5 Ways to Cut Down On Sugar

Sugar is everywhere at the minute. Everything we eat has hidden sugars in, and the more we eat the higher the risk we have of developing such diseases as Diabetes and Heart Disease not to mention the many benefits that you will feel in cutting it down in your diet. So I thought I would write 5 steps to cut down on your sugar.

• Buy Low Fat Products: Low fat products are lower in fat but higher in sugar. If a manufacturer has '25% LESS FAT' what have they replaced that 25% with? SUGAR - nearly always!! If you dont believe me take a look on the back of the product.


• Remove Added Sugar From Your Hot Drinks: Many of you will think you can't do it, but you can - if you want to. They say you should try something 12 times before you can say that you definately dont like it but in this case I want you to try it for 12 days. I used to drink approximately 7 cups of tea or coffee every day at work, 1 when I woke up and at least another 2 when I got home so I was nearly having 10 hot drinks a day each with a teaspoon of sugar in. A teaspoon of sugar weighs approximately 4 grams, so multiply this by 10 and I was getting 40 grams of sugar a day in just my hot drinks!! That was a third of my daily intake without thinking about it - thats before I ate anything!!! I wont lie, cutting sugar out my drinks did take me a while to get used to, a few weeks in fact, but i didn't back down and now I dont miss that sugar in my tea or coffee at all.


• Change or Eliminate Deserts After Dinner: How many of you have a desert after dinner? Even if you have 1 or 2 a week, then dont. Having a desert after a meal is basically just a sugar hit. These deserts though are lovely I know, and are your treat. If you feel you can't give them up just yet, what about if you changed your deserts to have less sugary treats? For example my girlfriend and I used to love chocolate in the evening - maybe a couple of times a week, when we were cutting down we changed the type of chocolate we were eating. We had very dark chocolate, between 80% - 85% cocoa. This has very little sugar in it as very little is added. Whats more as it is so rich we only wanted a square or 2. It is amazing, I urge you to buy some and try it. Like most things it takes a while to get used it (try something 12 times before you say you dont like it). This massively reduces your sugar intake.


• Analyse your breakfast: What do you have for breakfast? Do you have breakfast? If you dont have breakfast then start! It stops any mid morning cravings for food, any hunger and makes you feel a lot better. If you have breakfast then what are you having? Are you having cereal? If so look at the sugar, how many grams are you getting, remember that 90g a day is your limit. Cereals are nearly always very high in sugar. Try cooking something for breakfast, or some brown bread or toast. Stay away from those cereals, pastries and skipping it all together. It is the most important meal of the day for a reason. I used to snack terribly, once I started having breakfast it completely stopped.


• Cut out Condiments: Condiments are terrible for sugar. Tomato sauce alone is very high in sugar, but tomatoes themself are not! Take a look on line or in any recipe book and try to make your own and look how much is added. Look how much sugar is in your sauce PER 100g and this gives you the percentage of sugar. Do you really need as much as you are getting? Instead of salad dressing, try some olive oil, try some lemon juice or lime juice. Make your own salad dressing!

These are 5 simple steps to cutting down on sugar. Your body is addicted to sugar so it is never going to be easy but these steps can begin to improve your health. Try not to think of cutting it down for ever, give yourself small targets. Promise yourself you will do it for a month, see how you feel, if you genuinely are happy with some or all of the cut outs then carry them on, if you are struggling then promise yourself one more week. If you think you definately can't live without condiments, then maybe look at alternatives for that (I will cover this in later posts). If you feel you definately don't miss sugar in your drink then GREAT - thats what we want, thats a massive cut down. Little and often is a great way to do this.

Good luck, if you need a hand contact me....

Sugars Link to Epilepsy

I am an epileptic, was first diagnosed around 15 years ago and take medication twice daily for this. I was never an epileptic who had seizures daily, in fact I rarely had them once diagnosed because my epilepsy is and was completely controlled through medication. With that being said, if I dont take my medication I know that I haven't - I need it, I can feel my mind acting slightly different. It is one of the hardest things to describe but if you are epileptic I am sure that you can relate to what I am saying, my mind feels kind of distant. Before I was diagnosed and my epilepsy was not yet controlled I was having an 'episode' each day. I have the petit mal form of epilepsy if you are wondering.

After a conversation with my friend about the dangers of sugar I began to look into the effect it could possibly have on epilepsy. I knew that sugar causes and accelerates so many of todays diseases so thought it must be logical that epilepsy might also be affected from a high sugar diet. After a lot of research I discovered that there have been remarkable tests and studies in recent years that strongly suggest that a high sugar intake will increase your likelyhood of a seizure. When I first started to look into this I was shocked to say the least, the more I read the more I wanted to find out.

The strongest article that I found was here. This test goes to show a young girl who had seizures up to twice a day over a 15 year period. The Doctor put the patient through a 6 hour glucose tolerance test, during the 4th hour her blood sugar level dropped considerably and she had a seizure. This then showed that her seizures were triggered when her blood sugar level dropped considerably. From that day she was put on balanced diet keeping her blood sugar level controlled, this involved eating the correct low sugar foods and eating at the same time. Since that time (2 years ago) she has only had 1 seizure whereas before she would have had over 700!!! The one time she did have a seizure was after she drank a large quantity of orange juice (massively high in sugar).

Could epilepsy be linked to a with levels of sugar in our diet? After further research I found studies to suggest that epilepsy is not caused by a high sugar diet and nor can it be cured by it, but it certainly makes it far far worse. Have you ever heard or read about children having too much sugar that it makes them hyperactive? Well this is same the situation here, very basically - have too much sugar and your brain becomes hyperactive, your brain short circuits and causes you to fit. An epileptic is not able to deal with this rise in hyperactivty.

To add weight to this sugar and epilepsy argument; I recently read a of a study where 5 epileptic individuals fasted for 5 days drinking nothing but water. During this time not one of them had a seizure, when food was slowly re-introduced their seizures returned. This is further evidence that eliminating sugar does not cure your eplipesy but it can massively reduce any attacks.


I myself have taken a different approach to my diet and found amazing results. I stopped eating sugary puddings, sweets, I carefully watched what fruit I ate, for example I only ate low sugar fruits, I no longer ate refined carbohydrates - for example, changing white bread for brown. I make sure that I eat 3 meals a day, even if I am not hungry. The results have to be seen to be believed, I feel 100 times better and anyone who is affected by epilepsy or knows of someone that is then I would look at your diet and the amount of sugar you consume. Lets not forget there are so many hidden sugars in food now you are probably eating more than you know. I think that basically eating too much sugar is having a massive effect on epilepsy, we need a level blood sugar level, a healthy diet and a steady 3 meals.

As with any change of diet you obviously should consult your doctor. I am not a doctor I am just publishing my experience and thoughts, I hope it helps. For further help and advice on Epilepsy I have added a couple of links to epilepsy forums. Check them out, it is a good place to exchange experiences and discussions in the forum. Many people here also have had a similar experience relating to sugar and epilpesy.