- 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....
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