Slash your sugar challenge!

Sugar is one of the major sources of energy. From break-room doughnuts to healthy-looking packaged foods, the sweet stuff is all around us, and it’s all too easy to indulge. But sugar could be wrecking your health, whether you realize it or not.

There are two types of sugars in foods: naturally occurring sugars and added sugars.

• Naturally occurring sugars are found naturally in foods such as fruit (fructose) and milk (lactose).
• Added sugars include any sugars or caloric sweeteners that are added to foods or beverages during processing or preparation (such as putting sugar in your coffee or adding sugar to your cereal). Added sugars (or added sweeteners) can include natural sugars such as white sugar, brown sugar, and honey, as well as other caloric sweeteners that are chemically manufactured (such as high fructose corn syrup). Although sugars are not harmful in small amounts to the body, our bodies don’t need added sugars to function properly. Added sugars contribute additional calories and zero nutrients to food.

To complicate it further, added sugars can be hard to spot on nutrition labels since they can be listed under a few names, such as corn syrup, agave nectar, palm sugar, cane juice, or sucrose.

Sugar contributes to the development of several diseases, it is typically associated with weight gain, but the problems don’t stop there. Even if your daily sugar consumption fits into your caloric needs, a high-sugar diet puts you at increased risk for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease. It also increases your odds of developing mental health problems like depression and anxiety.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends: Adults and children should reduce their intake of sugar to less than 10% of their total daily energy intake. Taking adults with 2000 calories daily intake as an example, it is about 12 teaspoons (50 grams) of sugar. However, based on the statistic, each Malaysian consume about 26 teaspoons of sugar per day, and around 3kg of sugar per year in the form of sugary drinks, which is about 2 times higher than the recommended intake. Hence, we shall alert on our daily sugar consumption to avoid disease.

How to kick sugar addiction away, do this for 10 days for a quick, powerful detox.

1. Stop all forms of added sugar:  white flour, artificial sweeteners, hydrogenated fats, MSG, and pre-packaged foods
2. Don’t drink your calories: No sweetened teas and coffees, and no juices other than green vegetable juice.
3. Add protein to every meal.  Include eggs, nuts, seeds, fish, chicken, or meats.
4. Eat the right carbs. Choose wholegrain, root vegetables, and only non-starchy veggies: asparagus, green beans, mushrooms, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, fennel, eggplant, and peppers.
5. Include good fats at every meal.  Go for nuts and seeds, avocado, and fish, which offer omega-3 fatty acids.
6. Manage your stress.  When you’re stressed, your cortisol shoots up. This will drive up your hunger and can fuel sugar cravings.
7. Sleep.  If you get less than 8 hours a night, it can drive you to eat more calories

You can break the sugar habit. Doing a detox doesn’t mean you never eat another cupcake. But it does give you control over your cravings — and your health.