I call it liquid heroin (high fructose corn syrup or HFCS) some call it sugar. If you don’t eliminate it from your diet forget about losing weight, getting lean or for that matter walking your daughter down the aisle!! Ok I get it you love sweets, those gummy bears, pastries the sugary cereals that we’ve been lied to for years by the food companies. You’ve been addicted since childhood, so was I until I discovered that my body wasn’t performing at peak level, and I would crash after the initial insulin spike. You know how easy it is to eat more sugar than you should.
Candy, cookies, pastries, and other sweets are high in sugar, which is quickly and efficiently stored as body fat. And the more sugar that you eat, the more you crave it. It’s a rough situation for you and your sweet tooth, it’s as if your sweet tooth is against you ever meeting your summer body goal!
Don’t lose heart! It is very possible to gradually reduce the amount of sugar in your diet in a way that that’s painless and practical. I have a one-week plan here to help you to cut back on sugar consumption without going crazy. By reducing the refined sugar in your diet you’ll experience an automatic drop in body fat – this means inches and sizes lost!
Cut Back Sugar: Days 1-2
In the first two days your goal is to get an accurate idea of how much sugar you are currently consuming. You’ll act as a reporter on your eating habits for a full week, recording down everything you consume.
The first two days are only for reporting. I don’t want you to change anything about your diet yet. Eat as you normally do, but tally sugar grams at each meal and snack. Yes, even your drink at the coffee shop and your wine or cocktail at dinner. Look up the sugar content of everything you consume and record it.
By the end of the first two days, you will have a clear picture of how much sugar you are eating and which items in your diet are most sugar-filled.
Cut Back Sugar: Days 3-4
In the second two days your goal is to eliminate liquid sugar. It is all too easy to consume large amounts of sugar in beverages, often without even noticing. You know which beverages in your diet contain sugar, from your reporting last week, so target and cut out these beverages.
Sweetened coffee drinks, smoothies, alcoholic beverages, sweetened sodas and teas should all be replaced with zero calorie options. Try liquid stevia for sweetening beverages without adding sugar, it has a more pleasing flavor than powdered stevia. Avoid super processed sweeteners like Splenda or aspartame as these may cause bloating and cravings for more sugar.
In addition to focusing on removing sugary drinks, I also want you to focus on drinking lots and lots of water. You should be drinking ½ your body weight in ounces daily!!
Cut Back Sugar: Days 5-6
In days 5 & 6 we are now going to focus on eliminating the food in your diet that contain refined sugars.
What’s great about this approach to cutting out sugar is that over the course of this week, while you recorded your sugar consumption and then cut out sugary liquids, you likely found yourself instinctively beginning to choose items that are lower in sugar. That’s great! That’s going to make this week all that much easier as you begin to pass on those sugar-laden snacks and desserts.
Days 5 & 6 target and eliminate the food items in your diet that contain refined sugars. These are packaged candies and snacks, dressings and sauces, desserts and sweetened yogurts. Read labels and check sugar grams. Swap these items out for naturally sweetened treats – sweetened with fruit or stevia.
Cut Back Sugar: Day 7 and beyond
You are on the home stretch! As you enter the final day you should already be noticing your energy levels should be stabilizing. During this last day, I’d like you to once again record everything that you eat and drink. Tally up the sugar grams and take notice of anything that you’re still consuming that’s high in sugar.
This week should reinforce the healthy changes you’ve implemented and keep you accountable. If you find yourself really missing a certain sugar-filled item then look for healthier, low-sugar replacement foods to enjoy instead of reverting back to your old habits.
The key now is to maintain your new, low-sugar, habits. The first week is always the most difficult, as new habits are formed, so you’ve already done the hardest part! Going forward, whenever you find yourself getting hooked back on sugar then go through this one-week process again to get back on track.
In addition to removing refined sugar from your diet, participating in a challenging, consistent exercise plan is vital to fat loss. If your results have plateaued and you don’t seem to make any gains in your current workout plan. Call or email me, step out of your comfort zone my HICST Training in 22.5 minutes will be the best workout you’ve ever had!
The Many Names of SUGAR
Reading food labels is key to avoiding items that are high in sugar. However, it’s important that you are aware of the many names for sugar that can be found lurking in ingredient lists.
All of these are names for refined sugar: high fructose corn syrup, dried cane syrup, invert sugar, raw sugar, In the Raw anything, molasses, sucrose, dextrose, lactose, maltose, fructose, glucose, saccharose, (and any word ending in “ose”), brown rice syrup, honey, maple syrup, cane juice, beet sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, agave nectar, barley malt syrup, cane crystals, caramel, carob syrup, dextran, dextrin, diastatic malt, disaccharide, ethyl maltol, golden syrup, maltodextrin, sorbitol, sorghum or sorghum syrup, treacle, turbinado sugar, & xylose!!
