Sugarholics Anonymous

Are you high? Before you say no, consider what you’ve put in your mouth lately. If it includes anything from cereal or raisin toast to yoghurt or tomato sauce, there’s a decent chance you’re riding a sugar rush right now. Don’t feel bad – just about everyone is buzzed. Research shows we’re scarfing an average of 28.5 teaspoons a day – way more than we should. And since 80 per cent of your RDI has already been added to your diet by food manufacturers, chances are you’re sugar-wired most of the time.

Sweet treats are bad news because they typically deliver a load of kilojoules with little to no nutrition. A more troubling fact: as our consumption of sugar rises, so do the numbers on our scales. Our irresistible desire for the sweet stuff may indeed be out biggest diet downfall.

Kiss the Cravings Goodbye:

Here comes the hard-to-swallow truth: the only way to curb a sugar habit is to cut back. Drastically. It’ll be tough in the beginning, but your body will crave sugar less as it regains its insulin sensitivity. In order to extract your sweet tooth, you first need to know how much sugar you’re actually eating. Take note of sugar’s pseudonyms. Read labels for a week and jot down how much sugar you’re taking in – you’ll probably find that it far exceeds what you think. Current Australian guidelines (which haven’t been revised for almost 30 years) recommend that only 10-12 per cent of your daily energy intake (that’s around 12 teaspoons for women) should come from sugar. Most of us are eating at least double that.

You’ll also realise that many products touted as healthy are still high in sugar. There are no laws regulating the use of the words “all natural” on food packaging, so manufacturers can label their products with abandon. Even if sweeteners do come from all-natural ingredients, they can be highly concentrated.

Once you know how much sugar you’re eating, you can control your intake.

Here are the pros’ tips:

• Eat breakfast. “Ninety per cent of sugar addicts skip breakfast,” says Kathleen DesMaisons, (author of Potatoes Not Prozac). When you eat breakfast, you prevent the drop in blood sugar that makes you crave sugar later.
• Pick fruit. Satisfy your sweet tooth with apples, bananas and berries, which temper natural sugar with fibre and antioxidants. Dried fruit and 100 per cent fruit juices will also do in a pinch, but they don’t have nearly as much fibre and are more concentrated sources of kJs, so limit yourself to a quarter cup or less of dried fruit or one cup of 100 per cent juice a day.
• Indulge right after dinner .Late-night ice cream fixes give you a pure, unadulterated sugar rush. Have a small scoop soon after dinner instead and you’ll reduce (though not counter) the insulin-spiking effect.
• Cut out “overt” sugars. Tackle the worst offenders first: sucrose-laden treats like lollies, frappuccinos, ice cream and soft drinks. If you drink a sugary soft drink every day, try having one every other day, then once a week, then not at all.
• Enter sugar rehab. Like any addict, you’ll need to detox before you can fully recover. According to Gillespie, how you’ll feel when you stop eating sugar depends on how much you were consuming to begin with. You may have intense sugar cravings for a few days, get a headache, feel irritable (much like any other addict stopping their drug of choice, really).

But after a few days you’ll feel like a whole new person. Plus, after you’ve recovered, you’ll find that a little sugar goes a much longer way.

Reference: Jane De leo- Women’s Health Australia