Steviol Glucoside: What You Need to Know

Not everything delicious and sweet is evil for your health. There are healthy options provided by our good GOD and Creator.

Steviol Glycoside. This may be a new word for you and if you're looking for some easy no-diet slimming tips that allow you to enjoy sweets while getting fit, steviol glycoside may be it. It's supposed to be 150 times sweeter than table sugar--even more--but carries less calories. Finally, a good cheat for those who crave sweets and those who love sweet coffee. But you need to know some things about it.

Photo by Emre on Unsplash.

Let's start with the good news. Simply put, this sweetener is much better than white, refined sugar, or perhaps all the other sugars available. If you're diabetic, ask your doctor about it to be doubly safe, but a lot of studies and natural health experts say it's safe even for folks with blood sugar problems--because it's not sugar. It's a non-sugar sweetener. But we don't want to just take their word for it. Ask your medical diabetes expert. 

If you're simply watching your blood sugar levels and want to avoid spikes from what you eat, but otherwise you're healthy, you can try steviol glucosde as sweetener, but do not overuse it. It's not designed to be abused. Everything in excess is bad for the health. Don't get used to sweeteners, even with Stevia, that's including coco sugar and monk fruit. Use as little as possible and as seldom. Some people crave for sweets even with their coffee and fruit juices. DON'T. It's much better to tame your taste buds and train it to prefer unsweetened preferences. Drink pure unsweetened, black coffee now and then.

Even if you use stevia, the sweet sensation tickling your taste buds sends a signal to the brain which might detect it as "sugar" and cause some blood-sugar spike, though minimal. What we don't want is the body getting used to these spikes which may create inflammation. Use stevia or other natural sweeteners as little as possible. Or don't often use them. Better if you eliminate your need for sweet flavors. But again, we don't want you to sacrifice needlessly and forfeit yourself of the good life via good food. Use stevia now and then.

Here's the bad news. Stevia may cause side effects like diarrhea. So if you note watery changes in your stool, use it sparingly and not regularly. This is why I prefer unsweetened coffee. If I want some sweetness in my coffee and I'm out of the house, I use brown sugar to avoid emergencies to the restroom. Real dark brown sugar is organic and is considered healthy if you don't have blood sugar problems. Better if you have sugarcane jaggery or gur, which is unrefined, unprocessed but cooked, thick sugarcane juice, known locally as "panucha."

Better yet, make it a habit to drink fresh ginger tea to counteract your sweets intake. I put in some fresh turmeric, too. As I use steviol glycoside sparingly, I also love drinking ginger tea and green tea, sometimes a mix of both. They give you all sorts of health benefits, normal blood sugar and blood pressure levels among them. In the few times when I have to eat sweet food or desserts I follow up with ginger, turmeric and green tea later in the day, just to play safe.

BTW, steviol glycoside comes from stevia leaves which are dried and crushed into powder form. Aside from being a sweetener alternative and sugar replacement, it acts as an antioxidant and delays the degradation of your Vitamin C. Micro components of stevia also give anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor health effects, among others. Source

Here are guidelines to observe when disciplining your sugar consumption:

1. Train your tongue to forget its sweet cravings.
2. Get used to sour and bitter tastes and love them. I love pure kalamansi and ampalaya.
3. Bear in mind that white sugar is bad. It's not food and has no nutritional benefits.
4. If you must put sugar in your food or drink, use a small amount of real, dark brown sugar.
5. Don't get used to stevia, though it's a healthy alternative to sugar.
6. Never drink softdrinks or soda or unnatural fruit juices.
7. Seldom drink natural fruit juices. Except for berries, they're high in sugar.
8. Beware of food you didn't prepare yourself. Most foods are cooked with sugar, either for taste or as preservative. Adobo, for instance, is so good with vinegar and a little soy (soy sauce has sugar, by the way). But some folks add lots of sugar (though they always say, "add some sugar," you can be sure "some" there is really a lot). 
9. If you need dessert, opt for unsweetened jelly or those with less sugar, like guyabano fruit.
10. But don't be too strict. Treat yourself now and then to small slices of sweets. You have to enjoy life.

Always remember the no-diet slim rule: never overdo anything. Be balanced. Pray! Consult your doctor always before trying anything "healthy." And meditate God's Word in the bible. You won't go wrong. 

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This is Fattening More Than Anything Else

We think carbs, sugar, and fatty food make us fat. Well, yes but not entirely. It often depends on this one seemingly innocent, unnoticeable factor that happens to us everyday. Some people are less affected than others, and those seriously affected find it really hard to lose weight and rid belly, flabby fat in spite of diets and workouts.

It goes like this. This fattening culprit raises up cortisol levels in the body which increases insulin levels, among other things, which unfortunately lowers our blood sugar levels. This means our food craving goes up (lower blood sugar makes us crave for food) and the real bad news is, our appetite looks for carbs and sweets.

