Drop a size this month

Women like Yvette Cruz, down 58 lbs, swear by Dr. Michael Aziz's surprise sugar swap that makes excess pounds just fall off

- BY ALLISON NEMETZ

We've all heard eating less sugar helps melt spare pounds. Yet it often feels too darn hard. Enter The Ageless Revolution author Michael Aziz, M.D. He has a hack to make cutting sweets easy as pie: "As you reduce sugar, up your intake of natural fats. You'll feel so satisfied, you won't miss the junk," he says. Backing him up: A new study found healthy fats make us want less sugar and processed food. Plus there's evidence healthy fats boost the hormone GLP-1, "mimicking weight-loss meds like Ozempic without the cost or side effects," says the doc. For Yvette Cruz, good fats worked better than diet pills. "I lost 6 sizes and felt amazing and it was shockingly easy!" says the New York mom, 55. Read on to learn how good-fat swaps can help you.

We've been eating honey, maple syrup, even white sugar since the days when few folks were overweight. The real issue: Fifty percent of what we eat today is highly processed foods hiding more sugar than most of us can handle, says Dr. Aziz. Beyond candy and cola, there's sugar in dressing, soup, fast food and countless items marketed as healthy. An average person consumes 152 pounds of sugar a year, plus 146 pounds of white flour. "Refined carbohydrates become blood sugar once you eat them," he notes.

And this sugary overload has an impact on our brains that "is very addicting."

A better way to quit sugar