A 95% sugar or simple carb diet will heal as many issues and produce as much weight loss as a high-fat, keto diet.

Yes, you read that correctly. A near-exclusive diet of sugar, plain sugar, and sugar products can reverse metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and all the other cardio-metabolic conditions we see improve with a high-fat, insulin-friendly keto diet.

However, I have yet to find it successful in the long run as it needs a much higher and more strict adherence than the other end of the spectrum. 

I choose to try and parallel the metabolic state the body activates while in 100% control of the diet. AKA, the fasting metabolism.

That said, the two extremes work, but they are not the same.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but moderation will kill me.

What makes sugar dangerous? And don’t take this post as saying sugar isn’t dangerous, but it needs other factors.

Dietary sugar consumed in a high insulin-producing diet or in combination with moderate fat will destroy your health, cause uncontrollable, unpredictable, and unwanted weight gain, and stop you from losing weight when you try.

Sugar in liquid form doesn’t get digested. It gets absorbed directly. That’s a problem.

Sugar in a power form will cause an unnatural hyperinsulin response. Combined with the actual sugar in the food or ingredient, it will drive fat production regardless of calories. 

Unfortunately, the fat that is made is in the liver and forms body fat, causing metabolic dysfunction and weight gain.

The same applies to any food or ingredient made from or with a powder, such as flour from any source, protein powder, meal mixes, sugar, etc.

The issue with this delivery system is the particle size. Similar to sugar in liquid form, the sugar is refined into tiny particles that cause issues in two ways:

• The sugar is absorbed quickly and directly.
• The powder (whether still a powder or mixed in a liquid or made into bread, etc.) will cause insulin hypersecretion.

When sugar is consumed as the only nutrition in a diet, as in a 95% sugar diet, it maintains one specific metabolic pathway and produces a healthy response.

When both sugar and fat are consumed together, a second pathway for fat is stimulated, and the two conflict and cause the system to go haywire, resulting in metabolic and weight issues.

Fat and protein are made of nutritional, fatty, and amino acids. The mix of the acid metabolism response and the carb (non-acid) metabolism response breaks down the system.

Mixing these two metabolic responses is an unnatural scenario that doesn’t occur with whole foods, or at least hasn’t during our genetic evolution. 

Only recently could we eat foods together that would simultaneously cause both of these responses. and we just are not designed to eat that way, resulting in problems like metabolic stress and weight gain.

This deadly combination makes a doughnut a perfect metabolic dirty bomb, for example—fat, flour, and sugar.

Keep them separated!

If you want to continue eating a mixed diet, it will serve you best to keep your plant and acid-based foods (protein and fat) separate at each meal. 

If that’s too much to keep track of or plan, you can always do what I do when I eat: avoid plants, plant-based foods, and powders.

We can do better!

Dr. Don