Sugar Busting Plan: The Solution
The first step in cutting sugar out of your diet is identifying exactly where it appears in your diet. Only 30 per cent of the sugar we eat is actually in the form of obviously sugary foods such as chocolate, sweets or sugary drinks. The rest comes from hidden sugars in other foods like low-fat yogurt (a normal serving contains around 8g or Vioz), baked beans (an average can contains around 30g or 1 oz) or a glass of orange juice (around 20g or 3/40z).
Your first step in the Sugar-busting Plan is to identify the high-sugar foods in your diet by checking the labels for a figure for added sugars. Anything over about 20g a serving is a high-sugar food. If sugar isn't indicated, check the ingredient list; sugar hides under many names, including sucrose, dextrose, maltose, glucose (in fact anything ending in 'ose'), inverted syrup, corn syrup and malt extract. If any of these appear in the first three ingredients, or if more than two appear in any one food, it probably contains too much sugar. For the next two weeks, all of these foods will go from your diet (while you're trying to break the sugar cycle you need to abstain from them). The reason for this is that our Sugar and energy The most immediate problem with sugar is the effect it has on our energy:
- Sugar is absorbed rapidly into the bloodstream.
- This sudden rush panics the body and a higher than normal amount of insulin (the hormone that creates energy from food) is released.
- The insulin quickly moves the sugar out of the bloodstream, leaving the body without any accessible fuel.
- You feel tired, which sends the body into panic again as it needs fuel fast. It knows that last time it ate sugar it got a surge of energy, so it stimulates the brain to start craving sugar.