How To Reduce Sugar Intake?
We all know that sugar is by far not the healthiest and is very likely to ruin your physique too. While our bodies actually need sugar to be healthy and support our bodybuilding goals, most of us tend to eat too much sugar. For this reason, we’re going to share here information regarding how to reduce sugar intake. You may have noticed that figuring out how to stop eating sugar is not an easy task. Especially if you’re not sure what you’re doing.
It seems as if there is sugar in everything these days. That’s a huge problem when attempting to achieve a low-sugar diet to achieve your physique and performance enhancement goals.
It feels impossible to reduce the sugar intake when doing the weekly shop, because, indeed, almost anything contains sugar. Everything – from bread to beer, they all contain sugar. The trick here is learning which foods contain more sugar, and which one you can (or at least should) cut out of your diet.
Here we’re going to share various thoughts on how to cut sugar out of your diet. In this way, you can find what’s the best thing that works for you for achieving your goals. You will know how to reduce sugar intake which will support your goals!
The effects of sugar on your body
While a bit of sugar, as said, helps maintain a healthy body and mind, the problem of the 21st century is too much sugar for most people. And sugar plays havoc on your body’s health and physique. From obesity to diabetes, cancer, tooth decay, and heart disease, it can cause other issues as well.
Nonetheless, please note that we are talking about added sugars. That’s because you can get sugar from fruits, for example – from a banana. Fruits are packed with nutrients and often, these sugars are fine, again, unless you tend to eat way too much fruit.
In the end, most people, whether they are aware of it or not, tend to eat far too much sugar on a daily basis. The average US citizen, for example, consumes 68 grams of sugar a day! That’s a whopping 17 teaspoons per day. That is considerably over the recommended maximum which is 25 grams for females and 37 grams of sugar a day for males. And we’re not talking about an actual 17 teaspoons of sugar a day. While you may add only 2-4 teaspoons of sugar a day in your tea or coffee, you take the rest from the foods you eat. The sugar you add to your drinks only adds up to this number.
The point is – you don’t need to add sugar yourself to take the necessary amount! Well, unless you actually eat extremely low amounts of sugar.
How To Cut Out Sugar?
Check below some of the best methods that will help you reduce sugar intake, help you stay healthy, and reach your fitness goals.
Avoid The Desserts
Yeah, we know that it is hard to give up on desserts as they are very tasty, however, desserts usually offer very little in terms of actual nutrition. Instead, most desserts are full of sugar that will only cause your blood sugar levels to spike, and then crash. This is going to lead to tiredness, hunger, and a desire to consume even more sugary foods. Needless to say, each and every one of these effects can and will have a negative effect on your health, performance, and physique.
Almost a fifth of the sugar in the US diet tends to come from sugary desserts.
It’s hard to give up on desserts, but it’s worth reducing their amount until completely excluded or at least eaten very rarely. Instead, you can opt for a healthier dessert such as fresh fruit, dark chocolate, or yogurt, each providing less sugar and more nutritional value. It won’t make you feel tired and make your waistline grow.
Dodge The Sugary Drinks
Almost half of the sugar found in the average American’s diet comes from sugary drinks such as soda, sports drinks, and energy drinks! You may think that fruit drinks are an exception. Well, they’re not. While they are marketed as “healthy”, they are actually not. Indeed, they are healthier, providing some vitamins, but they are still full of sugar!
A lot of people make the mistake of dieting but continue drinking sugary drinks (whatever they may be, including fruit drinks and coffee or tea with sugar) and still have no luck losing weight.
Drinking is one of the poorest ways of maxing out your daily calorie allowances. That’s simply because they do not satisfy hunger. This means that you’re going to reach your calorie limit for the day before you’ve had your lunch, simply from drinking sugary drinks. And you’re still hungry.
What to do? Avoid ALL of them! Have the healthy habit of avoiding them. Only drink water, and sugarless tea or a few sugarless coffees a day.
Choose Whole Foods
By saying whole foods, we’re talking about foods that are not processed and are not packed full of additives. What should you do? Cooking at home, and ensuring that the foods you buy at the market are not processed. Those highly processed foods, like certain kinds of desserts, soda, and overall junk food are very high in sugar, as well as salt and fat.
