9 Ways to Easily Reduce Sugar to Lose Weight

Fun fact: your body reacts to sugar the same way it reacts to cocaine. Sugar is addictive, and most of us eat way too much of it.

We humans aren’t entirely to blame. A chocolate chip cookie here, a frozen margarita with the girls there…those are obvious sugar-bombs. It’s the not so obvious culprits that sneak in when we aren’t thinking about it: the sugar hidden in sauces, dressings, savory crackers, granola, health smoothies, bread.

There is a difference between the sugar that you find in an apple and the sugar you find in a chocolate chip cookie. The sugar you find in an apple is natural and it comes packaged in apple form with fiber, vitamins, minerals and longer chain carbohydrates that help your body digest the sugar. The sugars you find in cookies have none of those things.

When my clients are starting to focus on their diets to lose weight, I ask them to keep a food journal in part so that we can find where excess processed sugar slips in. Reducing sugar intake helps weight come off, boosts energy levels and improves overall health.

But it’s not always easy. As I said, sugar is addictive and the first few weeks might be filled with more excuses than anything else. But it’s doable and it’s totally worth it.

Keep reading to figure out how to reduce your processed sugar intake and improve your health.

Eat real food.

What is real food? Real food hasn’t been altered in a factory. It doesn’t require a label to tell you what it is. Real food contains nutrients – vitamins, minerals, fiber. Real food hasn’t been processed in a facility. A National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey performed in 2010 showed that 90% of added sugar in our diets comes from processed foods.

Processed food is easy, it’s fast, it’s affordable. It sits on the shelf in a pretty package and makes claims (like “just 100 calories”), that are hard to pass up. But the process that real food has to go through in order to sit in that package on that shelf isn’t a pretty one. And it’s not what you want to put in your body.

Next time you pick up a product whose package says “reduced fat”, flip it over and check out the nutrition panel. When comapnies take fat out, they have to replace it with something for flavor and texture. Chances are the fat that was taken out in order to make that claim was replaced by sugar. The healthier option: go full fat, go real food, avoid food that has to be altered.

Eat every 3-4 hours.

If you’ve ever gone without eating from breakfast until dinner, you know how hard it is to make healthy decisions, never mind cook an entire meal. When you are starving not only do you eat more food, you grab anything within reach because you are so hungry. All sense of healthy decision flies out the window because your body and brain are screaming “feed me” at you.

Eating every 3-4 hours helps to keep out-of-control-eating under control. 3-4 hours is about as long as any food, fiber-filled or not, is going to last in your system keeping you full and satiated. Eat real food every 3-4 hours and beat those snack cravings that have you reaching for the fastest form of energy around – processed sugar.

Be mindful.

It’s important to pay attention to your body to learn what it really wants. The best time to be mindful is always, but start by paying attention around 3-4 pm, when most of us feel that afternoon slump and reach for a sugary snack or caffeine.

Is your body actually hungry? If you’ve been eating real food every 3-4 hours, the answer is no. Most likely you are dehydrated or bored or anxious.

Keeping a food journal is a powerful tool to help you create mindful eating habits. You can pick up patterns that you might miss otherwise. With a food journal you can track that you crave a snack from the break room around 3pm every work day. Ask yourself what the trigger is. It’s probably not the dry Fig Newtons from the vending machine.

What you’re probably craving is human interaction, movement or a break from the monotony of working on your computer for hours. Once you learn that your body isn’t craving a sugary snack, you can be proactive and get up from your desk every hour, walk down the hall to have a conversation, fill your water bottle or get some fresh air with a friend. These are far better options than giving in to the trigger and grabbing a processed snack.

Snack wisely.

All of the above being said, if you find that you truly are hungry, snack wisely. Does that take a bit of preparation? Yes. But setting yourself up for success in this situation is super easy.

Throw a variety of these snacks into your bag every day, just in case:

• • Fresh fruit
  • Nuts
  • No-added sugar beef jerky
  • Plain Greek yogurt
  • Hard-boiled eggs
  • Full-fat string cheese
  • Edamame

  Cut back on sugar in the morning.

