The Role of Sugar in The Body
Ok, so contrary to popular belief, the primary role of sugar in the body is NOT to be stored as fat.
When I say sugar, I mean the carbohydrates that you consume through your nutrition that break down into the useable form of glucose (sugar).
Carbohydrate Breakdown:
In general, when you consume carbohydrates, enzymes in the mouth start to break them down. Further breakdown occurs in the small intestine.
When these carbohydrates are broken down into sugar (the ones that didn’t start as sugar that is), these monosaccharides (sugar) have many purposes in the body. First, your body will convert any fructose or galactose monosaccharides into glucose, which is what your body can actually use.
Now What?
Contrary to what many fitness “gurus” will tell you, often telling lies that fit their agenda, glucose does not just turn into fat. That’s right, you do not need to avoid carbohydrates like they are the plague.
Glucose prefers to do one of 3 things prior to getting stored as fat. They will either be stored in the liver as glycogen, stored in the muscles as glycogen, or circulate in the bloodstream for when they are needed.
THEN if there are excess carbohydrates, your body will turn them into triglycerides (fat), that can be stored in adipose (fat) tissue.
Doesn’t This Gain Fat?
Now you might be thinking, ok but won’t there be a lot of leftover sugar to be stored as fat? This will depend on a variety of things. There might be leftover, but you also need to remember that your body is not just consuming a constant flow of carbohydrates and therefore it is not always getting new glucose.
Your body has many functions that it needs to fulfill and it may very well need to dip into fat stores to produce energy if there is not enough available carbohydrates for the task at hand.
Just because some carbohydrates get stored as fat does not mean they permanently stay as fat. There is a purpose for that fat that leads to it to being burned/metabolized.
Now, if your rate of fat storage exceeds your rate of fat metabolism, then you would have an overall gain in body fat. However, this overall gain in body fat is not a direct result of carbs. It is a direct result of overconsuming calories, typically carbohydrate and fat calories.
So the only way carbohydrates lead to actual fat gain is if you consume excess amounts of them. Carbs themselves do not magically gain body fat just because they are carbs.
The End:
The end. Got questions or comments? Leave them in the comment section below!
Here are some other articles that may be beneficial for your knowledge!
Until Next Time,
Kohl Johnson
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