How To Change Your Diet And Cut Your Sugar By Half Today
Quitting or reducing your sugar intake can be a tough thing to do, but the benefits are multi-faceted from weight loss to anti-aging and prevention of a huge swag of diseases including diabetes, possibly alzheimers and many more.
Here are some basics that can help you kick start the process.
- Analyse your diet and taking photos of everything you eat for a week is the easiest way. Understand what you are eating and more importantly why. Are you having 3pm sugar cravings? Skipping breakfast? Eating out a lot? Eating carbohydrate and sugar filled meals? The first step is understanding your habits before you can consider breaking them.
2. Eliminate soft drinks and juices and replace them with herbal teas, soda water or water with sprigs of mint, pieces of cucumber or fruit. (Don’t forget to change what you have at the pub if you are drinking spirits with soda that contain sugar). If you just do this one thing, your sugar consumption will fall significantly.
3. Throw out any cereal boxes you have in the house, and start making eggs in the morning, or eating protein rich left overs for breakfast, experimenting with avocado, bacon and mince meat or try quick and easy natural yoghurt with no added sugar and berries.
4. Eliminate diet foods – there is a ton of research that shows eating food with artificial sweeteners has a negative effect on the body as your body prepares to ingest sugar, but sugar doesn’t actually arrive, so your body is left craving the very thing you are trying to give up. (That’s the one sentence explanation)
5. Change your mindset and relationship towards cakes desserts and any other sweets as all sweets contain sugar or sugar substitutes. UK Psychologist Marissa Peer has a ton of talks on youtube about this very subject, but in short, you need to focus on what you want in your life more than a sweet hit ( e.g. good health, a thin body etc).
6. Eat Real Food. The simplest and easiest way to lower your sugar consumption is to reduce the processed food you eat – so less take aways, less food in boxes and cans, and more fresh meat and vegetables. The vast majority of processed food contains high levels of sugar. Very simple really.
7. Reduce the amount of sauces you eat such as BBQ, Tomato, mayonnaise you put on your food as most contain a lot of sugar – more than you think. It’s ok to have some sauce, just don’t pile it on any more.
8. Learn how to read food labels. A simple google search will bring up a pile of articles on how to read food labels in Australia, what to look for and how to pick better products at the supermarket. This is possible the most important change to make, and effects everyone in your household.
For more healthy tips on how to cut your sugar by half, check out this website: www.sugarbyhalf.com
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