How to eat less sugar? 8 easy tips

Enjoy healthier life by cutting down sugar in your diet. Use this 8 easy tips to have more energy.

Nowadays people consume more sugar than ever before in human’s history. Average American consume around 90 kg sugar per year.
This sweet substance is added to almost all products on store shelves.

Main problem with high intake of sugar is it slowly kills us. High amount of sugar increase risk of obesity, diabetes type 2, Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular diseases. [1,2]

In this article I show you how to eat less sugar by using 8 easy tips

Tabel of content

1. Prepare Own Meals

2. Avoid Sweet Breakfast

3. Sleep Enough Hours

4. Eat Food In Order

5. Avoid Fizzy Drinks

6. Be Careful Sugar Is Everywhere

7. Less Carbohydrates, More Protein

8. We Are Only Humans

9. Bonus

10. Conclusion

11. Sources

1. Prepare own meals

How often you choose to buy lunch instead of preparing it? It is easy option but we don’t control amount of sugar in ready-to-eat meals. These cheap meals are full of sugar, trans fats and additives.

Solution to this problem is preparing meal in your house. It can be easier than you think. You only need to:

Find few recipes for quick lunch on Internet
Prepare shoppping list with products you need
Find 1-2 hours to make your meals for next 3-4 days
Keep your meals in the fridge
Enjoy your healthy lunch in work

2. Avoid sweet breakfasts

Modern breakfast usually consists of pancakes, orange juice, maple syrup, bread or potatoes. All are carbohydrates that rise your glucose level significatly after eating.

Why we should avoid high glucose level after breakfast?

Western breakfast full of carbohydrates will rise your glucose level greatly. Effects of glucose spike in the morning will influence on you during the day:

You will be hungry faster after sugar-based breakfast than fat/protein-based breakfast. It is especially annoying when you need to focus on work but you are hungry shortly after breakfast, [10]

High glucose spike in the morning has negative effect on sugar level after next meals. In simple words your next glucose spikes will be also high. [11]

3. Sleep enough Hours

Sleeping 7-8 hours is crucial element of healthy lifestyle. Poor sleep higher the risk of mental disorders, diabetes type 2 . What is more, it influences on food cravings.

How to stop sugar cravings?

Scientists found that after sleepless night your body change level of specific hormones. Men’s body produce more hunger hormone called ghrelin. [8] Women’s body lower level of ALP-1 which a hormone responsible for satiety. [9]

All of the changes in hormones level influence on your appetite. It is more probable that you eat sweets after sleepless night than after 8 hours of sleep.

4. Eat Food in order

How many times you feel tired after meal? It is very common after eating meal with carbs. Level of glucose rise rapidly so body try to store it. In consequence level of glucose drop so we fell tired.

START WITH VEGETABLES

Our goal is to not increase level of glucose too much in body. Vegetables full of fibre help us with that. Your next meal try to eat in this order:

Fibres-vegetables
Protein and fats-meat
Carbohydrates-potatoes, rice

How fiber prevent from high glucose spike?

Fiber play 3 roles in digestive system to prevent from high glucose spike:

Block enzyme which extract glucose from food
Create thin layer that don’t pass glucose to bloodstream
Slow down movement of food from stomach to intestines

Experiments conducted on people show that proper eating order can decrease: [4,5]

Glucose level about 37% and insulin about 49% after meal
Blood pressure
Total cholesterol
Weight

5. Avoid fizzy drinks

Sweet beverages like energy drink, soda, fruit juices, sweetened ice tea or sport drink are drunk in huge amounts around the world.
Only Coca Cola Company sell everyday 1.9 bilions servings of their products. [6]

One bottle of Coca Cola consists of 39 gram of sugar. It is more than recommended 25 gram of free sugar in our daily intake. [7]

Fizzy drinks can change brain’s regions responsible for decision-making and reward. Next time choose healthier alternatives instead of fizzy drinks. [3]

Healthier alternatives for fizzy drinks

Tea
Cold drink make with water and Honeybush
Ice coffee make from espresso and cold milk
Ayran
Homemade kombucha
Water with slices of lemon and mint
Kefir

6. sugar is everywhere

It doesn’t matter what type of sugar you choose. Every type of sugar effects you in the same way by increasing glucose level.

Food producers are way more smarter than we think. They decided to add few type of sugar to products we buy. This method enable them to trick consumer. Most of us don’t recognize malt extract or sucrose as sugar.

Next time you buy something in groccery shop look at the lebel and check how many form of sugar you find by using my list.

7. Less carbs, more proteins

In my opinion this tip will be the hardest to use in daily.
However, it will be tip that improve your health more than others.

We add carbohydrates all the time to our meals. In the morning we eat bread or tortilla. We add potatoes, rice or pasta to most of our dinners. To add little more carbohydrates we open pack of chips or crackers when we watch new season of House of the Dragon.

I would like to encourage you to change your dietary habits a little bit. Instead of potatoes or rice give yourself more meat and extra salad. Hummus with vegetables can be as flavourful as chips.
Amount of possibilities you can use is only limited to your creativity.

8. We are only humans

You don’t achieve goal by being executioner for yourself. We tend to do the same mistake. Everytime we break our resolution we give up and never come back to it. That’s why in February less people attend to the gym than in January.

It is human thing that we have a craving for sweets. Everytime it occurs try to use it in the best possible way. In these moments I make homemade brownie or buy croissant in the best bakery in city. Next time you need to eat sweet, try to enjoy this moment as
it would be your last.

9. Bonus

There is a list of smaller tips you can use:

Make your own vinegret sauce instead of buying ready-to-use
Don’t keep sweets in home,
Prepare shopping list before you go to shop
Don’t shop when you are hungry
Don’t add sugar to your tea and coffee
Chips and crackers will effect your body in the same way as sweets

Conclusion

High consumption of sugar is source of many diseases like obesity, diabetes type 2 or cognitive problems. It is reasonable to know how we can reduce amount of sugar we eat. Changing your habit is painful so gradually add my tips to your lifestyle. Small steps method is the best option to get rid of this addictive substance.

It is less known that sugar is beneficial for growth of bad bacteria in your digestive system. Problems with gut microflora is source of many diseases. I encourage you to read my article about taking care of your gut microflora.