With Christmas coming up our houses are going to be full of sweets and chocolate boxes.
This is the time of year where people put on the most amount of weight between not exercising and eating more.
We did a video to show you how much sugar is in a box of Celebration sweets.
Click here to watch the video.
So when we look at the back of a box of Celebrations it tells you that a recommended daily portion is 27.3 grams. So we got out the scales to see how many sweets add up to 27.3 grams. It turns out that only three sweets add up to 27 grams!
Over the Christmas period you might have three sweets while you’re waiting for dinner, three sweets after dinner and another three later on in the afternoon. So you could have four or five servings of these in the course of a day.
Those three sweets have about 15 grams of sugar, so you’re talking about 5 grams of sugar per sweet. Now if you had four servings in the course of a day you’re talking about 60 grams of sugar in the one day.
Sugar is listed in ingredients by law in terms of the content of how much of the product is sugar. On the back of a box of Celebrations the first ingredient listed is sugar and the second one listed is glucose syrup (which is just more sugar). So the majority of what you’re going to be eating is just sugar.
So three sweets is one portion which is 15 grams of sugar. What you need to understand is that over Christmas you’re going to tuck into a few boxes of these chocolates .
In total there is about 357.5 grams of sugar in just one box of Celebrations. The recommended intake of added sugar is 20 grams. With just three sweets we’re 75% of the way there already. At 357 grams divided by 20 is 18 days’ worth of added sugar in one tub of sweets.
Simple sugars like all of these will spike the blood sugar faster which means insulin is released which means you store those calories quicker as fat. Whereas if you got your calories from other foods that have natural sugars they might have other benefits such as fibre, nutrients and protein which helps stabalise the blood sugar spike which means you don’t put on the fat as much.
What we want to avoid is consuming so many of these boxes of chocolates. Why people put on weight over Christmas is because they stay eating normally over Christmas but then they start snacking on these extras because they’re off from work and they’re bored at home so they’ll eat a bit more.
People think that they won’t eat all of them but over the course of the Christmas you’ll be surprised at how much chocolate you’ll eat.
People are already starting to buy boxes of Roses and a box of this, that and the other and if they’re going to be laying around the place you’re going to be having a few here and there and it all adds up.
So you need to cut down on your food that you normally eat to allow for this and your training might be less also. So you’re moving less and you’re eating more.
So one portion of these sweets is 140 calories but if you have four portions a day you’re talking about 450 calories. The full tub of celebrations is 3200 calories and one pound of fat is 3500 calories.
So for you to shift one pound of fat you need to be in a deficit of 3500 calories either through exercise, food or both. Therefore one tub of celebrations is worth one pound of fat give or take.
So that’s one pound of fat after eating one tub of sweets over Christmas.
So what you need to understand from this is to try and reduce the amount of junk we’re going to eat.
Rather than bringing all these boxes of sweets into people’s houses that may not need them maybe look at another option.
Maybe like a nice Christmas candle that they can burn throughout the house instead of bringing in more sweets that they already have loads of and don’t need anymore.
Click here to watch the video on Facebook
