How can I reduce my sugar intake?
Ways to reduce sugar intake include doing it slowly, removing processed sugars from your diet, and getting excess sugars out of direct reach. In this video, psychologist Ramani Durvasula, PhD, shares some simple strategies for reducing sugar intake.
Transcript
Look for sugar in processed foods that you eat. You'd be amazed how much of it is lurking even in the strangest places, like a can of soup.
Reducing sugar intake can actually be a simple stepwise process. It's often hard to do it all at once
because if you take all the sugar away, a lot of people report getting irritable, headachey, frustrated, and that can put them back in the sugar game again.
So you want to do it gradually. And some of the great ways to do it are, number one, remove it out of your schedule. So no more donuts at breakfast, no more 4:00 PM cookie break.
Take those scheduled sugars out of your schedule. Number two, do things like lose the diet soda.
A lot of people feel like, oh, I'll use diet soda as a way to keep the sweetness in my life. The problem is, when you're actually faced with regular sugar, you're more likely to overeat it
at that point. Another step to take is get all the sugar out of your house. When it's there, you tend to eat it more readily.
So make sure it's not in your desk, it's not in your purse, and it's not in your house so it's not easy to get to. Number four, look for sugar in processed foods that you eat.
You'd be amazed how much of it is lurking even in the strangest places, like a can of soup. Again, when you eat sugar, you want more sugar.
So even when you think you're not eating sugar, you may actually be eating sugar. And number five, find natural ways to bring that sweetness
into your life. No one's ever going to live a sugar-free life. What we're trying to do is get you away from sort of those processed sugars
and turn more to the sugars you get from places like fruit. So things like making a fruit smoothie that maybe you put a splash of soda water in,
now you're having a fruity soda without all the traditional sugar of a soda. You can take fruit, and you can mix it
with things like yogurt and something to put some crunch on it. So find ways to bring that sweetness into your life.
And maybe even find ways to enhance foods that you already like, like maybe popcorn. You could put a little cocoa powder on top of that.
And that sometimes gives you that sort of salty, chocolaty feel that makes you feel like you're getting that sweet hit. But this kind of natural sugar is more dialed down
so you get the sense of having sugar without the intense sugar hit. You still get the sweetness, but you're training your taste buds
in a different direction. [AUDIO LOGO]
diet nutrition
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