Remove the Sugar from my diet

Artgallop501

Hi everyone my name is Arlethia. Call me Letha. I've been on a weight loss journey for a long time some success but as of lately not much. I'm going on a no sugar diet. Maybe some of you know how it feels when you get older and the weight won't come off. That's the reason for the no sugar diet. If anyone has any helpful hints or strategies please be free to talk to me about them. I'm looking for all the support and encouragement I can get.

paul65k1

While it's true that I have yo-yo'ed through the years, I find that for me (M65, 6'3" - 225lbs) that the easiest way to take off the lbs is to manage both sugar and carbs.

In my case, no more than 10G of sugar and 70G of carbs really helps me take off the weight and keep it off my goal weight...... right now, once I get to m, I'm only about 20 lbs away.

Using the food diary here is the best way for me to manage my numbers, and the rest works. In my case, calories are meaningless if I meet my two metrics daily....... hang in there and you'll get to your goal; the key for me is to check in at least 2X per week, make a chart with goal numbers by the day or week, and not just looking at the ultimate goal number.

tomcustombuilder

You lose weight by lowering calories. Eliminating things from your diet just lowers calories.

Fruit has sugar so you shouldn’t be eliminating those things. No sugar would mean no carbs.

Theoldguy1

As mentioned above, it's about calories in/out. I would look to eliminate ADDED sugar as a good tool to reduce calories.

AnnPT77

Artgallop501 wrote: »

Hi everyone my name is Arlethia. Call me Letha. I've been on a weight loss journey for a long time some success but as of lately not much. I'm going on a no sugar diet. Maybe some of you know how it feels when you get older and the weight won't come off. That's the reason for the no sugar diet. If anyone has any helpful hints or strategies please be free to talk to me about them. I'm looking for all the support and encouragement I can get.

Hi, Arlethia (pretty name!) and welcome!

I guess I know how it feels to get older? I'm 68. I used MFP to lose around 50 pounds at 59-60, now maintaining a healthy weight since. It is possible!

I have to admit, I'm kind of a hedonistic aging hippie flake, so I don't enjoy following strict rules. For myself, I started logging my food, and trying to reduce calories in the least-unpleasant way possible for me personally. Honestly, when I started logging, some easy cuts jumped right out at me. Mostly it was reducing portion sizes of some things, increasing portions of others (like veggies and fruits), and eating treat foods less frequently. I didn't completely cut out anything that I can think of, though probably there are some things I didn't like enough to bother eating anymore.

I think a person who eats/drinks a lot of sugary things can get significant calorie-reduction benefits from cutting down on sweet drinks, candy, baked goods, etc. Some people are happy substituting non-calorie sweeteners, other aren't. Most people find so-called whole foods more filling than sweets and refined/highly-processed foods, so it can be easier to cut calories by shifting eating more in that direction.

My biggest tip would be to figure out which calorie cuts would be easiest for you to do. If that's cutting out added sugar, then that's perfect for you. (Personally, I wouldn't recommend eliminating ALL sugar, because there is inherently sugar in very healthful fruits, veggies, and no-sugar-added dairy foods. Those things aren't what people call "empty calories"!)

No one way of eating/being active to lose weight is ideal for everyone. This is what I did, one option to consider:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10636388/free-customized-personal-weight-loss-eating-plan-not-spam-or-mlm/p1

I'd also point out that there are a couple of factors that commonly reduce people's calorie needs as we age: Daily life activity, and body composition.

Most people have more active lives in their 20s than later, things like physical jobs, social activities like dancing or games (frisbee, whatever), more physical transportation (walking to public transit, biking, vs. maybe having a car and gas money, etc.). That kind of movement burns a surprising number of calories. Of course we can add exercise, but we can also increase our daily life movement. Many MFP-ers share their ideas for that here:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10610953/neat-improvement-strategies-to-improve-weight-loss/p1

Body composition is more subtle: Usually young people have relatively more muscle mass than older, partly from that lower activity just mentioned, partly because we don't keep challenging our muscles so they sloooowly deplete. Muscle burns a tiny number more calories at rest than fat does, but that's not the big deal. Losing muscle - losing fitness generally - tends to make movement of all types harder and less fun, so we do less of it. That can create a negative spiral of doing less, losing more fitness, things get even harder, do less, etc. Exercise, especially strength-challenging exercise, can gradually turn that around.

Those are just a few things I've thought about, and worked on, to reach and (so far!) stay at a healthy weight.

Your best route may be different, and that's great. Regardless of eating/activity choices, I'm cheering for you to succeed, because IME the results are very much worth the effort!

neanderthin

Artgallop501 wrote: »

Hi everyone my name is Arlethia. Call me Letha. I've been on a weight loss journey for a long time some success but as of lately not much. I'm going on a no sugar diet. Maybe some of you know how it feels when you get older and the weight won't come off. That's the reason for the no sugar diet. If anyone has any helpful hints or strategies please be free to talk to me about them. I'm looking for all the support and encouragement I can get.

Well, a no sugar diet would then technically be a carnivore diet with also leaving out the dairy aspect of the carnivore diet simply because all carbs are basically sugar.

I suspect you mean any added table sugar and foods that have added sugars in them and to a lesser extent some of the many processed and ultra processed foods that are filled with those refined carbs that have a lot of sugar added which just going to the bakery section in a supermarket you'll see when reading the ingredients list all those products will have sugar added.

Despite what other people say here, it's a decent plan that will force you to replace all of these foods with foods that don't have these characteristics which for the most part will be whole foods by default and I would if you can focus on your protein and hopefully where the ideology for consuming animal protein hasn't tainted your beliefs in thinking it's going to kill humanity, then I would suggest much of that increased protein come from animal sources.

I, after quite a while of fumbling around with different dietary strategies started with low carb and eventually included a ketogenic diet, but that might not work for many people including you so looking at a more holistically freindly diet where mostly whole foods are what you eat is probably a good stategy going forward and it still alow for natural sugars found in many whole foods, a Mediterranean type diet is a good example. Anyway your basic idea that you would like to remove sugar from your diet is a good one but you need to realize that doing that is a little more nuanced than most people think. Good luck regardless of what you end up doing.