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Hey there, welcome to episode 390 of the Find Your Food Voice podcast. I’m Julie Duffy-Dillon, registered dietitian and your host. Welcome to this mini session episode. What is a mini session? Well, this is an opportunity for you to just kind of have your ear to the door, listening in to what I would have discussed with clients when I was working with clients one-on-one.

And while this gives you a view of like the information or the education that I would have provided, of course it doesn’t replace individual work with a dietitian or a therapist. So just keep that in mind. This is a great opportunity for you to bring this information into a meeting you’re having with an in-person healthcare provider. So I’m excited to bring this particular episode that is kind of bonus that goes along with this week’s episode that released about Halloween and how to navigate candy discussions with kids. Should we use the switch witch? How do we do this? Especially if you’re struggling with your own complicated history with food and you probably don’t want to pass it on to your kids. How do you navigate all that? And I wanted to record an episode that includes why it’s okay to actually eat sugar.

And I would even go a step further and say, there is a place for sugar in healthy eating. Like it’s okay. And I’m going to give you three reasons why. And these are reasons again that I would have shared in a client session. And I hope you find it helpful. Along the way, just know over the next few weeks, we are going to be gearing up with some really exciting content. Some of it I’ve already recorded. So I know it’s really fun and kick ass.

And I can’t wait for you to be able to listen and be able to give us some feedback on what you think. But we will be back next week with a regular episode and a bonus episode that again, I’m just so excited for you to hear. But we are gonna get to today’s mini session episode in just a minute after a very quick sponsor break.

All right, welcome back. We are going to get started on three reasons why sugar actually is okay to eat.

Number one, this is something I would say for anything that you feel really scared to eat, something that makes you uncomfortable even thinking about having in your house, any food that you’re like, this is bad, I want you to remember something. Because no matter what the answer is with this food, it’s not gonna be the end all be all for your health. Our health is not determined by one meal or snack in a day, in a week, in a month, in a year, of many years. Do you get what I’m saying? Like we have many eating opportunities throughout every single day. And one of the food choices you have within one of those of many different eating opportunities, that isn’t gonna be the end all be all for your health. It’s not gonna be the end all be all for your blood sugar. It’s not gonna be the end all be all of your heart health. It’s like the whole big picture is what nutrition is all about.

something I want you to keep in mind, nutrition science is very unsexy. I know the headlines make it seem just so exciting and extreme, but what we know about nutrition science is that when it comes down to it, one food and that again, and one meal or snack is not gonna be the end all be all. It just doesn’t have that kind of power. Healthy eating is really this like summary of what you’ve eaten over the last couple of months.

and not what you just ate at your last meal. It just doesn’t work that way. Nutrition science is, again, it’s more of averages instead of exact amounts in a certain meal or snack. So keep that in mind when you are celebrating a holiday that includes extra sweets, maybe you are meeting up with a friend for a birthday and there’s gonna be cake and you’re wondering, should I actually eat this high sugar food? If you want to, yeah, go ahead.

It’s not gonna be something that’s gonna determine your health. All right, so number two, let’s get down into some more nitty gritty science. Because a lot of people will say, Julie, I shouldn’t eat this high sugar food because of its glycemic index number. So glycemic index, if you’ve never heard of this, I mean, I would say you don’t need to really look into it anyway, but you know, if you come across it, there is a way you can use it. And there is a way that I use it when I work with clients, especially

if they have high insulin levels or they have higher blood sugar or diabetes. Glycemic index is this type of way of studying how our body reacts to a certain food. And glycemic index and how it’s measured is it has an exact amount of that food. So they take 50 grams exactly of that food and they give 50 grams of that exact food to someone who hasn’t eaten. Like it has to be on an empty stomach.

Like it’s not with a meal. It’s not like you had a snack an hour ago. No, has to be on a completely empty stomach. And then blood sugar is measured over the next two hours. So again, useful information, but who eats candy corn in 50 gram increments on a completely empty stomach and then doesn’t eat anything for two whole hours?

That’s just isn’t how we eat candy corn. It’s not how I eat candy corn or black jelly beans. Yes, black jelly beans are my favorite. I will die on that hill mainly because I know you probably hate them and you’ll just give me all of yours. Anyway, how we eat food is normally like a part of a meal or a snack or we eat something that maybe has higher sugar content with it. And 30 minutes later, we may have something else.

