“How many times did you feel sugar cravings?”
“Did you know that sugar is more addictive than cocaine?”
Research has shown that sugar should be considered an addictive substance same like cocaine and It increases your dopamine level that encourages the pleasure centre in your brain.
Also, there can be withdrawals symptoms while cutting or eliminating sugar from your body, symptoms like depression and headache.
In addition, the high consumption of sugar intake can threat your health due to the mess of hormone production that interferes with your mood and sleep.
However, the daily consumed amount of sugar for women is 100 calories (6 teaspoons) and 150 calories (9 teaspoons) daily for men.
You might think that sugar is the only source of energy, but on the contrary, sugar can rob your energy and there are many subsidiaries that you can eat to fuel your body with energy than sugar.
Thus, eliminating the daily intake of sugar will help to detox your body, all you have to do is to stay hydrated and well fed.
Why pick a free sugar diet?
I’m not convincing you to start a free sugar diet right now but I’ll explain to you the benefits behind cutting sugar from your meals.
Also, to what extent you’re exposing your health to losses by excessive sugar intake.
Sugar is an extracted chemical from plants either from sugar cane or sugar beet.
There’s two types of sugar, natural sugar and refined sugar.
All kinds of fruits and veggies contain natural sugar and the refined is extracted from the cane or beet.
Basically, Sugar doesn’t include any nutritional value, we add sugar to the coffee or the cake in order to have a better food taste only.
Besides, adding too much sugar can destroy your health including:
- Tooth decay.
- Accelerates ageing.
- Higher cholesterol.
- Anxiety and stress.
- Weight gain.
- Obesity.
- Insomnia.
- Gum disease.
- Hair loss.
- Affect your immune system.
While taking steps to start a sugar-free diet isn’t easy, but it’s worth it maybe It’s the best action you can toward your health for many reasons like:
- Help you to lose weight easily and fewer cravings.
- Lower risk of disease like heart disease, type 2 diabetes.
- Reduce the risk of digestive problems.
- Clearer skin without wrinkles or fine lines.
- Keep you energized during the day.
- Improve brain focus.
- Reduce the risk of cancer.
- Protect you against fatty liver disease.
- Maintain you mentally and physically.
Follow these steps if you’re encouraged enough to begin the free sugar diet:
1- Food to eat
Most of the vegetables and fruits contain natural sugar, but with different sugar concentration.
For example, you can eat an apple with 10 grams of sugar or a doughnut with 27 grams of sugar.
In the end, sugar is sugar, but controlling your sugar intake will help you step by step to remove sugar from your meals.
Here are kinds of food with less sugar intake, such as:
Vegetables: broccoli, avocados, carrots, cauliflower, onions, lettuce, spinach.
Fruits: apples, blueberries, cantaloupe, peach, oranges, kiwi, strawberries, pears, lemon, raspberries, blackberries.
Meat: Beef, chicken, lamb, turkey.
Nuts and seed: almonds, cashews, peanuts, sesame, walnuts.
Whole grains: brown rice, barley.
Beans: chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans, lentils.
Seafood: crabs, salmon, tuna, mackerel, shrimp, sardines
Spices: ginger, paprika vanilla, cinnamon, cumin.
2- Food to avoid or eliminate
It’s awkward to tell not to eat kinds of fruits or vegetables during a diet plan but it’s true there’s a lot of them contain sugar in high concentration
So, as we listed the kinds of food that contains a low-level of sugar to eat, here is the list of food you should stay away from it during a sugar-free diet.
All kind of sugar: brown sugar, coconut sugar, date sugar, syrup, honey, white sugar.
Condiments: Sauces, vinegar, salad dressings.
Refined flours: cakes, cookies, doughnuts, white bread.
Beverages: flavoured coffee, soda, smoothies, ice tea.
Fruits: mangoes, grapes, bananas, cherries, passion fruit, pomegranates and any dried or canned fruits.
Vegetables: sweet potatoes, sweet corn, beets, green peas and onion.
Snacks: protein bar, granola, cereals and candies.
And for sure NO JUNK FOOD!
3- Stay hydrated
Summer is coming and your body tends to lose more water than the usual during sweating, exercising, urinating.
Thus, your body asks for more fluids to stay hydrated.
“Let’s go for smoothies”.
I can’t deny that smoothies are the best choice in sunny days and can keep you hydrated, but it’s a false feeling of refreshment.
In addition, It adds sugar and calories to your body while your aim now is to cut sugar.
The surprise is there are kinds of food such as fruits and vegetables that can keep you hydrated, but it contains sugar as well and you shouldn’t eat or squeeze it to make a juice like mangoes and grapes.
Water has been always the best solution for dehydrating problems which contains zero calories.
Every organ in your body needs water to function properly including your brain and muscles.
There aren’t any other fluids can keep you hydrated as much as water.
So, if you want to stay hydrated without having extra calorie, you should drink at least 8 cups of water daily.
It also depends on the climatic condition and your physical activity.
Here are more benefits of drinking water:
- Feel full for a longer time
- maintain body temperature
- transport the nutrient through the body
- Improve kidney performance
4- Know how to read nutrition food labels
Once you took the decision to follow a sugar-free diet, you need to know how to read food labels.
Food nutrition labels contain all the nutrient in a selected food will help you to decide which food suits your regime.
As we are talking about the sugar-free diet, keep your eyes on the sugar section on any packaged food.
While the acceptable amount of any packaged food is lower than 5 grams of sugar per 100 grams
If you want to eliminate permanently the sugar from your meal so don’t pick any food with the names below on the nutrition label.
However, the sugar come under many concentrations and different names you should be aware of and avoid it, the most names commonly used are/anything ending with”ose“:
- Dextrose
- Fructose
- Galactose
- Glucose
- Lactose
- Maltose
- Sucrose
In general, you have to know as much as you can about the food you eat not only the sugar concentration but all the ingredients in processed food.
To sum up
Sugar-free diet is the best choice you can take to maintain your health and detox your body without worrying about your daily energy.
You have to limit any source of added sugar(soda/cakes) and hidden sugar in natural food.
In order to help you to pursue the sugar-free diet, pay attention to your fridge stock, fill it with all the allowed food and stay away from buying any food with a high sugar concentration.
You can start to eliminate sugar from your meals slowly (one teaspoon on coffee instead of two, skip dressings on salad, stop junk food, one less soda per day).
Step by step you will get rid of sugar from your body then from your life.
Not only sugary food but also choose non-caloric beverages and stay away from smoothies.
Also, Hydration is critical in any diet plan, 60% of your body is water.
It will make you feel full quickly and lose weight at the same time.
Furthermore, being a nutrition food reader is important either you’re following a diet or not.
But knowing to choose the ingredients of every food, being aware of the food that enters your body is necessary.
And the most important do not listen to your sugar cravings, It’s a false alarm. and stick to your goal which is losing weight through free sugar diet.
