Artificial Sweeteners: How they can be counter productive to your goals

Today I would like to hit on the importance of natural foods in our diet. Most important to me in this regard are eliminating artificial sweeteners from my diet.

"But, artificial sweeteners are good for me and allow me to eat and drink things with zero calories! It must be healthier!" you say.

While there is some benefit from the use of artificial sweeteners to combat obesity and diabetes, long term they can fundamentally change the way the brain registers sweets and actually achieve the opposite affect than that which was intended.

"How so?" you ask.

When we put something sweet into our mouths, it signals the brain with a checksum. The brain registers sweets incoming and because it associates sweets with calories which equal fuel, it is set to process them and limit their intake to reasonable amounts. Now when that sweetness hits our stomachs, the stomach sends a second checksum to the brain confirming the intake of sweets and also how much fuel or calories was received. The brain figures out how much is enough and either tells us MORE or to stop. So to illustrate this exchange:

Mouth to Brain: "Hey, we have sweet calories incoming, get ready."
Brain to Mouth: "Rodger that, prepping for incoming calories."
Stomach to Brain: "Sweets received, Calorie report is as follows: X calories delivered. How to proceed?
Brain to Stomach: "Direct X calories to Y parts of the body, store X calories in reserve (fat)."
Brain to Mouth: "Continue consuming sweets." or "No more sweets, needs met."

Now, when we start introducing artificial sweetener to this process, this start to go wrong.

The brain sees the sweets incoming. The stomach reports them as received, but now the stomach is reporting no calories. Over time the brain starts to associate sweets as no longer a calorie source and the body's natural limitations on our intake for sweets are fundamentally changed.

"But Nathan, how does this affect me?"

When your body stops associating sweets as a calorie vessel, it also stops naturally limiting our intake of sweet foods. Sweeteners seem to stimulate parts of the brain that produce pleasurable effects without stimulating those parts that make people feel full. Now that the brain no longer limits sweets due to caloric intake, the gates are set wide open.

So the next time we go to eat foods without artificial sweeteners, or even ones with them, the body stops telling us when enough is enough and we tend to over indulge in something that is not good for us. That bag of oreo's, chips, cookies, ice cream, soda, etc, etc. This unconsciously builds unhealthy habits of over eating over long periods of time.

It takes making conscious choices and actively watching and counting what we eat to change the habits we have developed  over the years. It was the hardest thing for me to do personally. I was taught to clean my plate and not leave left overs as a child. I love the taste of what I eat. By recognizing how my body works, I was able to change how it responded to what I was feeding it and it also allowed me to change how I fueled my body.

It has been 5 weeks since I started changing not only what I ate, but HOW I ate it. With a solid plan, small obtainable goals that lead to and end result, I have been able to set myself up for success and so can you!

If anyone has questions please feel free to comment. If you would like help setting up a plan and goals to meet your life style, leave a comment or contact me through Google+ or Facebook.com/HealthyVets

Various sources for this information and additional information about artificial sweeteners:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=artificial-sweeteners-confound-the-brain
http://www.drbriffa.com/2008/06/20/artificial-sweetener-fails-to-fool-the-brain/
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-sugar-free-but-at-what-cost-201207165030
http://www.livestrong.com/article/163629-effects-of-artificial-sweetener-on-the-human-brain/
http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_brain_damage.htm