Can cutting down on sugar really help you lose weight?

Read this if you are still loading up on candies and muffins.

Tania Tarafdar | Published: November 14, 2017 2:12 pm

Sweets: What if your blood sugar drops suddenly? So to be safe than sorry, always keep some chocolates or rock sugar in your bag without fail. You can also carry dry fruits or glucose biscuits as an emergency snack.

You may think that you need to put in a lot of hard work if you are trying to lose weight. But just taking tiny steps like refusing a handful of cookie bars and soda bottles can help you get there. Do not believe us? Nutritionist Akansha Jhalani tells you how cutting back on sugar can help you lose weight.

Cutting back on sugar can help you lose weight
All those muffins and cookies are a major source of empty calories which causes the entire spike in your blood sugar levels. And when you overindulge on those sweet treats; your pancreas pumps out an extra amount of insulin which in turn pulls glucose into fat cells making you put on a lot of weight. So yes, it can be a great idea to cut back on the sugar if you are trying to lose weight.

Also, eating a pastry, doughnut or two gulab jamuns to satisfy your mid-morning hunger or mid-evening craving might make you eat more during your meal time, no matter how early or late you decide to have the meal. Sugar in various forms (glucose or fructose) doesn’t help to satiate your hunger. In fact, even high level of fructose in the blood can decrease the circulation of leptin and insulin while increasing the concentration of hunger hormone ghrelin. So you end up giving in to your cravings if you eat sugar, ultimately gaining weight.

A diet containing fresh fruits and vegetables will provide you with plenty of sugar in its natural form of energy. Avoid highly processed foods to nix the refined sugar. Simply avoiding sources like sweetened drinks, flavoured yoghurt and desserts can reduce your refined sugar consumption by 75 percent. Here are 9 foods that have more sugar than you think.

These tips can help you reduce your sugar intake.

Do not purchase and store sugary snacks, biscuits, chocolates, cakes, pastries at home. You are likely to eat them more when you know you have them stocked at home or office.
Read foods labels to ensure that the food you are purchasing is not very high in sugar content. Corn syrup, corn sugar, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, dextrose, honey, cane sugar, cane crystals, molasses, brown sugar are all sources of simple sugars.
Avoid preserved juices, fruit crush and squash. These are high in sugar content and provide barely any nutrition.
Add honey instead of white sugar to meals. But remember it has the same amount of calories per gram, so too much of it is also not healthy. Here are 5 healthy alternatives to table sugar.

Image source: Shuttertock Images

Published: November 14, 2017 2:12 pm

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