The Top 3 Exchanges (Part 3)

“Better Health Begins At The Cell.” -Dr. Bill Cole

(If you have or suspect you might have thyroid related problems go to ColeClass.com and watch the short video (about 23 minutes) that I made for you. It’s free… You don’t even have to give me your email.)

Hey guys, we are here for part three of our short series here on changing your foods from the bad ones to the good ones, what we call in my practice our basic diet. Our three exchange diet. If you remember in the first blog post, we talked about getting rid of bad fats for good fats. In the second post, we talked about exchanging your bad protein, or meats, for your good protein. Today, we’re going to talk about the hardest of the three to change for everybody, and that is sugar.

Look guys, in 1900, the average American family is estimated to have consumed only about 5–10 pounds of processed sugar per family per year. I try to teach in my workshop is in your mind’s eye, think of 1 or 2 five pound bags of sugar. Today the average American, not family, the individual American consumes between 120–150 pounds of sugar per person per year.

When we say sugar, we’re not talking about just the white stuff that you can see, that we use out of our sugar jar. We’re talking about stuff that’s hidden in our food. It can come in a lot of different disguised ways. If you read ingredients, you’ll see sugar. You’ll see brown sugar. You’ll see dextrose, maltose, fructose, any of these words that end in “-ose”. We will see high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup. I mean, the list goes on. Some foods have many different sugars in them. That’s where we’re getting the majority of this.

We get tons of people. They’ll say, “I don’t even use sugar,” but they’re not really aware of what’s inside of the foods that they’re buying from the grocery store. In addition to sugar, the other thing is going to be refined grains. Understand that these refined grains, like pasta, like white rice, like white bread, when they touch your lips, four seconds later they begin to break down into sugar in your body. There’s really no difference. Now what’s the problem with sugar?

Well, besides the fact that it’s addictive? I joke about this at my workshop that in my 34 years, over 10,000 patients, I have yet to see the person who comes to me telling me that they crave vegetables. Now, we might love vegetables, but if I tell somebody you’ve got to stop eating vegetables for 30 days, I promise you not one of them would have a problem. They might miss them. When you tell somebody that they’ve got to get off of these carbs, these sugars, these refined grains, what do you think the reaction to that is? You can just see their countenance drop. They start to immediately question whether they can do it because we are addicts in this country. We are addicted to sugar. It’s unnatural. It’s not supposed to be that way. That addiction is a major problem.

What it does to our bodies also is a major problem. We know that these refined carbohydrates, these sugars, are an anti-nutrient. What they do is they will rob your body of nutrients. The little bit that they might provide for us is far superseded by the fact that they rob our tissues of nutrients just to be able to process these things that we have consumed that are so bad for our health.

The other thing is that when you consume these refined carbohydrates, it raises insulin and leptin levels in the body. They are both hormones. Whenever they are raised consistently by over consuming these refined carbohydrates, we become desensitized to them. We become resistant to these hormones.

When you become resistant to insulin, you enter into pre-diabetes. Your sugar levels are rising. When you become resistant to leptin, and girls this should hit home for a lot of you, you simply will lose the ability to burn fat for fuel. Meaning you become a fat storer. Fat begins to accumulate on your body. No matter how much you exercise, no matter how little you eat, you’ll find weight loss to be in futility, no pun intended. These things are things we absolutely have to eliminate from our diet. They cause disease. They’ve been linked to all kinds of diseases, besides diabetes, besides obesity, heart disease, even things like dementia. Alzheimer’s is the fastest growing disease in our society today. There is a strong link between these refined carbohydrates, the damage that they do to our brain, and our ability for our brain cells to function normally.

What we tell our patients is that when you’re going to buy grains, for instance, you need to look on the label and see that it is a whole grain. It should have the word “whole wheat”. Wheat flour is not whole wheat. People are tricked by that. They’ll look at bread that is brown, which has been dyed by the way to be brown, and on the label, it’ll say “wheat flour.” That’s not whole wheat. That’s a refined grain. They just made the bread look like it’s whole grain, but it isn’t. Look for the words “whole wheat.”

Stone ground, that’s another thing that you can look for, or sprouted. One of my favorite brands of bread out there today is Ezekiel 4:9, just like the Bible verse. Normally if a grocery store or a health food store is carrying it, it’s going to be in the freezer section. It doesn’t have the same preservatives in it. So, it won’t last as long. What the heck? That’s why it’s healthy. It’s a darker, hearty type bread that our ancestors used to use and it is sprouted. So, you’re going to get maximum nutrition out of that.

There are other sprouted grain breads that you can find normally in health food stores. Some of the grocery stores are carrying it, but Ezekiel 4:9 is one that I recommend for my patients. Then, the thing is, in terms of sugar, we want to get away from processed sugar.

If you need sweeteners, the thing that we recommend is going to be raw honey. That’s going to be unfiltered, unpasteurized. Raw honey with all of its available nutrients that God put in from the beginning. Then, also we would tell you to use Stevia. It’s not completely natural, but it comes from a natural plant. Most people can tolerate it quite well. It does not cause an increase in insulin or leptin increase in the body. You’ll avoid that particular danger there also. Also, there is another sugar, called xylitol, which I can’t personally use because it upsets my stomach. It’s birch sugar. A lot of people tend to be okay with it, though. That’s something that you can look at also but in small amounts. You don’t wanna overdo any of that stuff.

Then, when it comes to artificial sugars, you want to avoid them completely. Guys, when I’m talking about 120–150 pounds per person per year in this country, that doesn’t include artificial sugars. All of the aspartames and the Equals and all. Those things are just terrible. A lot of them are neurotoxins. They will really damage our nerves. They also negatively impact your brain function because they can be neurotoxins.

On top of that, we know that they blunt the hormone leptin, which is your fat burning hormone that I just talked about. They will blunt the effect of leptin in the body, and so, what we’re finding in the research is that the people who consume these artificial sugars like Diet Cokes, thinking it’s gonna help them lose weight, in essence, does the complete opposite. It stops their weight loss and makes them really ineffective at burning fat. On top of that, it causes them to crave sugar even more. There you have it. Those are our three exchanges. They’re pretty basic.

Think about it. You’re just going to get rid of your bad fats for good fats. That’s what we call a lateral shift. There’s not a big change that needs to happen. You’re really not even gonna notice it. The second thing is the same. It’s going to be bad protein for good protein. You’re really not going to notice it. It might cost you a little bit more, but you get what you pay for. Then, the other thing is going to be the harder thing, which is gonna be getting rid of sugar.

Here’s what we tell people. Five days. If you can just start in your mind, five days. Peddle to the metal. You’re going to eliminate these sugars. You need to be really strict with this because in my experience even a little bit of sugar is going to keep you an addict.

If you want to break the cycle, give yourself five days. Some people, it’s gonna be a little bit more. Keep going because normally it takes maybe three weeks for people to kick that sugar habit. Then you’ll see your cravings decrease. Once your cravings are down, guess what? You are in control. No longer is this a battle of willpower.

Guys, every one of us is going to lose if it’s a battle of our will. Ultimately, we will succumb. This has to be a natural thing, like with our ancestors. They did not get up in the morning, turn to their spouse, and say, “Geez. I don’t know if I can eat like this anymore.” It’s what they did. They didn’t have these unnatural cravings the way that we do. They also didn’t have these unnatural diseases that we are seeing in our society in epidemic proportions. So much of it related to what we’re doing diet wise.

I hope this series helped you. Institute these three things.

Take care, guys. God Bless.