In this solo episode, Kierstin is tackling the age-old question: is sugar in fruit good or bad for you?
We’ll discuss the difference between natural and added sugars, how fruit sugars affect your body, and how much sugar petite women should be eating while busting some common myths and revealing expert insights along the way.
So whether you’re a fruit lover or skeptic, tune in for a fun and informative discussion about the sweet stuff in your favorite produce!
Links
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Transcription
Hello and welcome back to the funsized podcast. My name is Kierstin and it’s just me today coming at ya with a short and sweet Solo episode. I feel like it’s been a hot minute since I’ve done a solo episode. There’s just been a lot of new things happening here at Funsized. I feel like I’ve been saying that for a while now but things are just constantly changing all the time it feels like and the only way to keep up is to try and do new things.
Anyway, A couple of weeks ago, I polled my audience on instagram stories asking what are some things you are tired of hearing in the fitness and nutrition industry. Some of the answers went like “I’m tired of hearing that lifting doesn’t make females look manly – it’s 2023, I think we have enough evidence” and I’m tired of hearing about “cutting out entire food groups.” But the one thing that came up quite a few times was about sugar. More, specifically, ya’ll said your are tired of hearing that you should be avoiding fruit because of the sugar. So here I am, with another 20 minute podcast episode about the topic you can’t stand to hear another second about – just kidding, well kinda. What I want to do is debunk this myth but also help you understand why this myth even came about in the first place.
Because here’s the weird twisted truth… almost all of these quote rules in the fitness and nutrition world do actually stem from a real chunk of science. The problem is that someone takes that little nugget and exaggerates it into something extreme OR it get’s lost in translation. – which I think is what happened with this whole fruit sugar thing. It’s like a game of telephone. Remember that when we were kids. Everyone whispers what they thought they heard to the next person and by the end of the chain it’s usually not what the first person said.
Intermittent fasting is a fantastic example of this. Is there science that proves it works? Absolutely, I would never argue against science. But that doesn’t mean EVERYBODY would benefit from IF and it also doesn’t mean that anyone needs to fast EVERYDAY. Somehow, those nuggets of truth were stretched to the extreme. And now you have everyday people believing they have to do this extreme thing – when really you don’t have to go to such extreme lengths. Anyway, that’s enough of that. Basically all I’m saying is humans like to glorify.
But is sugar really that bad? Like everything else, the dose makes the poison. Our bodies certainly don’t need a lot of it. The average recommendation is about 40g a day. But for petites I like to lean towards 30-35g. We all know that too many processed sugars will impact our health by way of cavities, type II diabetes, weight gain and cardiovascular disease. We know this – it’s old news.
We also know that studies indicate that foods with sugars consumed in their natural sources (fruits, vegetables, grains, dairy products) also contain nutrients that our bodies need. We know natural sugar that is digested slower than added sugar which won’t cause that blood sugar spike and crash.
Is one source of sugar better for you than another?
Of course! The natural one is the obvious choice. But the body will view all added and natural sugars equally. So what matters most is how much you eat of both – combined.
And if you’re not paying attention. It can add up quickly!
Here’s an easy example. Let’s say you have a whole banana in your breakfast smoothie, a grande iced vanilla oat milk latte from starbucks at lunch, a midday snack of low-fat yogurt with granola and a sweet potato at dinner. Generally ALL healthy things right? Let’s do the math real quick. These numbers will depend on the brand and quantity you consume of course but That banana has approximately 14g sugar, latte has about 23g, yogurt has about 5g plus the granola has 6g give or take, and that sweet potato about 7g. That my friends is 55g of sugar in just those items! I’m sure there are other things you’ll eat throughout the day that have trace amounts too. and Do you remember what I said before? 30-35g is generally the sweet spot for my petite clients.
Yeah, the first thing I would recommend here is to reduce the added sugars first which is that latte. You could easily do a sugar free vanilla instead and that would cut off 13g which brings us to 42. Then I would look at the next big place you’re having sugar. In this case, it is the banana. Does that mean you should remove it entirely? No, not necessarily. The thing about bananas is that they pack a punch – even just doing half a banana would still give you that super flavorful and thick consistency that you’re looking for so if you do that it’s 7g less sugar which brings you down to 35. Gee look at that.
So it’s not that fruit sugar is bad – it’s that you have to look at the entire day as a whole.
One of my VIP clients recently had this huge realization. Before working with me she couldn’t figure out how she had so many health concerns and couldn’t lose weight because she genuinely felt that she eats healthy foods. Just like the example I just mentioned. Even her friends and co-workers have commented things like “you always eat so healthy” but what she’s learned after seriously tracking her intake, actually weighing her foods, and trying to meet her assigned macros is that she might eat all the healthy things, but if they’re not in the right balance, it’s still obsolete and is not going to get her the results she’s looking for. So yes, fruit is healthy, sugar from fruit is healthy, but even if the only carbs you’re eating is fruit, those sugars are going to add up and your days will look unbalanced… So I would definitely argue that I’d say you could do better and reach your goals by eating less fruit. THAT is where this stigma comes from. And it gets so lost in translation.
Again, the sugar in fruit is not bad. You don’t need to eliminate it. But based on everything else you put into your body, the goals you have, and how your body is responding, you may need to reduce it. That’s all.
I hope that this helps you understand sugar better and I hope that you find ways to keep that fruit in your diet because it’s yummy and yes, it’s good for you.
If you have any questions about this topic, or any others, let me know and it might just become the next topic for an episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a positive rating and review on apple podcasts. Anyone who leave a review during the month of march will get a free fun sized muscle tank as a small token of appreciation. And if you’re listening to this on Spotify, there will be a fun poll and a question at the end of each episode including this one so if you have 5 seconds, I’d love if you could engage and let me know what ever it is that I asked. That’s all for today. Thanks again for listening and as always I’ll catch ya in the next episode!
