatively quickly and if you do not keep refuelling, that source has dried up after 45 minutes to an hour. That is when you hit the wall.

If you want to keep your engine running for a long time, it is useful to use a different fuel. One alternative is fat as fuel. The difficult part is that you then have to teach your body to choose fat as its preferred fuel. Normally your body opts for sugar, because that is easier to absorb. To train your body to process fat instead, you can opt for intermittent fasting. This means you give your body no new fuel for a certain number of hours per 24-hour period, so that it learns to draw on stored fuels. Your fat reserves, above all. In this way you train your body to see fat as its preferred fuel.

Another alternative is eating fat to burn fat. A diet low in carbohydrates and higher in fat. Your body will use whatever you put into it. So if you eat fatty foods such as avocados, good fish, real butter, eggs and good (unprocessed) meat, your body also learns to process fat well.

By eating fat we do not mean chips and deep-fried snacks. They may be fried in fat, but they consist mainly of carbohydrates and contain less fat than you might think. What they do contain, moreover, is processed fat from the factory, which your body digests less well than plant-based fats or the fat from fish and good meat.

It also helps not to take a sugary drink such as AA Drink or a shake with fruit sugars after training, but proteins and fats instead. That way you force your body to draw on those nutrients after training and it becomes increasingly used to doing so.

So if, as an athlete, you want to get your body out of sugar burning, you can steer this from your plate. It is important, though, to make a sustainable choice. You cannot do one thing one week and something else the next in the hope that something will happen. Only when you structurally choose a way of eating will you experience the benefits for your sporting performance and your daily life.

Is sugar bad? No, sugar is not unhealthy by definition. If you take it at the right moments from the right sources, it is good for you. What applies to virtually all nutrients applies to sugar as well: what matters most is how you consume it, how much and at what moment. Eating well starts with eating consciously.