Yeah, we know the facts. Sugar is evil. Sugar is bad. Sugar can lead to major chronic diseases including cancer, diabetes, obesity and heart disease. Blah, blah, blah. We care and understand but that still hasn’t kept us off the white drug.

Instead of banning sugar all together (congratulations to those that have crossed this finish line, we salute you) you don’t have to go cold-turkey in an effort to kick the habit and improve your diet. Moderation is a virtue and those that are willing to compromise can have their cake (no pun intended) and eat it too.

Mary Perry, registered dietician and clinical trials director for the Zone Diet offers these four rules for those of us who sometimes just gotta have our sugar fix:

  1. Always couple sugar, a simple carbohydrate, with protein to minimize spiking blood glucose levels. This will help to limit the fatigue, hunger and lack of energy that can often set in shortly after eating a high carbohydrate meal.
  2. Avoid added sugars, sugar added to foods during processing, which are often in combination with the wrong types of fat as these provide little nutritional value and are high in calories. If you can’t give up your sweets try to make sure they don’t exceed 100 calories per day and eat it within the context or shortly after a protein rich meal. You’ll be less apt to keep going back for more.
  3. Aim for the majority of your sugars coming from natural sugars found in fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy.
  4. When consuming sugar in the form of breads, pasta, grains and other starches think about keeping it to condiment sized portions.

What are your tips for consuming sugar in moderation?

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4 Comments

  1. This is hard to do. Sugar is in everything. I like sweets so much if i have my choice i use splenda because it tastes sweeter. (As she opens her chocolate milk)

  2. I’ve recently chopped my sugar intake by quite a bit but cutting it out is… less impractical and more “oh hey, so here I am and there’s official looking people who won’t let me up unless I eat these sugar wafers.” When I can I use stevia (whole, if possible) or monkfruit extract. If I HAVE to do sugar, it’s coconut palm sugar for the mineral content.

  3. I went Paleo/Primal for a while and never fet better. In fact, the less sugar I had the more energy I had which seems counterintuitive because I hear so much about eating the right whoelgrains and fruits which are all sugars. I’m confused but still trying

    • @Patrick: I’m attempting to go paleo as well, because I know the problems with sugar and grains. While cutting grains and carbs is mostly easy, I still have a problem letting go of sugar. Ugh. It’s my go-to, especially during this time of year.

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