How much added sugar is unhealthy if your goal is body composition ? How does relatively high sugar affect your health , training and gains ? Find out on today's weekend Q&A bonus episode . Welcome to the Whits and Weights podcast . I'm your host , philip Pape , and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger , optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition . We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement , metabolism , muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry , so you can look and feel your absolute best . Let's dive right in .
Speaker 1Hello and welcome to the special weekend Q&A edition of the Whits and Weights podcast , where we supercharge your Saturdays and Sundays with an answer to one burning question so you can put it into action this weekend . These questions are taken from the weekly Ask Philip thread in our free Whits and Weights Facebook community . If you're feeling overwhelmed by the endless amount of information and , let's be honest , misinformation online and just want a straight up answer without the jargon , that's what this free service is for . With the weekly Ask Philip thread , you can post a specific question relevant to your unique individual situation that week and have it answered live by me on Friday . If you'd like to experience it yourself , I invite you to use the link in the show notes to join the Whits and Weights Facebook group . It's totally free and you'll quickly find out what a positive and supportive community it is .
Speaker 1With that , let's get to today's Q&A . Why its question is intuition and general knowledge says it's not the quote unquote healthiest choice to fill your diet with a bunch of chocolate , sugar and other treats . But I'd like to understand more about why that's the case , especially when I have 320 grams of carbs and almost 3000 calories allotted to me on weekends . And what does that do for my body composition ? Given that I'm bulking , strength training and eating protein at optimal levels , can my carb choice make me fatter or create different results than if I eat mostly whole food or unprocessed carbs ? For example , for breakfast , lunch and dinner I'll generally eat oats , rice potatoes and occasionally wheat hamburger buns . For midday snacks I'll eat fruits or rice cakes . Over Christmas I got a lot of candy .
Speaker 1Looking at macro factor , I generally have 120 grams of sugar per day , 34 grams of added sugars . I understand it's okay in moderation , especially when I'm hitting all the other targets . But given I hit my carb target every day , how is relatively high sugar intake affecting my training and gains and there's some follow-ups here . But I'm going to focus on some of the aspects of your diet . So , first of all , the question about sugar 120 grams of sugar per day , 34 grams of added sugars and for anyone who wants to know how to figure that out , if you go into macro factor and if you don't use macro factor , start using it right away . What are you waiting for ? Use my code witzenweights all one word . It'll change your life . So in macro factor in the food log , if you tap on the macros at the top , you can see for different periods . You can see today , one week , one month , I think three months and one year . Something like that is different ranges , the average of all your macros and micros , including sugar and added sugar . So , for example , you said it's 120 grams of sugar per day . I think I get something like 100 a day .
Speaker 1Now , sugar comes from a lot of sources natural whole food sources , including fruit , and there's nothing wrong with fruit and you can pretty much have as much as you want . It also comes from other sources of carbs . Right and complex carbs , of course , have sugars in them . The added sugar is 34 grams . I think the American Heart Association for Men recommends limiting daily added sugars to 36 grams . I looked at it before I recorded here or went live . I think it's 36 . So , whether or not you agree with or want to follow government or association recommendations , you're still under that limit as well .
Speaker 1The simple answer to this is always going to be it depends on you and your biofeedback . How do you feel , how do you perform , and so on . Less , much more so than some of the myths we hold onto about carbs making you fat and having too much sugar making you fat and this and that . However , having said all that , if you have too much sugar in your diet , it's going to displace other things , of course , it's going to displace more nutrient-dense foods . Now , again , we're talking added sugars , because natural sugars are found in whole foods that have lots of nutrients . So we don't want to confound the two , and what I would do why it , of course is look at a given day that matches that profile and drill down into the meals that show the higher sugars and see where the natural sugars come from , just to take comfort in the fact that they are probably mostly coming from whole foods . And then the added sugars are maybe where the concern is , but the amount isn't that much .
Speaker 1I'm going to be honest A few things that you might be concerned about . Blood sugar regulation If you have a lot of added sugar , it's going to cause probably a more rapid blood sugar and insulin spike really any form of simple sugar and people are worried about this . People are worried about this in the context of fat gain from carbs , for example , your strength training . You are utilizing those carbs very effectively and I suspect that there's no issue there when it comes to metabolic disease and whatnot , and this is why I always talk about having more muscle and strength training , being so protective against those things . There's also the idea that too much sugar promotes fat gain , promotes visceral fat gain due to insulin driven fat storage pathways . Again , I think that's mitigated somewhat by a healthier lifestyle , by lots of activity , by lots of movement , and again , the added sugar amount you have is probably far less than what the average person walking around is getting , let alone people that have even more unhealthy lifestyles .
Speaker 1And there's some other trickier areas . There's the inflammatory response that could be caused by added sugars . I find any discussion of inflammation , cell inflammation , of gut micro and gut health kind of a mystery , and it's not just me . I think the general body of knowledge is in primitive stages right now when it comes to understanding of gut health , for example , and inflammation , and there's so much misinformation about inflammation which leads to recommendations for certain extreme diets . It's always do low carb or do carnivore because it's going to reduce inflammation .
Speaker 1We're not going to jump to those conclusions , but what I would say is , if you notice that you just feel more bloated , sluggish , you get brain fog , you get any sort of symptoms that are off from what is optimal for you and you want to experiment with just hey , I'm just going to get those candies out of my diet and replace them with other things like fruit , and see if there makes a difference , then great , some people , you're training so hard and you're lifting weights and you need all those carbs . Your body is just going to consume them as energy . Right , when you get them , it's going to help with your glycogen and you're going to move on and sit pretty . There's a reason that some old school bodybuilders ate gummy bears and things during and after the workout . That's what you want to do , but I'm also saying it may not be a big deal for you .
Speaker 1What's the other thing ? No , we talked about gut health and the gut microbiome . There is a theory that too much sugar causes quote unquote bad bacteria to be able to feed more and grow and displace the better bacteria . So this could affect not only digestion but all the things that the gut cascades to in your body , which is a pretty complicated subject . It's funny you bring this up because I did have Josh Deck on my show . His episode will be coming out , I want to say March 1st . It may be sooner than that , but I think that's what it is . It's all about that . The gut microbiome , gut health . We talk about sugar , we talk about these things .
Speaker 1Long story short , man . See how you feel . Is it causing any issues , any symptoms of any kind ? If you're feeling just as fine as you did with less sugar , it's probably fine for you . You're also within the AHA recommendation . If that makes you feel better , great . If you'd rather have more nutrient-tense foods and not so much candy , just displace them with other things that taste great instead of candy , and fruits are perfectly a good substitute . All right , man , hope that helps .
That's it for today's weekend Q&A bonus episode . Remember this is just a small part of the weekly Ask Philip live Q&A in the Wits and Weights Facebook group , which you can join totally free using the link in the show notes . I invite you to join us as we improve our health and physique together . Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights . If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits or Weights , please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode . Until then , stay strong .