I never really looked at the sugar content in a lot of the common things I was eating. Thanks to the Fitness Pal ipad app I started using to monitor my health efforts (particularly calories and protein) I saw how much sugar I was eating and knew that was a problem. Now let me be the first to tell you I eat healthy. In fact a lot of my friends just roll their eyes at me when they ask me what’s for lunch or breakfast knowing well the words oatmeal and yogurt or vegetables and tuna are more than likely to come out instead of greasy versions like burgers or pizza. This is exactly my point, how daunting the amount of sugar is in everything from “healthy foods” to non traditional items like tomato soup and bread.
It’s frightening when you really start totaling it all up. For instead, I LOVE greek yogurt, mainly Fage but Chobani and Oikos have their days. Have you ever looked at the back at the sugar content of the versions other than plain? Here it is: Chobani ranges 19g-21g per flavored container, Fage the plain is 9g and all others are 16g plus with the honey version packing well over 25g! What difference are those from the warned about juices like Apple or Cherry, their sugar content is pretty much the same. If tv taught me anything about sugar it’s this your body can’t differentiate from good versus bad. Your body sees it as the same. Point is, say you have a yogurt for breakfast and a glass of apple juice at some point in the day you’ve already reached your max in sugar! For those of you that workout this is one of the biggest reasons you can not get rid of that belly fat.
Don’t let that crap full you about this sugar is all natural and comes from a certain plant and this sugar is artificial…blah blah blah. Yes some versions of sugar are worse than others and if you HAVE to exceed in sugar the better kind is the obvious choice but what it really boils down to is that it’s ALL sugar. You’re best bet is to do like I have and track it manually, online, through an app you pick your poison but I think you’ll be rather surprised/shocked and a little more enlightened than you were.
So here are some way healthier alternatives to knock the sugar out that I’ve come up with to try and stay within my healthy limit of 27-30g max a day.
However I still do not have it 100% under my “green” limit so if you have any ideas I’d love to hear them as well.
1. Greek Yogurt – add REAL fruit like blueberries and strawberries to plain brands instead of the pre sweetened kind
2. Try limiting the amount of sugar is not forgoing it all together in coffee and tea
3. Instead of a tomato bisque soup (loaded with sugar) opt for its counterpart plain old tomato soup.
Honey Crunched Fitness 