So remember, a lot of the research that you read on sugar content and how it impacts blood sugar levels is using glycemic index, which is not really that user friendly because we eat food all as a part of other things. And glycemic index is not measuring that. When we eat, let’s say we have birthday cake after dinner and you maybe had chicken and a salad and you had some kind of pasta dish, you had that all together.

our body is not gonna have a spike in blood sugar like it would if you just had the cake by itself because it has all these other foods in there that make the digestion time a lot slower. Okay, so that brings us to number three. This is why sugar is okay. And this goes for anyone who has any blood sugar issues. So if you have diabetes or pre-diabetes or you’re concerned about diabetes or you have PCOS or insulin resistance. I live with insulin resistance myself. so some of these things that I’m gonna be telling you, I’ve also used as I’m managing my insulin resistance. So some of you may notice when you have something that’s higher in sugar, that you kind of feel sluggish afterwards. Some people call it a food coma. Maybe you get a headache or a migraine or you just don’t feel very well. This may be new to you because maybe when you’re a kid, you could eat a ton of candy or a bag of Doritos or something like that and you felt great. The way our body uses energy when we’re younger is just different because we’re doing these things like puberty and our brain is developing and all these things that we are only doing at that period of time. But then as we get older, our body just doesn’t need the same type of nutrition quickly. And it can kind of like scoot things around for how it needs it.

And if you are someone who does feel sluggish after eating candy, that doesn’t mean one, that you shouldn’t have eaten it. It doesn’t mean two, that you’re bad for eating it. All it means is you just got some data and this data is gold. This data is not something that you can get from a diet book or a meal planning sheet. This is your specific data from your body. This is feedback that’s letting you know how your body is managing, digesting. whatever you just ate. this is a part of the Find Your Food Voice book where I teach something called curious nutrition. Next time you eat something that’s higher in sugar and you feel that kind of sluggish feeling or you just don’t feel well, maybe you have a tummy ache, instead of going into that shame or blame spiral that diet culture has trained us to do, ugh, that is just not helpful. Instead, I encourage you to be curious about it. Curious nutrition is a tool that I teach in the Find Your Food Voice book that’ll be coming out in the spring. And again, this is your data. This is not something that any diet book could ever teach you. And instead of saying I’m bad for eating that, I encourage you to say, huh, I think I just got some new data. And what you may find are some common ways to navigate blood sugar and insulin management and still enjoying all the foods that you want to enjoy. So what I know to be true is if some people with blood sugar issues eat a higher sugar food, they may notice that sluggish feeling if they have it by themselves.

And if they have maybe a piece of cake at a snack and they happen to be really hungry as they were eating that snack, they may feel that sluggish feeling. But if they have that piece of cake, like I mentioned earlier, with a dinner and they had a bunch of other foods with it, especially foods with proteins and fats and fibers, and it helped your stomach to just slowly digest it instead of having it on an empty stomach, it probably feel great or at least neutral.

And so what curious nutrition data is trying to inform you is that it just wants you to have a way to navigate when and how to add certain foods into your life. If you eat a piece of cake and you feel sluggish, remember, you’re still not bad. It’s still not a bad food. You aren’t bad for eating it. You just are getting some data and you need that data. Like you kind of need to have this experience in order to know how to best fit foods in your life to help keep blood sugar at a lower level. So it’s kind of like, thanks, I’m glad I have this information now. So next time you feel that blah feeling, just remember, I’m not a bad person, I just got this data. And I hope you use it. I hope you use it to help you decide when you’re gonna add some high sugar foods.

if you say sometimes, screw it, I’m just gonna eat this high sugar food by itself because I’m hanging out with friends or because it looks really good or I’m hanging out with my grandma and this is like one of the few times I get to have her homemade cookies. Yeah, you eat it. It’s okay because something else I need to be true is that healthy eating includes pleasure and sugar provides pleasure. It provides that umph, that satisfaction. So remember, it’s okay to eat sugar. You may find that there are certain times a day or with certain foods that it feels the best for you. But remember, you’re never bad for eating a food that actually tastes really good. All right, I hope this helps. And I look forward to checking in with you next week with a new if you enjoyed this episode, would love it if you push subscribe or follow. However, you’re consuming this content right now and leave us a rating review. Comments always help too. So thank you in advance and until next time, take care.