To kick off my mini-series on the contents of my Healthy Pantry, I’m going to focus on sugar and sweeteners. One of the FIRST things I’d recommend any of my clients and followers to do is evaluate their relationship with sugar.
I’m going to caveat this post and say that included in this post are details of what I do that works for me. Please take this information and experiment for yourself to find what works for you. I do get a bit cheeky in some of my comments below, but I totally understand and support that different things work for different people!
If you are wanting to change your relationship with sugar, I’m so excited for you!
Addressing sugar is your diet is hard. It’s not just you. If you are struggling with sugar, please do not interpret it as something “wrong” with you or your ability to make healthy decisions. You are up against some serious considerations that make your body seem to work against you, and I’ll tell you what they are:
- Sugar changes your sense of taste. When you are used to high amounts of sugar in your diet, foods will lower amounts of sugar taste bland and even bitter. When you try to reduce sugar in your diet, this can make you feel like you’re “giving up” foods that taste good and those thoughts and experiences can interfere with your progress unless you know that this is the reason why. Not to worry, once you’re off sugar and sweeteners, your taste buds can “reset” to prefer normal levels of sweetness. Yes, even the sweetness in fruits and vegetables can be satisfying!
- Sugar feeds the Candida (yeast) in your gut. Candida is a normal part of our microbiome, but when we have been eating high levels of sugar (or have taken an antibiotic or birth control), there’s a chance we could have an overgrowth of this yeast. If you get frequent yeast infections, skin/nail fungus, eczema, or oral thrush, it might be a sign of an overgrowth of candida. These candida send chemical signals to your body that make you crave more sugar. Please read that again because I think this is fascinating: Candida releases a chemical that makes you crave sugar, altering your thoughts and behavior to consume more sugar.
- Eating sugar activates the reward centers of our brain and releases dopamine, which reinforces further sugar consumption, but eventually higher and higher amounts of sugar are required to get the same pleasurable result. This also makes it likely for us to use sugar to self soothe during times of emotional difficulty, stress, etc. If we don’t have other strategies to deal with our emotions, it can be challenging to alter our behaviors around sugar.
These reasons make coming off sugar a literal detox with physical, mental, and emotional symptoms you may experience. You might have flu-like symptoms as candida dies off in your body. You might experience mood swings and the chemicals in your brain recalibrate. You may experience intrusive thoughts about different types of sweets that you’d like to eat. It takes about 2 weeks for the initial recalibration to occur, with some symptoms lasting up to 6 weeks after removing sugar from your diet.
After I completed this detox process, I found I don’t crave sugar, sweets, candy at all like I used to. I don’t need it in my morning cup of herbal tea, it tastes great on it’s own. When my mom stays the weekend and I make her a cup of my tea, she doesn’t like it because she says it’s too bitter — she hasn’t yet chosen to reduce sugar from her diet. In fact, when I do have sugar now, I don’t even like it. It’s too sweet, I feel horrible afterward, I’m wired and then I crash. I’ve also noticed that I get a sore throat and UTIs when I’ve eaten more sugar than usual. Like so many things in life, when the impact sugar has on your body remains unexamined, you think the symptoms created by sugar are just normal.
This is really the key to behavior change. You can achieve a healthy lifestyle when you realize that the choice that makes you feel best is the healthy choice. Normally, I advocate following a diet that “feels good” to you, but in this case it takes some time to recalibrate what that is for you. You have to experience what healthy and satisfied feel like. You have to separate out the experience of “feeling good” by caving to social pressures and emotional drives. So, some of my suggestions below may sound boring and limited to someone who doesn’t thing normal levels of sweetness taste good — but this is my point! You have to recalibrate what is normal.
Most people know that hi-fructose corn syrup (GMO fructose and glucose) and white sugar (sucrose from sugar cane or GMO sugar beets) are not good for us, but I still see many behaviors that don’t reflect a clear understanding of sugar. Here are some of my thoughts on sugar below:
- Artificial sweeteners: I avoid these, with the exception of Stevia which I’ll choose very occasionally if I’m out of the house and don’t have any other options. There is a lot of information out there about the impact that artificial sweeteners have on our bodies if you’re curious about this. I also feel that the “0 calories” argument for why some people choose artificial sweetener is really misguided. Labels can be tricky sometimes and say “0 Sugar” but still contain artificial sweetener. Honestly, I would choose a drink or product sweetened with cane sugar over any artificial sweetener.
- Fruit Juices: I get a headache just thinking about a glass of orange juice. One 8 oz glass of orange juice contains 24g/6tsp of sugar which is your entire daily recommended amount of sugar. But more importantly, how do you feel after drinking orange or apple juice? Do you feel like you need a nap a few hours later? I know I do. Fruit juices have so much sugar and have no fiber content like whole fruit to slow down the absorption of those sugars. Frankly, I’d rather choose to spend my “sugar credits” on an awesome muffin than “waste” it drinking fruit juice and thinking I made a healthy choice.
