Why Does The Sugar Diet Work? [Physiological Mechanisms Revealed]

Yes!!!

Wow I learned so much from this! Quick question. Are there any concerns with a pre-diabetic starting this diet? Any ideas what this does to A1C over time? Thanks!

no way

I so appreciate your thoughtful discussion on this method of weight loss. It's so much more honest than the likes of Ken Berry and Tony Hampton. They kneejerk react without having ANY clinical experience with it or even looking at all the droves of people leaving keto/carnivore and how they are doing on the "sugar" diet. Why wouldn't they take a wait and see what happens approach? My suspicion is that it threatens their income, the very thing they accuse the low-fat regime of perpetrating.

I don't know, i'm on the fence on this one because sugar has been shown in studies to be very harmful to over all health but I will say this, I was Keto for about 4 years and once a week or so I would give myself a cheat day and have pizza, spaghetti, any carb I was missing and I always found it strange that when I woke up and jumped on the scale I would be 2 to 3 pounds lighter ? I did a fat free diet about 40 years ago, I wish I could find the book but you basically cut all fat out of your diet, I remember having tuna on salad with lemon and I'm not sure what ells to get my lean protein, I lost aver 30 pounds on that diet in a month, not working out, also having one cheat day but didn't go crazy so don't know if you need all that sugar added ? Maybe just add some sugar if you feel your energy dip but for me at the time it was no problem. I deff wouldn't do this sugar diet full time but might be aquick way to shed some pounds !

Really good explanation!!!

Started sugar diet about a week ago. Started the sugar fasting 2 days ago and cut the evening starch.
After starting the sugar fasting, 2.8 lbs down,(1.4 lbs per day)
49 yr old female, ex keto/ carnivore with low thyroid,
2000-2500 calories daily
All calories coming from whole frozen fruits (mostly smoothies with I cup fruit and added sugar) with dark maple syrup, organic cane sugar and raw honey.
Adding small amount of Moringa powder for a little green.

Thank you for breaking this down, much appreciated. I've seen alot of people make videos about candy & soda to consume, but I like the ideal of Intermittent Fruit Fasting breakfast & lunch followed by lean protein source with carbs & no fat. I look forward to the next video & could you give us an example meal plan, how long one should do this program, & what to do once you get to your desired weight?
Thank you👍🤝👏👊

Sugar Diet is just the repackaged Starch Solution from OG McDougall

Great video, looking forward to the next one

All of these content creators stroking each other off with this new fad diet they are jacking views up for each other. Anyone looking to do this, it does work no doubt 4 cal per carb and keeping fat extremely low and protein low does mean your overall volume to calories will be condusive to weight loss.

But do NOT do this diet long term. Snake Diet says 100 days, I genuinely would consider no more than 45. You will lose muscle. You will destroy your natural biome in your mouth and cause tooth issues. Not short term, but thinking this is long term is where the problems will rise.

I just wish content creators were forethright, honest, and had your best interest in heart but they don't they are chasing anything that is hot and makes them money. This is not a 'health' diet at all. Zhanna Samsonova recently died as a long term raw fruit vegan.

Most people have no clue they’re being misled. I read book The Secret Health Reset and realized I had no clue about health. It's wild how much we aren’t told.

I think it's okay to add sugar to your fruit or smoothies because it's really hard to get fruit that is at it's peak, where it would contain a lot of sugar. Fruit is supposed to be sweet and often times, it's bland or even sour. Table sugar is inexpensive and much more accessible to most people than other sweeteners. Also, while refined sugar doesn't have other nutrients in it, we should keep in mind that sugar is a nutrient in and of itself, just like how we regard protein as a nutrient. Our obsession with micronutrients might be misguided. We need them, but we don't need to be getting vast amounts of them on a daily basis. Healthy populations have eaten white (refined) rice as the base of their diet for entire lifetimes with some veggies and fruits added in, and been extremely healthy that way. The sugar diet is meant to be short term anyway and it's important to have a healthy low fat diet plan (fruits veggies and starches IMO) to fall back on when you break the fast in order to maintain a healthy weight. And one more point, it's really hard to eat sufficient calories on just fruits and veggies without the calorie boost of added sugar or other sweetener. You can't get the desired results with insufficient calories and hopefully people aren't trying to do this while trying to maintain a calorie deficit, that will just work against them.

