Get the Sugar Out of Your Diet

Sugar cravings—we all get them. It is what we do with them that matters. We now know that sugar is one of the most addictive substances on the planet. It was, at one time, worth more than gold itself. It is the one substance that can cause weight gain even to a distal gastric bypass patient. It will also cause “dumping syndrome,” severe gas, and diarrhea to gastric bypass patients.

Make it your personal goal to find the best sugar- and milk-free recipes and wow your friends and families with the fact that your diet is sugar/milk free. Diabetic cookbooks have great recipes in them. You can use a soy product or mocha mix rather than milk. Use plain yogurt instead of milk.

Splenda is an excellent sugar-free product that you can bake and cook with, and it doesn’t have a bitter aftertaste.

Getting Started

* Eliminate first the sugars that you are the least apt to miss: those sugars that are hidden in drinks and in breakfast, lunch, and dinner convenience foods.

* Keep a food diary. Jotting down everything you eat and drink for a few days is a sure-fire way of seeing the truth of your eating habits more clearly. Be sure to keep a record of what you eat on at least one weekend day, too, because we may eat irregularly and indulge in foods then that we don’t usually have the rest of the week.

* Look for patterns in your food record, in particular, when you crave and indulge in sweets. Some people who ate well the rest of the week were shocked at their sugar-craving mayhem on the weekends. Every weekend they went out for an unusually high-sugar breakfast: pancakes (made from white flour), high-sugar commercial pancake syrup, and a large glass of orange juice. This started a cycle that led to blood-sugar swings and sugar cravings and binges on those days.

* Make a bet to stay sugar-free. You’d be amazed how sheer stubbornness and the desire to show the other person you can win the bet often give you unfailing resolve. (The opportunity to earn a little money doesn’t hurt either.) A thirty-year-old career woman made a bet with her boss to give up chocolate for Lent. She had a difficult time not giving in to her desire for chocolate, but did it just to show him she could. The great thing was, after she won the bet, she felt so good, she decided not to go back to chocolate and to cut down on other forms of sugar as well!

* Try staying sugar-free Vegas style. Find others who are trying to kick the sugar habit and encourage each person to bet money that both they and you can stick to a healthier, low-sugar lifestyle. If someone drops out, the rest of you get to split his or her money. Set the parameters so everyone clearly understands, and you’ll be surprised by how well monetary bets keep you committed to getting the sugar out. Many different types of sugars can be found in foods, but they are generally all built from the same three basic sugar units: glucose, fructose, and lactose. These three sugar units are found naturally in many foods and can be made into sweeteners, which are added to foods for taste, preservation and texture.

The Ingredients In Foods... ...Is Made Up Of These Sugars

Apple juice concentrate
Glucose, Fructose
Corn sweetener Glucose, Fructose
Dextrose Glucose
High Fructose Corn Syrup Glucose, Fructose
Lactose (milk sugar) Glucose, Lactose
Maltose (grain sugar) Glucose
Sucrose (table sugar) Glucose, Fructose

Get back to basics if you want to lose weight. If you think about it, the most obvious and the safest way to promote weight loss is to avoid foods that give you unnecessary calories. Sugars, processed carbohydrates, and alcohol—which give you little of the nutrients you require—are the top three on that list.

Avoid falling into the trap of believing sugar will make you happy. The pleasure you may experience from sugar on your taste buds is just temporary. It doesn’t change any unhappiness you may be feeling from troubles with your friends, family, work or love. Remember, too, that sugar often causes depression and emotional upset, besides being a major contributor to the development of physical diseases that can affect us emotionally as well as dumping and gas.