This Mom Ate A Ton Of Sugar, Gained 20 Pounds, And Is On A Mission To Lose It All – SELF

Instagram fitness stars Sharny and Julius Kieser gained weight to put themselves in other people’s shoes—and they did it by eating sugar. What’s more, they say the sugar made them so much hungrier than usual. Here’s why.

Instagram fitness stars build their brands on, well, fitness. And you don’t have to look a certain way just to be fit. But in an effort to sympathize with just how hard it can be to lose weight, one Australian power couple decided to purposely gain weight in an unhealthy way, then try to drop all of the excess pounds through exercise and healthy eating. Sharny and Julius Kieser, creators of the FitMum and FitDad workouts, got the idea after gaining a little weight when their son was born and realizing fitness professionals can’t usually relate to their clientele. 

“We were looking at all the fitness people and thinking, ‘What do they know about being fat, about being parents, about being addicted to food?’” Julius told Us Weekly. “We wanted to get back in the trenches with our followers and live it up with them…really go through the pain of quitting junk, feeling like crap, and wanting to quit.”

To gain weight and alter their healthy eating habits, the couple turned to the sweet stuff. “We ate a lot of sugar, which opened up the hunger,” Julius says. “We had a ‘secret stash’ of chocolates, [cookies], and ice creams that we’d raid during the day…. We’d eat thousands of empty calories. After a few days it became addictive.” Within three months, Julius gained 40 pounds and Sharny gained 20—and it all started with sugar.

Although food addiction is not in fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manuel of Mental Disorders, eating too much sugar can create a vicious cycle of hunger, according to experts. “Eating a sugar-heavy diet doesn’t just supply loads of empty calories, it can literally make you hungrier,” Karen Ansel, R.D.N., author of Healthy in a Hurry: Simple, Wholesome Recipes for Every Meal of the Day, tells SELF. When you eat a lot of sugar, your blood sugar rises and your body responds by secreting insulin, a hormone that helps your cells take in glucose, which they use for energy. But the more sugar you eat, the more insulin your body needs to secrete. After that initial spike, your blood sugar eventually plummets, sending signals to your brain that there’s an energy shortage that you experience as hunger, says Ansel. 

This can happen even if you just ate, Alissa Rumsey, M.S., R.D., a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, tells SELF. “Since most foods that are high in sugar don’t fill you up, it’s easy to take in too many extra calories and gain weight,” she says.

The end result isn’t just more intense hunger levels and a different physical appearance, Marc Leavey, M.D., an internist at Baltimore’s Mercy Medical Center, tells SELF. Gaining too much weight from eating excess sugar—or other methods—can increase blood pressure and cholesterol, he says, which can lead to heart disease and diabetes, among other things. 

On the flip side, experts have concerns about losing weight too quickly. That can upset many of the normal mechanisms of the body which regulate blood pressure, blood sugar, and fluid and electrolyte balance, Leavey says. It can also have lasting effects on your ability to lose weight in the future and keep it off.

 

“It can mess with your metabolism, making it more difficult to lose weight in the long run,” Ansel says. When you lose weight, you lose fat and muscle, she explains. Muscle burns more calories than fat, so it helps keep your metabolism up. “Constant yo-yo dieting eats away at your muscle mass so your metabolism slows over the long haul, making it increasingly harder to lose weight with every attempt,” Ansel says. (She recommends losing weight slowly so that you can keep as much calorie-burning muscle as possible and also just stay grounded throughout the process.)

It’s freaky that sugar can change your health and weight  so much, but you don’t have to give it up entirely in order to avoid unnecessary side effects. Instead, Ansel recommends eating sweets after a well-rounded meal when you’re already feeling pretty satisfied. “You’ll eat much less that you would on an empty stomach, plus your meal’s protein, fiber, and fat will help slow down the release of sugars into your bloodstream,” she says.

Of course, some foods that aren’t sweets are packed with sugar as well. That’s why Beth Warren, R.D.N., founder of Beth Warren Nutrition and author of Living a Real Life With Real Food, tells SELF it’s a good idea to read labels and limit processed foods with high fructose corn syrup. And, if you’re going to eat something sugary, she recommends pairing it with a healthy fat and protein to help balance your blood sugar.

Most of all, if sweets are your main sugar source, just maintain control of your portions, says Rumsey. The flavor is the same, but your hunger—and your metabolism—will stay in check as a result.

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