Can you give us a diet of what to eat etc
Doesn’t Sugar feed Cancer?

Well, will try this. Fruits all day, and at night a couple of boiled eggs for the protein of the day. 🎉

This has got to be a joke right?
This is really bad advice.

I lost weight fast on this diet. 2 month in and I could see my body skin get white dots. I was clearly eating my own skin.

Would love to see bloodwork as you move forward. Please keep us updated.

Fructose doesn't stimulate insulin? How? I've heard insulin sky rockets with fructose.

I’m really struggling because with having more sugar from fruit, honey and table sugar… I’m just not hungry when evening comes. And I’m not eating a ton of sugar

Here after shout-out from Mark Smelly Bell. Interesting perspective

First in the pantheon of sugar promoters
William Kempner MD
The Rice and Sugar Diet at Duke University. Over 30 years he killed thousands of people with a diet that was compose of rice, sugar, fruit juice and fruit.

Second Dr mcdougall's low-fat vegan diet

Durian Rider who put all the pieces together and make this doable.

Then after many years comes Cole snake diet who started his own version of the sugar fast.

And then Mark Smelly Bell who transformed his body on various versions of the sugar fast.

And now 500 different hustlers all claiming to be masters of the sugar diet

IT DOESNT. YALL have no idea what the body requires. Unbelievable.

👍

Excellent video! Really appreciated the deeper dive into this than anyone previously has given. I'm a data nut myself and as much as I love anecdotes from hundreds to thousands of people at this point, I still want the science behind it instead of just being assured that "it works." I did a deep dive into sugar fasting through Grok and even its take wasn't overly concerning, which put my mind at ease initially. I think as more time goes on for data to come out, more anecdotes and even personal successes for myself, I think this'll have the potential to flip everything on its head that we've really known up until this point. The body's metabolism is such a complex thing and it's amazing that sometimes it actually seems like the theory lines up with reality. Thank you for the information! I'll be happy to continue doing the clean sugar fasting intermittently throughout the week and track my results. As much as I love low-carb/keto and have had immeasurable benefits from it from gut health, to inflammation, to fat loss, etc, I am really welcoming the idea of introducing fruits back into my diet and adding some variability and potentially incredible metabolic flexibility with alternating between the two lifestyles. We'll see if the theory in my head is as reproducible as I'd like it to be for fat loss. If it doesn't translate after a month or two, I'll just go to a lower-fat, moderate protein and minimal starch food plan and watch the fat incinerate off my body.

You should interview skeleton city. Nobody like him. Incredible guy

Can you check your ketone levels on sugar fasting?

the sugar diet isn’t new. look up the rice diet (walter kempner), they ate only fruit, sugar and rice. they lost weight and increased health

It doesn't.

for your sugar fat thing: I tried this coming from keto. Took 350g of sugar and was in ketosis the next morning. Usually when getting back into ketosis, but not into ketosis, you feel low energy and cold. Not here. Here the sugar high just weened of and then I felt "normal"

Eat a fruit everytime he says In addition to that… 🥭🍑🍌

The sugar diet's been working very well for me I haven't been sticking to it exactly but the things that I have learned don't eat starch and another thing high fructose corn syrup is made from starch and fructose so stay away from that as well don't forget to get your salt and your potassium chloride

Great biological breakdown of how the 'sugar diet' works. Being a bit of an oldie, this diet is not new, ive known about it atleast 18 years. Probably its been known way further back. I would personally see the diet as 'cutting', after a period of bulking or heavier weights program. Longer term, it would just keep you lean, but personally speaking, i like traditional foods rather than an 'extreme diet'.

Sugar Diet Not new. The key component is the absence of fat

Why aren’t the sugar dieters monitoring their glucose? Has anyone done repeated fasted insulin tests while on the sugar diet? Sugar dieting doesn’t address food addiction namely carb addiction.