But this is just the tip of the ice berg.

What we should worry about (oops, worrying is bad) is the way this culprit also slows down our metabolism. When metabolism is slow our bodies find it hard to burn fats and calories. Especially fats. This is why regardless of what kind of diet and workouts we have, we remain fat--or even grow fatter. Sometimes, even if we eat so little.

You know the culprit? You guessed right. It's prolonged overstress.

Listen:

A 2017 study showed a connection between the stress hormone cortisol and having overweight. It also found that higher cortisol levels are associated with carrying that extra poundage in the waist — what we sometimes refer to as visceral fat.

That study adds to an already strong association between long-term stress and unhealthy weight gain. A 2015 study found that our metabolism is slower when we’re stressed out, while a 2007 study found that high cortisol levels may actually enhance the feeling of satisfaction we experience when eating fatty, sugary foods. [Source]

Not all stresses are bad. We need healthy stress to do urgent tasks or surmount difficulties, like learn how to drive, beat deadlines, accomplish new things, do better at things, beat a former athletic feat, speak to an audience or give reports for the first time, things like that. These are healthy stresses because they're short term and give you euphoria after, which relaxes and not food based.

Distress is different, more so if prolonged. It's there everyday for long periods, like a distressful job you do each day for a year or so. Or distressful business. Even church ministry (no wonder why some pastors are overweight or have protruding tummies). Prolonged distress leads to depression and anxiety, which make matters worse, especially for your metabolism and ravenous appetite. 

Not to mention deadly diseases like heart failure and high blood pressure. It's extended distress or too much prolonged bad stress. Remember that.

I've come across real fitness and health experts say all kinds of food (I mean real food, not artificial or processed) are okay and won't give you any weight problems. It's not the food we eat but the unnecessary stressful lifestyle we choose to live, thinking overstress means productivity in career and life. 

But I see it differently today. Because resting and relaxing has become a lost art and capability to many, we don't see anymore how being really productive means being able to really rest and relax again after hard works. Often, even taking vacations--which is supposed to be relaxing--makes us overstressed due to the vacation "schedules" we make that we believe will make our vacations meaningful and (again) productive. 

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Life After Intermittent Fasting and OMAD

After about 5 months of intermittent fasting and OMAD (which I did gradually at the onset), I lost weight and slimmed down steadily, like a gradual miracle. I mean, nothing else worked before. But I began looking alarmingly skinny and that gave me some concern. I wanted to get to my ideal weight, which is 160 pounds, not look malnourished. So I sought more medical health experts on the subject. And here's what I got.

Photo by Intenza Fitness on Unsplash.

It's wise to slowdown a bit after you reach your ideal weight (mine is 160 pounds) and start eating as usual, like 3 times a day on certain days. I did it 3 times a week--on the other two days I fasted intermittently and ate a meal once a day, meaning a lavish lunch with a snack in the afternoon. Much later, I fasted and OMADed once a week.

But even on these back-to-usual meals I ate less carbs and more fibers and protein. 

The result?

I started building up a lean, athletic body with enough muscle mass for my kind of sport activity, which is Filipino martial arts (though it's not really a sport). I enjoy a flat tummy which I more easily sculpt into slightly ripped abs. Just slightly, though, I hasten to reiterate. But it's a major improvement since prior to intermittent fasting and OMAD, I could not reduce my bulging, flabby tummy no matter what workout I did. I was getting hopeless, depressed and losing self confidence. 

I discovered how you can start hating yourself once you fail at things that really matter to you, which in my case was getting fit. Fitness, of course, is but a tiny speck in the vast world of what is called "self." There are other things as important (if not more) than physical fitness when talking of self improvement, but for some reason a flabby tummy made me feel like it was the end of my world. Nothing more to talk about.

But with the desperation and anxiety came the dogged stubbornness to look for a remedy, any remedy--because deep down you know God has installed a success mechanism somewhere deep in your personality system. All you have to do is push a button there and presto! At least, that was how I felt and made myself cope up with the hidden discouragement I had.

The mechanical button was the will to do OMAD.

I feel much better now with my body weight somewhere near the ideal and my flabby tummy almost gone and on it's way to being ripped. The best part is that, being done with too much flabbiness, I eat normally now and enjoy the food I want. My only problem is the occasional slight bloating in the afternoon that makes my tummy a bit protruded, but unlike before. All I need is to fix my tummy gas issue. And anyway, what matters most is my revived love for self, especially how my medium-size shirts fit perfectly on me. 

This is the wonder of it all. After getting my ideal weight plus keeping up with regular workouts, my body keeps fit and slim no matter if I eat three times a day and get a bit liberal with carbs and sweets. And that's not to mention afternoon snacks. The regular workouts keep the gains from intermittent fasting and OMAD intact despite my liberal eating. The metabolism burns constantly, even while I'm asleep. Yes, there's life after intermittent fasting and OMAD.