  Raise your hand if the first thing you do in the morning is brew a pot of coffee. Keep your hand up if you add sugar to your coffee. Breakfast is notorious for sweet foods: pancakes and waffles with maple syrup, scones, muffins and pastries, sugary cereals and prepackaged oatmeal, jam and parfaits. Starting your day with a pile of sugar filled foods, not to mention sugar filled coffee straight to your blood stream, is like waking up and deciding today is a wash before you’ve even put socks on.

  Cut back on sugar in the morning to give yourself a mental and physical leg up. Mentally, you can feel really good about eating a healthy breakfast with real nutrients that can carry you through until lunch time. Physically, you aren’t filling up on sugar, you’re filling up on real food that will digest slowly and keep you satiated until lunch time, when you can make another intelligent, unsweetened decision.

  My favorite, reduced-sugar breakfasts include:

  • • • Homemade oatmeal with fresh fruit and walnuts
      • Hard-boiled eggs
      • Avocado
      • Fresh fruit
      • Plain Greek yogurt with fruit and nuts

  Cut back on sugar-filled drinks.

  Even “healthy” drinks like smoothies and fruit juices contain loads of sugar. It’s easy to drink more sugar (and calories) than you know because your body and brain just doesn’t recognize liquid the way it recognizes food. Every diet soda, sweetened iced tea, Odwalla smoothie and Gatorade that you chug is teaspoon upon teaspoon of sugar. *For reference, the recommended daily value for a healthy adult is 6 teaspoons of sugar and 1 can of soda contains 10 teaspoons of sugar.

  Instead, drink water or sparkling water with citrus, cucumbers, berries or mint for flavor. Drink no-sugar added iced teas and trade in the sports drinks and sugar-loaded fruit smoothies for good old-fashioned H2O.

  Learn to flavor your food.

  The jars and containers of ready-to-eat sauces, dressings and condiments that line the grocery store shelves are shockingly loaded with processed and added sugar. Is it easy to make your own marinara sauce, BBQ sauce and Caesar dressing? Well, yes. But it does take time and maybe you aren’t overly excited about making your own sauce.

  If that’s you, add flavor in other ways. Here’s how:

  • • • Spices: cumin, cinnamon, chilies, garlic powders – spices and spice rubs go a long way in flavoring foods without having to lather on sauces. Try marinating meat with olive oil and spices for a couple of hours instead of slapping on BBQ sauce after the fact.
      • Citrus and vinegar: balsamic vinegar, lime juice, lemon juice – vinegar and citrus provide pop without needing sugar to back them up. Next time you make a salad top it with lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper instead of a store bought dressing.
      • Fresh and dry herbs: basil, thyme, parsley, chive – herbs contain zero sugar and zero calories but are still full of bright flavor. Try cooking with them and finishing dishes with freshly chopped herbs.

  Read labels.

  What if you want to have spaghetti and marinara tonight and don’t have time to make your own sauce? Knowing how to read labels comes in handy here. You can find products at the grocery store that aren’t loaded with added sugar but you need to know what to look for (and no, it’s not a loud claim written in gold on the front of the label).

  The word sugar doesn’t always make it onto the ingredient list. But it hides in the form of cane syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, molasses, dextrose, caramel…the list goes on. The closer the ingredient is to the front, the more of it there is in the food.

  Good news: the FDA is now requiring companies to put the amount of added sugar in the product on the ingredient label, so you should be able to tell easily what you’re eating.

  Choose wisely.

  All of the above being said, be smart about your choices. If it’s your birthday and your mom made pumpkin pie because it’s your favorite, have a slice and enjoy the sh*t out of it.

  It’s the everyday decisions where you can make the most progress. If you know that you are having your favorite margarita at your favorite tex-mex spot tonight, skip the cookie at lunch time. If you are going to consume it, make sure it makes you happy.