For those of you who don't eat white sugar

[Anonymous]

What do you eat and not eat? Do you use alternatives such as honey, maple syrup, agave syrup, stevia, or artificial sweeteners? Do you never eat sweets, or eat only those made with certain other sweeteners? Do you use condiments and other items with "hidden" sweeteners, like breads, ketchup and wooschester sauce?

I'm finishing up a month of a diet that only allows agave syrup and brown rice syrup, and I feel good and would like to continue to some extent. But I need to come up with eating parameters that I can follow for the rest of my life. My goals are both to maintain weight (which has become harder as I enter peri-menopause) and be healthier by ensuring that my insulin levels stay more level. I'm curious as to what your "rules" are.

[Anonymous]

Bump.

Anyone? I know some of you don't eat white sugar.

[Anonymous]

Rather than using white sugar or buying heavily sweetened things, I just add fresh fruit (to plain oatmeal and to plain, nonfat yogurt, for example). I try to stay away from processed food in general and condiments with sugar. I drink my coffee black.

Actually I think eliminating a lot of sugar in your diet is easier than eliminating salt. That's MY downfall!

[Anonymous]

Actually, I recently eliminated artificial sugars and am now back to regular sugars -- I just eat less of it (I can't stand the taste of honey)


Sugars are essential to cooking!

Honey (which is refined sugar) is metabolized the same way in your body, so it's not really an alternative to sugar. I think it's recommended that sugars make up no more than 10% of your daily caloric intake.

[Anonymous]

everything in moderation

I stay away from any of the substitutes and usually use raw sugar instead of white.

[Anonymous]

Agave is more slowly digested by the body so its a fairly good alternative. I try using fruit too, but lately I've been out of control with the sweets so I'm not the best person to ask!

[Anonymous]

I use one splenda in the morning in my coffee and cook with organic muscavado sugar.

[Anonymous]

OP here. I'm good about keeping most of my diet clean - plain yogurt, oatmeal with at most a drizzle of maple syrup, no-sugar added jams, no take out, ketchup maybe 2x/month, etc. But I do like my sweets and if I said no sweets for the rest of my life I'd go off on a binge. So I need to figure out new rules for sweets, like only homemade or only on weekends, etc. If my rule is health-based rather than based on trying to maintain my weight then I'm much better at sticking with it.

PP - why the muscavado sugar.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, if this is 'for life' OP, then I believe you are best off with no rules except this: everything in moderation. I like your idea about eating only the baked goods YOU bake, that kind of thing.

I worry when I hear you saying things like "rules" that you must "live by" that you're setting yourself up to fail. If you have 3 little Almond Joys every Halloween ... so what?

Moderation. Plain ole' white refined sugar is totally fine if you just have it very occasionally.

[Anonymous]

You could also start gradually...start by kicking High Fructose Corn Syurp off the list. Start eating natural sugars, etc. I think that artificial sweeteners are pretty much just as bad as corn syrup, but I do eat them on accoasion. Like people said, everything in moderation.

[Anonymous]

The newest reports show that agave is ranked right along with high fructose corn syrup. It is all about how it is absorbed and what it turns into. Many of our foods are high in sugar when we don't even know they contain the stuff. Starting to read the food labels is a good start to decreasing the amount of sugar you eat.