Anybody can come up with some sort of mechanistic explanation. But where are the hard outcomes? Where is the research backing the "increase in metabolism"? Please show some data or reference. The rest is pure speculation for people who are impressed by big words but know nothing of energy metabolism

I lived on just fruit and juice and juice for two years. Didn't lose an ounce, and I was about 30 pounds overweight. Towards the end, the weight began to climb. I was exercising 5x per week, teaching yoga, no fat, all just fruit and juice. So this approach doesn't work for everyone.

coming from carnivore, do you have any particular suggestions? I started this two days ago and am up a little in my weight. What troubleshooting would you suggest? thank you!

👍

Thank you for this video! Great information and very encouraging! I am looking forward to any more information you can give on the best ways to approach the diet.

Bonus points awarded for the Wim Hof photo

I LOVE your videos! I’ve been a Ray Peat fan for awhile, really trying to heal my metabolism through “re-feeding” from too low calories and lowering fat, increasing carbs, moderating protein etc… I discovered the sugar diet recently and tried it for a few days. I struggled to maintain it and ended up needing starch. I just watched a video of yours from 5 years ago where you mention the importance of starch over fructose when it comes to increasing insulin sensitivity. Correct me if I’m wrong, but let’s see if I’m following here: long-term, pro-metabolic diet would be as stated above, perhaps with an emphasis on good starch. Occasionally if I did a sugar fast, I might eliminate starch, or moderate it and emphasize fruit? Thanks so much!!

The "sugar diet" (when defined as a high-carb, low-fat approach from whole food sources) aims to circumvent the Randle Cycle by ensuring glucose is the primary fuel. The general idea of choosing one macronutrient as the dominant fuel source while consuming the other in moderation, and critically, avoiding the ubiquitous modern combination of excessive refined fats and carbs, is a scientifically grounded perspective on improving metabolic health.

I'm really looking forward to your next video! I'm 13 days in and stalled at day 6, today I went with just orange juice and watermelon to see if I could make the scale move, but instead those 2 are acting like a major diuretic...

Calorie deficit ?

Make sure you give credit to the people who brought it to life. You seem to forgotten

In your future videos, could you discuss how calories play a part in the sugar diet, especially for weight loss? A lot of advocates for the diet say to eat as much as possible, basically a maintenance level or even more, but others are saying that you still need a calorie deficit to lose weight. Thank you!

⚠ Before You Get Sucked Into the Sugar Diet Hype — Read This

Yes, some people are losing weight on the sugar diet—but not because sugar is magical. It’s because they’ve finally cut out ultra-processed garbage, seed oils, and binge-snacking. Sugar didn’t fix anything—it just wasn’t as bad as what came before. Don’t mistake the removal of poisons for the addition of medicine.

Here’s what’s really going on: even though sugar spikes insulin (which locks fat away), people often lose weight despite this because:

- They’re eating fewer total calories due to how limited and monotonous the sugar diet is.
- They’ve dropped water weight by cutting out junk food and lowering sodium retention.
- They might be moving more temporarily due to glycemic energy bursts.
- Some weight loss is actually muscle and glycogen, not fat—especially with low protein intake.

But long-term? Chronically high insulin levels from constant sugar hits promote fat storage, insulin resistance, and metabolic collapse. And fructose (especially from juice) is 7x more damaging than glucose when it comes to cellular aging—none of which shows up on your A1C test. This damage is silent until it isn’t.

This trend is just the standard American diet with a TikTok filter—low fat, moderate protein, high sugar, wrapped in pseudo-spiritual fluff and pushed by influencers chasing clicks or quietly cashing in. There’s no ancestral precedent, no long-term evidence, and no credible metabolic expert backing it.

Carbs are non-essential. Sugar is optional. Your body makes all the glucose it needs from protein and fat via gluconeogenesis. A well-formulated carnivore or low-carb diet delivers all essential nutrients—without destroying your metabolism.

👉 Don’t trade short-term weight loss for long-term metabolic damage.

Cancer lives on sugar

Didn’t work for me. Gained 5 lbs.