How to eat less sugar: 8 simple ways
Text:Lena Konchalovskaya
Nearly two months of autumn is overbut ahead of us is waiting for the whole season of cold weather. More than ever, you want to dig a little deeper in the blanket, turn on your favorite TV series and reinforce the pleasure with a bucket of ice cream or at least a chocolate bar. Limiting yourself in all carbohydrates at once is not the best idea, but it’s still worth monitoring the amount of sugar eaten - not to fit into last year’s jeans, but for the sake of health and well-being. We tell how to reduce the amount of sugar consumed, not indulging in too much.
Watch not only for food
A large amount of sugar enters our body, not only with food, but also with drinks. It is estimated that the average American consumes an extra 400 calories per day from fluids. And even if soda is not so popular in Russia, we love pochaevnichatsya, not stinting on sugar. Replace the juice with water with a slice of lemon or fruit slices, and the usual black tea - with a more fragrant fruit, spicy or herbal without sugar. Sweet sodas are better to eliminate from the diet.
Nutritionists say: everything that is not water is food. This is not a call to count the calories in each drink, but the reason to remember that many of them contain sugars, which we often do not need at all. Of course, in the cold season it is especially difficult to drink enough liquid, but try to follow the conditional daily rate: drink warm water, carry a compact cup with you and constantly maintain the water balance in the body. Scientists say that the desire to eat sweets is associated with dehydration.
Fruits are better than juices
Trendy today juice diets are actually not as useful as they seem. Recall, at least, the documentary film “Sugar” by Damon Gamo, in which the director, deciding to eat “correctly,” begins to rapidly gain weight. Gamo finds out that behind the mass propaganda of healthy food lies a powerful marketing ploy and conventionally “useful” products contain a considerable amount of sugar. Freshes in tall glasses are tasty and beautiful, but fruits are useful primarily because of the fiber that remains behind when squeezing the juice: it is responsible for reducing the speed of sugar absorption into the blood and maintaining the glycemic index.
In addition, all fruits contain fructose. If in the whole form one large fruit can be enough for saturation, then in the form of juice you will easily drink three times or four times more - and more sugar will be ingested into the body. It is proved that apples, pears or blueberries in the daily diet reduce the risk of diabetes, but the use of juices, especially packaged, with added sugar, works exactly the opposite. If you don’t want to abandon them, you can occasionally replace fresh juices with fiber-rich smoothies or freshly squeezed vegetable juices.
Drink wisely
Alcohol is one of the main suppliers of sugar in the body, especially if you are not indifferent to cocktails. There is about 160 calories in one glass of red wine, about 140 calories in a glass of beer, and almost 250 in one daiquiri (equivalent to half a bar of chocolate). Of course, you want to have fun, so you can simply choose the lesser of the evils and switch to less sweet drinks - dry wines and at least strong pure alcohol. It would be good to make it a rule to drink a glass of pure water for every glass of alcohol: this will help you not to feel completely sick in the morning and escape from a headache. The more sugar in your drink, the heavier the hangover the next day: ethanol contained in alcohol, when interacting with glucose, provokes the production of lactic acid in the body, making the overall condition worse. And the worse we feel, the more sometimes I want to solve the problems with a can of Nutella.
Find alternatives
Doing absolutely no sugar will not work, but you can replace foods with a high glycemic index with more useful and nutritious analogues. We talked about the role of the glycemic index in the material about carbohydrates. Instead of milk chocolate, try bitter, with a higher cocoa content, sweeten the tea with Jerusalem artichoke syrup or coconut sugar (their glycemic index is lower than that of other sweeteners). Eat breakfast oatmeal instead of ready-made breakfast cereals, and replace white rice with brown.
A great snack option is fruit, despite their sweetness. The most useful are citrus fruits, apricots, pears, kiwi, apples and, of course, berries, which are much more difficult to get in the cold season. But too often bananas or grapes are not worth it: the glycemic index of these products is very high. If you want to treat yourself to sweets, try making unusual desserts from nuts, fruits and dried fruits. Most of the treats with the lowest sugar content are vegan: they rarely use refined flour and sugar in their preparation.
Distinguish brain signals
Sometimes the desire to eat the whole cake or swallow a bucket of ice cream is associated with a lack of vitamins and trace elements in the body. Some studies suggest that the constant desire to eat sweets is often due to the lack of magnesium. So if you already want a chocolate for the third week, and dozens of eaten tiles go by, perhaps you need magnesium, which you can get in nuts or in the form of vitamins. When constantly baking for baking and it does not manage to get enough of it, it is believed that what is really needed is not a croissant, but nitrogen, which is rich in fish and meat.
It is difficult to say how reliable these data are, but the attempt is not torture: there are tables with the most often desired products and equivalents that are better to be thrown to the body instead of sweets. Even if the role of patterns is exaggerated, perhaps replacing chocolate bars with nuts, and three rolls instead of lunch with baked fish, you will get rid of frequent overeating, and the cake, eaten after the main course, will not become a cause for guilt.
Add odors
Often we add sugar to drinks or food in order to enhance the taste or to give it at all to dishes that we don’t like. Try experimenting with spices and herbs: the brain receives signals about food not only through the taste buds located on the tongue, but also through smells. In the familiar morning oatmeal, you can add cinnamon or vanilla, in the water - ginger, lemon and even turmeric. In Ayurveda, it is believed that in order for the body to be completely satisfied and there was no desire to chew anything after dinner, six basic tastes should be combined in food intake: bitter, spicy, salty, sweet, astringent and sour. According to ayurveda, we do not offer food (this is still alternative medicine), but in this approach you can find something useful. It is easier for those who have a delicate sense of flavors to get enough of a simple meal, and then the desire to supplement dinner with a piece of cake will occur less frequently.
Cheer up
Biting sadness and stress with sweets is a well-known method for everyone. Sugar really raises the level of serotonin, the so-called hormone of happiness, but the effect of candy is short-lived: the hormone insulin reacts quickly enough to the intake of sugar and reduces the level of glucose in the blood. As a result, fatigue, drowsiness sets in and another desire arises to eat sweets. If possible, it is better to stimulate the production of serotonin in more beneficial ways. Proven methods include exercise, walking, sexual intimacy, and talking to animals.
Sleep more
Lack of sleep and sugar consumption are closely related. If we are little and sleep poorly, the body does not have time to recover, and the lack of energy makes it difficult to fully function. In order to compensate for this, we are desperately starting to look for resources in everything that surrounds us, and, of course, fast carbohydrates are the easiest way to give a kick of vigor to the brain and body. Do not neglect the night rest and find a pleasant way for you to make it better. Using this and other simple life hacking, you can reduce the dependence on sweets, not indulging yourself too much. Attempts to completely eliminate sugar from the diet and constantly avoid it in all possible ways are better left - they will not lead to a healthy relationship with your own body.
Photo: chones - stock.adobe.com, 5second - stock.adobe.com, severija - stock.adobe.com, Mara Zemgaliete - stock.adobe.com