This report from 60 Minutes is scary and accurate.  Watch it.  It’s important.

For about two years now, I’ve been trying to have 15 grams of sugar or less every day.  It’s been a difficult transition and I haven’t always been perfect, but I changed my way of thinking because of coming across research such as the ones outlined in the above video and reading books like The Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise.

It made sense to me because of what we already knew from every diet book in the last two or three decades.  Everything from The Atkins Diet to The Zone outlined that fat wasn’t making us fat, it was excess carbohydrates (which are basically complex sugars) that were being converted into fatty acids that get absorbed by our fat cells making us fatter and more prone to disease. (including diabetes, heart disease and cancer).

I know this personally from growing up in a very healthy home where we were not allowed to have sugar, and becoming a teenager who rebelled in small ways by sneaking Reese’s Peanut Butter cups on the way to school.  The dynamic combination of sugar and puberty caused me to gain weight and I’ve been struggling with my weight ever since.

There is a theory that our bodies were genetically predisposed to hold onto fat in order to withstand famine or long winters where hunting became more difficult. Our distant ancestor’s bodies locked in storehouses of fat by eating berries and other carbohydrates in order to survive because we didn’t know where the next meal was coming from.  Now that we don’t have to hunt for the grocery store and fast food joint with complex sugar on every corner, our bodies don’t know that the famine is over. They crave the dopamine effect that sugar brings to our brains.

That same kid who snuck peanut butter cups went to Whole Foods last night and got kale salad.  That’s something I never imagined I would be doing.