If you cook simple dishes with meat and vegetables as well as complex carbs like whole grain pasta, brown rice or peas will help you cut out a lot of sugar from your diet.
Low Sugar Cereals
A lot of us tend to have breakfast cereals, however, they are popular for being full of high amounts of sugar. Even those that are marketed as healthy cereals still have lots of sugar! You should be aware that a lot of popular American cereal brands contain almost HALF their weight in added sugar! This means that almost half of what you eat is pure sugar! Want to reduce sugar intake? Avoid those high-sugar cereals.
In fact, a lot of breakfast foods tend to be high in sugar. Pancakes, waffles, muffins, and many more – all packed in sugar. That’s why a lot of people tend to exceed their recommended daily allowance of sugar even before they have their breakfast! But then there’s the full day ahead. And since their breakfast was so full of sugar, they tend to feel sluggish throughout the day and have food/sugar cravings.
A fruit, avocado, eggs, and/or Greek yogurt is going to be a much better option for breakfast!
Double Check Labels
While it feels unfair, it is not illegal for brands to use words like “healthy” on their products, despite the fact that they may not be. What should you do? Always read the label! There’s a chance you’ve read “low fat” with a huge font on a product. But if you were to read the labels, you’d see that while it’s indeed low in fat, they compensate for it with a huge amount of sugar! Or the other way around.
There are also lots of those who use various sneaky names for sugar. It could include caramel, maltose, dextrose, molasses, rice syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, cane sugar/juice, and possibly others.
Top tip: The name of an ingredient that is on the top, has a higher percentage of foodstuff in the product. The higher the name of an ingredient is in the top ingredient list, the higher the percentage of it.
Add Lots of Protein and Healthy Fats
While sugar will make you feel sluggish and only increase the hunger feeling, protein keeps you feeling full (satiety) for longer. That’s simply because a lot of protein-rich foods are slowly broken down and digested. Sugar, on the other hand, will increase your appetite by sending signals to the brain, suggesting the stomach is empty, while it is not.
That’s why it is so easy to overeat and binge on sweet and sugary foods such as desserts. Protein, on the other hand, is full of extremely important amino acids and will make you feel full for longer. On the other hand, fat is high in energy (healthy fats) and also works to reduce hunger. In short, you’ll feel both full of energy and a full stomach.
Use Natural Sweeteners
You should know that sugar is incredibly addictive. Regardless if you know it or not, accept it or not, and regardless if you notice it or not in our daily lives. Moreover, similar to certain drugs and alcohol, over time you can get a tolerance to it. This means that in order to feel satisfied, you will be required to up your intake of sugar. In fact, do you know that it is even possible to experience withdrawal symptoms from lack of sugar if you quit a high-sugar diet? In short, you should be switching to a diet that is low in sugar if you’re already making the mistake of having a high-sugar one.
We know that giving up on sugar can be hard. That’s why, if giving up sugar in your food is really difficult, you could try natural sugar alternatives like stevia, erythritol, and xylitol. While it would be better to avoid them too, they come with far fewer calories and they are not going to cause spikes in blood sugar (that’s why they are good for diabetes-suffering patients). Nonetheless, they are still exactly as sweet as sugar.
Reduce Sugar: Conclusion
Learning how to cut sugar from your diet is very important because it can be tricky. Moreover, it may not be a rapid process. Nonetheless, over time, you should be able to reduce your daily intake of sugar below the level of the average American. And that’s what you actually should be doing as long as you want to support being healthy and developing the physique you’re dreaming about.
Keep in mind that sugar both benefits the way you look and your health because reducing sugar will reduce cancer risk, lower chances of heart issues, lower body fat, and will actually lead to more energy in your daily life.
If you are serious about getting more energy levels that can support your health and your bodybuilding goals, however, I recommend you to pay attention to our anabolic steroids which are of the best quality and are sure to help you out. While they do not help reduce the cravings for sugar, they help get rid of extra body fat and support your muscle gains. When you start noticing results from the efforts you put in the gym and in the kitchen (by resisting the temptation to eat sugary foods), you’ll want to get to the next level. And there’s nothing else better than the anabolic steroids you can get for sale from Cycle-Gear.to.