Sugar Rush

One of my new years resolutions was to work on cutting down sugar in my diet. I should start out by saying I have only done a very basic course in nutrition and kind of know what works for my body, I otherwise have no medical expertise and you should definitely consult a professional (or do googling of your own) if you have concerns regarding proper nutrition.

This week I have been looking into sugar in general, to help myself better understand the amount of sugar my body needs, and where that sugar currently comes from in my diet versus where it should ideally come from. (Read: I eat way too much candy.)

So anyway, here’s some interesting things I learned which I thought you might find interesting or vaguely useful in your life.

Sugar comes from places you may not expect it to, like in milk and fruit, as well as the more obvious sources like Snickers bars. We need some sugar, and it is not all evil!
If it ends in ‘ose’ it is a form of ‘sugar’.
Simple carbohydrates and sugar are essentially processed the same way by your body. Both are treated as fuel for the fire, but the effect they have on the fire can be different.
It’s important to consider processed or refined sugar versus naturally occurring sugars such as those in milk and fruit. You will need to make up your own mind what you believe about ‘white death’… Personally I think all things in moderation, including moderation. But again, I am not in any way a health professional.
I am going to try and avoid foods (most of the time, in moderation) with a lot of added sugar, have no more than 10g of sugar at lunch time and use the following two simple rules:

If you’re trying to cut down added sugar in your diet, like me, an easy way to avoid having too much in one serve is to check that the sugar is no more than 10g per 100g (you can see this info on the nutrition label).

Here’s a simple way to work out the right gram amount of sugar for you to be taking in: Take 10% your daily caloric intake and divide by 4. This works out to approximately 40g for me. Which is a LOT less than I am used to eating let me tell you! To put it in perspective – 1 teaspoon of sugar is 4g, 1 fresh apricot contains about 3g of sugar and a serve of 2% milk on my cereal contains around 12g of sugar.
It’s important to weigh up the other nutrients you are getting from the foods you are eating as well as looking at the sugar content. For example in my breakfast cereal (Special K) I am also getting 7g of protein, another 4g of sugar, and 22g of carbohydrates. The cereal and milk combined make the sugar content of my breakfast 16g, which is close to half my daily recommended intake, not even taking the carbs into consideration! I was surprised by this, but for the good carbohydrate and protein content and lack of added sugar, I am okay with this.

Nutrition can be an overwhelming topic, but learning the basics of it has been the only way for me to gain control over my weight. I went to the gym for 2 years and lost 2kg before I finally took a basic course in nutrition, I then lost 10kg in 12 weeks. Even though I probably do an above ‘average’ amount of exercise, it wasn’t until I understood the way my body was processing the fuel I was putting in that the scales and tape measure were finally showing my effort.

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I hope you found this post interesting or useful, writing it really helped me to understand it better in my own head!

Photo from sxc.hu