Monday, February 27, 2017

How To Quit Sugar


                          How Should I Quit Sugar?

1. Read the Label… (On Everything.) 


Always, always, always – no matter how safe you think the food is that you’re buying – read the label.  Recipe calls for an ingredient you’ve never heard of? Read the label.
 Do it until you’re an expert. Do it until you can read a label upside-down, backwards, and with your eyes closed.

2. Take Time to Find Replacements

Research and find healthy substitutes for things such as butter, sour cream and vegetable oil.  I use non-fat Greek yogurt for butter and sour cream and healthier oils such as avocado oil and olive oil.  I have even made cake with Greek yogurt.



3. Eliminate Sugary Beverages



If you're anything like I used to be, you would be slurping down nearly 40 pounds (70,000 calories!) of liquid sugar per year. Sipping sweet, beverages (think soft drinks, sweetened waters, Slurpee’s) spikes your, insulin levels and cues major cravings. Over a period two weeks, cut out all such drinks. If straight H2O bores you, sip seltzer water or fruit infused water with fresh fruit.

4. Quit Sugary Junk Foods

Cakes, cookies, candy bars—give 'em the heave-ho. Also press pause on secretly sugary fare such as granola bars. When you can, opt for fresh food over processed snacks—nearly 80 percent of the latter contains loads of added sugar. First, ID the foods you have the hardest time avoiding (um, cupcakes?) and quit those first, one at a time. Over the next two weeks, edit out all sugary junk. Sub in fruit when your cravings start up.

5. Reduce Simple Carbs

Chances are, by this point you've halved your sugar dependence—and shed some serious pounds. Next, tackle simple carbs, which act just like straight sugar in your body. Make a list of the refined foods you typically eat (e.g., crackers, white breads, white pastas) and, again, reduce them one by one over the next two weeks. Try starting with pastas: Instead of making two cups of spaghetti, make one cup and top it with a protein-packed lean meat; the next time around, replace that remaining cup with a veggie such as spaghetti squash.  The trick is small and simple steps try not to overwhelm by doing it all at once.

6. Sleuth for Hidden Sugars



This one's the trickiest and could take a full two weeks to master. Because hidden sugars are, well, hidden, you could still be ingesting lots of sweet stuff. Keep a critical eye on ingredient labels on condiments, sauces, and salad dressings—all sneaky sugar sources. Also, be leery of "sugar-free" offerings; many are packed with simple carbs instead.

7. Keep It Up (Realistically!)

It's all right to indulge every now and then, but pay close attention to your cravings. A slice of cake might be okay for one woman, but it could push another woman over the addictive edge. If a sweet snack leaves you yearning for more or, worse, bingeing, you'll know you're particularly vulnerable to sugar's powerful lure.


http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/how-to-stop-eating-sugarhttp://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/how-to-stop-eating-sugar

Ten reasons why you should quit sugar

WHY SHOULD YOU QUIT SUGAR?

A few of the most compelling are:
  • Sugar creates an addictive cycle of hunger, fatigue and moodiness. It initially spikes blood sugar, causing us to feel energized and happy. But since it's devoid of real nutrition, blood sugar quickly plummets, leaving us tired, hungry and moody.
  • Sugar causes excess storage of fat: It triggers the body to produce insulin, which tells fat cells to store more.
  • Sugar causes inflammation. This causes pain and is seen as a precursor to heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
The good news is that it takes only five days to dramatically reduce the body’s dependence on sugar, by eliminating refined sugar from your diet. That includes most processed foods (because they contain loads of added sugar), condiments, candy, baked goods and sweetened beverages, including those with artificial sweetners. Also watch out not to overindulge in fruit – aim for no more than 1 serving a day. 

1. Sugar Slows You Down

Eat more protein, as well as veggies and other fiber-rich foods, your blood sugar will stay level all day. This will help you to resist the urge to eat sugar and drink caffeine to get through the day because you will already have enough energy.

2. Sugar Hampers Mental Activity

Your memory will improve as you make this change to quitting sugar. You will be able to focus better.  The increased mental-clarity is due to a number of factors. Most obviously, when your blood-sugar levels are consistent and healthy, you don’t feel sleepy all of the time and your brain works better because of it. Less obvious is the fact that an overabundance of fructose such as that obtained from foods containing high-fructose corn syrup (sodas were the main culprit in my case) taxes your liver and pancreas. In short, these two organs have to work harder to manage all of that bad sugar and get it out of the blood stream. While doing so, they exhaust energy reserves which otherwise should have been used for processes such as breaking down fat and converting it to usable energy, as well as synthesizing hormones other than insulin. This results in an unpredictable combination of moodiness, anxiety, exhaustion, heaviness or bloating in the gut, a sluggish metabolism, and eventually a sick thyroid.  In my case I quit drinking soda because I found out not only that I had a fatty liver but that I also have gastritis, and a hiatal hernia.  I also have a history of thyroid disease. 