- Hidden Sources of Sugar: store bought sauces, drinks, baked goods, deli meats, alternative/plant milks, etc. can all have added sugar. You have to look at the labels and find brands that you like and trust.
- “Healthy” Sugars: We seem to know that hi-fructose corn syrup is bad for us, but somehow other sugar sources have been able to maintain their branding as “healthy” (looking at you Maple Syrup and Honey) even though it’s still sugar. You’ll see these listed below as something I keep in the house, but I’m not fooled into thinking it’s somehow ‘less’ sugar impact on my body than other sources. I still limit the amount that I include in my diet.
- Carbs Are Sugar: Carbohydrates eventually are broken down into sugar, so it’s important to choose complex carbs like sweet potatoes and other vegetables that take longer to be digested instead of simple carbs like bread and pasta.
Here are some comments on the sweets and sweeteners I have in my pantry today and about how often I am using them:
- Fruit (daily): I have at least two pieces of fruit a day, and not because I’m “trying to be healthy”. I love the taste and I feel good when I include fruit in my diet. I like blueberries, strawberries, or a banana in the morning, and an apple, orange, or bunch of grapes with lunch. Pears and plums are so sweet when I find them in season. I also love mango but I get contact dermatitis from the skin so I haven’t bought it recently. To be fair, the grapes are high glycemic and might not be a good choice if you are working to eliminate sugar for a medical reason- stick to blueberries.
- Vegetables (daily): Sweet Potatoes are so good and so easy to bake whole in the oven. I just add butter or coconut oil, cinnamon and enjoy. No added sugar needed. Other sweet vegetables I enjoy for sweetness are roasted summer squash, roasted eggplant, raw or roasted carrots.
- Local Raw Honey (1 tsp a few times a week): I usually pick up a large jar in the spring and in the fall from a local farmer at a Farmers market. I use honey when I make sweet tea, but I actually don’t use it daily in my herbal teas. I’ll also drizzle this over peanut butter and banana toast or oatmeal in the mornings. Honey is also useful to have when I or my husband have seasonal allergies (add to nettle tea in the spring) or a dry irritated throat.
- Maple Syrup (monthly): I keep this for the occasional pancake breakfast, and to add to coffee, which I have very rarely.
- Light Agave Syrup (monthly): So to be honest this one really isn’t much better than white sugar. The only benefit in my mind is that agave is not a genetically modified food like some sources of white sugar. I use this one pretty sparingly for sweet tea or matcha if my honey is crystalized.
- Granulated Coconut Sugar (monthly): I use this in baking when sugar is called for so the chemistry of the baking works, but I don’t want it to be so sweet. When I made banana bread for the first time, the recipe called for 3/4 cup of white sugar and I was like no way am I going to put this amount of sugar into one loaf pan of bread! It put me off of baking until my sister-in-law recommended I try coconut sugar. It’s still sugar, so it’s not something I eat regularly, but it contains some trace minerals, and inulin which may help to slow the absorption and not raise blood sugar so quickly when eaten.
- Coconut Oil (daily): I’ll mention this in a different post when I get to oils, but I wanted to add it here because coconut oil can impart a sweet flavor to sauces instead of adding sugar to a dal or marinara sauce. We have also used it to reverse sear steak because it is safe at high temperatures and it brings out an awesome sweet flavor without having to use sugar in the marinade or dry rub.
- Cinnamon (daily): I use cinnamon a lot to make my food fit a sweeter profile without adding sugar or sweetener. Sweet potatoes are an obvious application, but I also use it in smoothies, oatmeal, rice, dal, chicken soup…honestly I put it in everything and it’s my secret ingredient for making complex flavor in almost any dish. Cinnamon is one of those really incredible spices that is warming and also moistening, which is why it is so nice in the cold, dry months of the year.
- Chocolate (daily): I actually do get cravings for chocolate. I like chocolate that is sugar and dairy free. I also have raw cacao (not cocoa) powder that I add to smoothies and make “hot chocolate” with. It’s really important, if you are someone like me that gets chocolate cravings, to increase the amount of magnesium in your diet!
- Peppermint Herbal Tea (daily): if you’re transitioning to herbal teas without sugar or sweetener, I highly recommend using peppermint tea as it has a naturally sweet flavor.
- White Granulated Sugar (basically never): Okay, I actually do have this in my pantry but I only use it to make hummingbird food. It’s really important not to use sugar substitutes for hummingbird food. This is a good way to use up any leftover white sugar in your pantry!
Okay, this ended up being a lot more information that I originally intended to share! Let me know in the comments if you’ve thought about reducing the sugar in your diet, or if you’ve already changed your diet, what additional tips you would share!
If you’re thinking about reducing sugar and are struggling or would like some support, consider working with me one on one with coaching. You can sign up for a free introductory consultation using the link below!
Thanks and stay tuned for the next post in this series — Oils!
Inner Clarity Wellness and Coaching 