As fitness experts and science say, my body is on constant fat burning even during zero activity. I've heard this even from medical doctors who are in the know, who maintain that intermittent fasting with OMAD plus regular workouts eventually produce constant fat-burning effects.

There's life after suffering for 4 to 5 months. You can enjoy no-diet slim and just eat.

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Let Your Body Eat Your Body Fats

It's everybody's dream to have belly fats melted and gone forever without recurring--and with little to almost zero workouts. Thank God there's a natural way to get this done, if we let the natural processes of the body work freely. It's called autophagy. God put that in our body system to help us keep in shape.

Photo by Miriam Alonso: https://www.pexels.com.

But technology and modernization, used wrongly, messed all that up so now we get extra weight than we need and gather belly fat around the tummy. We eat a lot of junk food. Junk everyday--from breakfast to lunch to diner and in-between snacks. Not to mention the amount of hidden sugar in processed food, plus the sugar we add in them. Then we disrupt natural sleep. 

Then we wonder why we have belly fat that won't go away despite our rigid physical workouts.

So, why not try God-given autophagy? Here's how the Cleveland Clinic site puts it:

Autophagy allows your body to break down and reuse old cell parts so your cells can operate more efficiently. It's a natural cleaning out process that begins when your cells are stressed or deprived of nutrients. Researchers are studying autophagy's role in potentially preventing and fighting disease.

Moreover, Cleveland Clinic adds:

Each (body) cell contains multiple parts that keep it functioning. Over time, these parts can become defective or stop working. They become litter, or junk, inside an otherwise healthy cell.

Autophagy is your body’s cellular recycling system. It allows a cell to disassemble its junk parts and repurpose the salvageable bits and pieces into new, usable cell parts. A cell can discard the parts it doesn’t need.

Autophagy is also quality control for your cells. Too many junk components in a cell take up space and can slow or prevent a cell from functioning correctly. Autophagy remakes the clutter into the selected cell components you need, optimizing your cells’ performance.

Using my layman's terms, it is how your body recycles or "discards" (or "eats up") bad cells ("junk parts") to get them out of your system. Aside from "eating up" fat cells and burning them as fuel, your body also flushes out defective cells that can lead to serious illnesses. Thus, your body can eat your body fats and dysfunctional cells (like cancer cells) and flush them out.

It begins with intermittent fasting. In my case, I don't eat from 6pm to 11 am the next day. That's no food 17 hours a day. Then I have a 6 to 7-hour food window when I eat low carbs with extremely minimal sugar intake (often it's zero sugar). Usually, I allow less than 1 gram of sugar. This means, my intermittent fasting allows me to I eat enough lunch and some snacks in the afternoon. But that's it. It's fasting the rest of the day.

What do I usually eat? Natural nutritious food rich in fibers, protein and fats. Definitely NO PROCESSED FOOD.

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When you starve your body of carbs and sugar, your metabolism goes crazy looking for other stuff to burn in your body and soon turns against your body fats. So with less carbs and sugar, and while working out or moving around, the minimal carbs you ate burn easily (the body always burns carbs first before it burns fats). 

After burning the few carbs, your metabolism goes after stored fats. This is why we eat less carbs, even zero carbs from time to time if you can, so your body can immediately go after the fats stubbornly clinging to organs, your belly, and elsewhere. If you keep eating carbs, your metabolism merely burns them all day long and never gets a chance to burn your body fats. Thus, no matter how hard you workout, your belly fat stays there.

Then Go Back to No-Diet Slim

Now that I have hit my ideal weight, I go easy on intermittent fasting. I just eat anything now. I add a little bit of carbs now and then, sometimes allow myself some sweet treats, sometimes eat two meals a day, but I make sure to intersperse this with one-meal-a-day intermittent fasting--or at least have it 2 times a week. Once you hit your goal, go back to no-diet slim. Don't get too slim or malnourished. But always workout. A lean muscular body regularly worked out automatically burns fats even while you sleep. Will talk about this later.

My wife lost 26 pounds in about 6 months, from 160 to 134 pounds recently.

I achieved athletic and lean muscularity plus strength, being able to do 50 push-ups in 3 sets, or 35 push-ups in 4 sets, weight training, jogging and walking with other leg workouts. That's besides my regular martial arts training. I can do all these energetically by GOD's grace at 62.

Staying away from carbs and sugars is a matter of discipline, the kind that needs strong backing from your power within. Yup, you have that power in you. To learn more about it, get my FREE e-book below.

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POWER FOR YOUR SOUL (mind, will and emotions). Though I'll appreciate a donation, this powerful e-book is yours with or without donation. Just email me at nodietslim@gmail.com and ask for the FREE E-book, "Your Power Within." You get an email back in about 30 seconds or less with a download link to the e-book. The email also contains my GCash number for your donation of only P50 or P100 or whatever amount you have in mind. You also get short inspirational NON-Joiner emails.