3. Sugar Is Expensive

Sugar comes with a lot of hidden fees. Consuming enough of it is a sure fire way to develop cavities and gum disease, so you can be sure that you’ll be seeing your dentist more frequently. Go ahead and add your family doctor to the equation because sugar causes a lot of other health problems which you may not realize are the result of your sweet addiction.  Yes I have seen the doctor a lot because of sugar or let’s say my previous soda habit.

Furthermore, sugar-related illnesses like diabetes and obesity have caused a steady rise in health insurance premiums. While you as an individual may not see yourself as personally responsible for this trend, purchasing and consuming sugar and sugar-filled products line the pockets of processed food manufacturers. As long as these companies continue to profit from it, they’ll keep pumping out the poison with zero regard to the health of the world’s population.

As if the increased medical bills weren’t enough, over-consumption of sugar also triggers the production of ghrelin – the hormone which signals to your body that it’s hungry. You feel like you need to eat more so you spend more money on food. Then you gain weight and have to buy new clothes. Maybe you even get ambitious and sign up for a gym membership because you know you need to lose weight. However, if you keep eating sugar, you probably won’t have enough energy to really feel like working out. Instead you turn to caffeine and expensive weight-loss supplements.

4. Sugar Makes You Fat

As previously mentioned, a diet that includes sugar – high levels of fructose in particular – makes you far more likely to overeat. However, this isn’t the only reason that sugar causes weight-gain. Because sugar stresses the pancreas by forcing it to produce elevated levels of insulin, other hormones are neglected such as those which regulate weight, stress, digestion, and metabolism. When these systems are unbalanced, we experience fatigue and mood swings. Also, when the body is stressed, it produces cortisol which signals the metabolism to go into conservation mode; leading to an even further decrease in energy, metabolism, and ability to burn fat stores.

5. Sugar Deactivates Your Immune System

Eating or drinking too much sugar also deactivates T-cells, the component in blood that fights bacterial infections. This effect can last anywhere from a couple of hours to an entire day, depending on how much you consume. If you find yourself getting sick a lot during cold and flu season, take a look at your sugar-intake and remember: just one regular-sized can of soda is enough to turn off your immune system for an hour or more.

6. Sugar Destroys Your Liver




Another of the hidden risks is one that I’ve already briefly mentioned: Sugar destroys the liver. High-fructose foods like juice, soda, syrups, and other sweet liquids not only require the liver to work overtime to process them, they also cause it to neglect its other functions. An over-worked liver results in symptoms like fatigue, increase uric acid in the body, gout, high blood pressure, and kidney stones. Eating too much sugar also causes the liver to become fatty, leading to liver disease, insulin-resistance, and possibly even organ failure.  Which has caused me to have a fatty liver.

7. Sugar Leads to Cardiovascular Disease

Sugar doesn’t just increase fat around the waist and in the liver. By unbalancing the metabolism and hormones (specifically insulin), sugar also ramps up lipid levels in the blood stream. Over consumption of sugars is also now known to be a bigger cause of high blood pressure than salt. Between that and the increase in blood cholesterol and triglycerides, you’d better believe that your poor heart is struggling.

8. Sugar Is A Primary Cause of Diabetes



Which of us hasn’t heard about the dangers of developing diabetes from eating too much sugar?
Here it is then: Eating too much sugar over extended periods of time leads to hypoglycemia and insulin resistance. Try to picture yourself pricking your finger with a tiny needle to test your blood a few times per day. Or maybe you’d like to have to self-administer syringes of insulin to yourself. Needles are fun, right?

9. Sugar Disrupts Kidney Function

Sugar disrupts kidney function. Think of just how painful it must be to pass a kidney stone; or of the itching, burning, and constant urge to urinate every fifteen minutes or so that comes with a good old-fashioned urinary tract infection. (Who doesn’t love a UTI?!?) Perhaps we could take it a step further to a full-blown bladder infection, complete with abdominal pain, fever, and blood in the urine.

10. Sugar Makes You Smell Bad

Due to the hormone imbalances, malfunctioning immune system, increase in body fat, decrease in liver and kidney function, and poor digestion; eating too much sugar actually makes you smell bad.  Bacteria love sugar and that includes your native buccal flora. When you eat sweets, they eat sweets. Then they stick to your teeth via the plaque they produce and use the energy you’ve given them to propagate more bacteria.