Rupert Drew

Just jumping on the trend like the speedy boy I am

Now, there’s every chance GPT was just blowing smoke up my arse. 🤣

Honestly, I think it’s pretty bang on.

When I hear fellow trainers say things like sugar is toxic, or act like all you need to do is cut out sugar if you want to be healthy and lose weight, it really gets me thinking about how much influence that narrative still has. Not just on the general public, but on professionals who are supposed to know better.

Because we know it’s not just one singular thing.

We know this. We’ve studied this. We’ve monitored this.

And I think a lot of the time it’s because it’s easier to blame one thing. It’s easier to simplify the problem and point the finger at that. But we’ve been doing that for years, and people still keep running into the same issue, because the issue was never just the one thing they were blaming in the first place.

It was the myriad of other things.

S**t sleep.
Low movement.
Sitting on your arse all day.
Poor planning.
Lack of nutritional knowledge.
Your food environment.
Your beliefs around food.
The way you look at yourself.
The way you grew up around food.
The things people said to you.
Using food for comfort because it soothed some of the negative feelings you were going through.

It’s all sorts of reasons that end up driving a calorie surplus, and that calorie surplus is what drives weight gain.

And of course, if we’re stuck around the same weight for a long time and finding it difficult to lose, then yes, we’re not in a calorie deficit. But that’s still a simplified way of looking at it.

The more useful question is: what is driving that maintenance or that surplus in the first place?

What behaviours are driving it?
And what is influencing those behaviours?

That’s the bit we should be looking at.

Not sugar per se.

Sugar can be one part of it.
But it is not the sole reason why people struggle to lose weight.