Giving Up Sugar: Good Tips from SeekingHealth.com

From Seeking Health: "Avoid the high sugar snack foods. This is a catch 22 as you crave sugar but this point must be addressed as if not, you will find yourself constantly in the candy section. High sugar snack foods cause your blood sugar to spike and then you 'crash' shortly afterwards. You crash afterwards as your insulin has 'overshot' the amount it needed to secrete and thus has pulled all sugar from your blood causing you to have Reactive Hypoglycemia. This causes you to crave sugar again as you actually do need sugar. So avoid the high sugar snacks and Reactive Hypoglycemia attacks will not occur nearly so often - hopefully never."

That's just one of five great tips. Sweets are kind of my last big hurdle, I especially like chocolate. What I've tried to do is gradually eliminate one high-sweet (not necessarily sugar but any sweetened item, like fruit-sweetened soda for example) item from my diet at a time, often replacing it with fresh fruit. I've gotten rid of jams and jellies this way: You either eat something sweet, e.g. grapes or berries, with the item, or just crush a fresh item on the stuff you've used sugar on in the past.

I gave up "natural" sodas this way. Now I'm working on oatmeal. I've always liked it with maple syrup but am trying to use fresh or frozen berries as a substitute.

Anyway, Ben Lynch has other right-on ideas at SeekingHealth.com.

-- Paul Andrews, GreenforGood

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