Why You Can’t Lose Weight and Keep it Off

By: Kathy Best-Gibson, July 21, 2019, updated September 10, 2025

I used to struggle with my weight. As a child I was considered obese and was often teased, taunted and bullied in middle school because of my weight. I remember one incident in particular where a couple of boys who had been taunting me relentlessly decided it would be funny to push me down a flight of metal stairs to see if I would bounce. It was a long flight of stairs and I fell hard, but surprisingly the only thing I broke was my ego. I remember seeing a teacher just standing there staring at me trying not to laugh as I picked myself up and tried unsuccessfully to brush away the tears of pain and shame. As hurtful as that event was, it ultimately set me on the path of nutrition and health.

I’ve spent over 20 years studying, researching, and testing nutritional, weight loss, and exercise science, programs, theories, and guidelines and there are two things I absolutely know to be true. Number one - weight loss programs are not sustainable and don’t improve your health and number two – excess, processed sugar is one of the biggest causes of poor health and chronic disease.

There are so many problems with the way people eat today, but let’s start with sugar. Did you know that Americans consume more than 140 pounds of sugar per year? This isn’t just from soda, candy bars, and baked goods. Almost every packaged item on store shelves has added sugar in it. This includes all of those so called diet shakes, and frozen meals. You see, our food industry has discovered that sugar can be as addicting as drugs and alcohol. In numerous scientific studies, animals fed sugar intermittently developed classic signs of addiction including bingeing and opiate-like withdrawal symptoms including anxiety, depression, and craving more sugar.₁ Sugar is strategically hidden in everything, because it stimulates your appetite and makes you crave more. Sugar has about 60 different names, so be aware when you are reading product labels that the following names are also added sugar:

• Brown rice syrup

• Corn Syrup solids

• Dextrin

• Dextrose

• Diastatic malt

• Ethyl maltol

• Malt syrup

• Maltodextrin

• Maltose

• Lactose

• Glucose solids

• Barley Malt

• Crystalline fructose

• Fructose

• Beet sugar

• Blackstrap molasses

• Brown sugar

• Buttered syrup

• Cane juice crystals

• Cane sugar

• Caramel

• Carob syrup

• Castor sugar

• Coconut sugar

• Confectioner’s sugar

• Date sugar

• Demerara sugar

• Evaporated cane juice

• Florida crystals

• Fruit juice

• Fruit juice concentrate

• Golden sugar

• Grape sugar

• Grape juice

• Apple juice

• Honey

• Maple Syrup

• Muscovado sugar

• Panela sugar

• Raw Sugar

• Refiner’s syrup

• Sorghum sugar

• Sucanat

• Turbinado sugar

  
  

There are several types of naturally occurring sugar – glucose, fructose, sucrose, lactose, galactose, and maltose. The brain runs on glucose, and almost every cell in the body can metabolize glucose, which is a sugar found naturally in fruits and some plants. Fructose is another sugar also found in fruits and some plants, but it is processed almost entirely by the liver. When consumed in fruit these sugars can be metabolized and processed effectively due to the fiber, high water content, antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals found in fruits, which help the body utilize the necessary glucose and store, or eliminate the excess. The problem is that most food manufacturers extract glucose and fructose from plants through a chemical process, refined the sugars which eliminates any beneficial minerals, and sometimes genetically modify it so it no longer looks or acts like natural sugar. They also use a variety of names, so that they can sneak in more sugar without your knowledge.

Add to that the almost constant intake of sugar and you have overstimulated organs that cannot keep up with the copious amounts of chemicals and sugar being consumed. Organs, like the pancreas, liver, kidneys, stomach, adrenals, and spleen all work overtime in a valiant, but futile effort to rebalance the body. Not only is the sugar we consume stressing our organs, but the typical American diet keeps the immune system, digestive system, lymphatic system, metabolic system, and the nervous system in constant high gear. When so many systems are functioning at high performance it causes the body to cut back the energy it uses for other functions like, restful sleep, balancing hormones, stress reduction, brain function, elimination, motor skills, and so many other important areas.

Excessive intake of high fructose, which is a chemically created sugar, has been shown in numerous studies to cause hypertension, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, inflammation, metabolic syndrome, and certain cancers.₂ Another study done by Baylor and Cornell Colleges of Medicine found that modest amounts of high fructose corn syrup, about twelve ounces of a sugar sweetened beverage, increased the growth of intestinal tumors.₃ Processed sugars, including sugar substitutes have been shown to cause diabetes, metabolic syndrome, are highly addictive, and reduce our desire for nutritious fruits and vegetables.₄

Did you also know that our dietary guidelines are not based on facts, but come almost completely from propaganda designed by the Department of Agriculture and Food Industry lobbyists? ₅ We have all been deceived and programmed by the food manufacturer lobbyists with deep pockets.₆ The foods we’ve been told to eat on a regular basis for health are the foods that are causing our bodies to age faster and promoting disease.

Our bodies were designed to eat food grown from the earth, in its original form, aligned with its natural growing season. We were never meant to stuff ourselves with engineered, nutritionally void, chemically laden, sugar-filled substances that leave us feeling tired, moody, bloated, weak, and sick. If you want to transform your health and have weight loss become a happy byproduct of vibrant health all you have to do is return to a natural plant based, holistic diet.

The word diet originated from the Latin diaeta and the Greek diaita which means – way of living. Human beings are the only species on earth that ‘go on a diet’ to lose weight or get healthy. Every other species has a diet that they live on for their entire life. Human beings are also the only species that suffer so much physical and emotional pain because of the food we eat. Did you know that for the average person 80% of your health and body shape is determined by the food you eat and your emotional environment? 15% is determined by exercise and 5% by genetics.

Different foods trigger different messages in your body. When you eat foods with little or no nutritional value like pizza, french fries, chips, crackers, cake, candy bars, hot dogs, cookies, donuts, pasta, fried foods, alcohol, and bread they trigger a starvation response telling the body to store fat, conserve energy, and reduce certain body functions because the body is not getting the nutrients, vitamins, and minerals essential to survival and health.

When your body is being fed foods that provide the nourishment that it needs to regulate, normalize, and harmonize all of its organs, systems, and functions efficiently, it can and will balance weight as a natural byproduct of vibrant health. Nutritious foods like fresh fruits and vegetables, lean chicken and turkey or wild game, trigger safety, satisfaction, excess energy, and positive mood along with so many other health benefits like clear skin, improved eyesight, strong bones, teeth, and nails, healthy hair, slower aging, healthier, more flexible muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons, stress resistance, increased mental function, balanced hormones, and disease resistance.

₁ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/

₂ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5490528/

₃ https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190321141924.htm

₄ https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-sugar-free-but-at-what-cost-201207165030

₅ https://time.com/4130043/lobbying-politics-dietary-guidelines/

₆ https://nutritionfacts.org/2013/10/22/big-food-wants-final-say-over-health-reports/