Confused about sugar

ruststar

I'm totally confused about sugar. I'm at 1200 calories and according to MFP I should stick to 24g of sugar - you'd be surprised how many veggies have sugar in them (cauliflower? Who knew?). The only way to do that is cut out fruit, which doesn't sound healthy - whatever sugars might be in fruit the benefits of the fiber and vitamins outweigh them. I've been sticking to my plan and carefully limiting my sugars, choosing only lower sugar count fruits (today= half a grapefruit and 1 cup of cantaloupe), but I don't feel good. I feel headachy, bloated, and kind of lethargic. I went to another site (www.realage.com) and under their 1200 calorie recommendation I'd be eating 82g of sugar. So which is it? I'm stay close to my recommended carb intake and I do choose whole grain over other options as best, so I'm learning a lot, but I really don't like the way I feel.

Plus - last week I lost, yay, but this week? Up by 3. It's not my weigh in date - not till Friday - but that concerns me. Thoughts?

utes09

When looking at my sugar amount I subtract Natural Sugars. IE those found in fruit, veggies and milk (1 cup serving has like 12g). I focus more on added sugars. I've changed my sugar allotment to 40g on here.

MikeM53082

I don't put too much effort into meeting the sugar goals on here. I eat a lot of fruit and have a weakness for dried fruit, which is loaded in sugar. I usually just focus on caloric intake.

LORR79

Im interested in this too. If you eat the recommended amount of vegetables and fruit you are very easily over. By the time I add in my skimmed milk and natural yogurt forget about it!

It seems really low to me.

lil_missfit

My sugars are over everyday too. I'd be interested to see what others post. I will say that I posted something similar a few weeks back. But not just sugar--fats too. What I got was, as long as they are good fats and sugars you should be fine. For instance, I usually have almonds and avocados (good fat)....I also eat 2-3 servings of fruit a day (good sugar)....though those things will cause me to go over in both areas. I doubt the gain is due to eating good sugar (fruit) but I am no expert and am only responding very humbly. I'll be following this thread today:)) Hope you get some good feedback!!!

utes09

I don't put too much effort into meeting the sugar goals on here. I eat a lot of fruit and have a weakness for dried fruit, which is loaded in sugar. I usually just focus on caloric intake.

The dried fruit is loaded with added sugar. Be careful with that.

lil_missfit

When looking at my sugar amount I subtract Natural Sugars. IE those found in fruit, veggies and milk (1 cup serving has like 12g). I focus more on added sugars. I've changed my sugar allotment to 40g on here.

How do you change the sugar allotment? or any of the numbers for that matter? I would like to do so:))

hpsnickers1

Natural sugars can count towards your Carb amount. (if something has 10g carbs and 5g of sugar then 5g of those carbs are from the sugar. All the carbs in milk come from lactose - natural). I limit myself to 25g of added sugar per day. I was re-creating the foods with natural sugars and pulling out the sugar numbers but it got tedious.

hpsnickers1

I don't put too much effort into meeting the sugar goals on here. I eat a lot of fruit and have a weakness for dried fruit, which is loaded in sugar. I usually just focus on caloric intake.

The dried fruit is loaded with added sugar. Be careful with that.

You can gain weight eating too much fruit. If you eat 150g of carbs and 100g of added sugar that day then 100g of those carbs come from sugar and that isn't healthy either. And when you eat too much sugar your body will stop burning fat until that sugar is burned off (the last thing your body wants to burn is fat - it would even prefer burning off muscle mass than fat mass). YOu want to get most of your carbs through fibrous veggies and whole grains.

And dried fruit is like eating concentrated fruit (all the sugar but none of the fiber that slows down the digestion).

deathtaco

Sugar is such a simplified term for such complicated and misunderstood science.

The shortest, best answer is to just limit yourself on man made sugars, keep a moderate amount of vegetable and dairy sugars, low (1-2 pieces; ie, 2 apples, 1 banana, 1 orange, etc) fruit sugars.

As far as carbohydrate sources go, I'd venture for veggies -> oats -> dairy -> fruits -> nuts -> grains.
I'm not a fan of grains. I don't eat (or limit myself to VERY low amounts) of wheat flour based foods.

Sweet potatoes and oatmeal. If I had but two choices of carbs to live off of!

ruststar

@deathtaco - I do love sweet potatoes. And oatmeal. I think I'm going to stop tracking sugar so closely and just keep mental track of the sugar that comes from non-natural sources. Thanks for the advice!

tryinghard2012

Half of baked sweet potato, FF milk and my medium apple sends my sugar allotment sky high.

Today I'm okay because I traded my apple which is 16 grams of sugar for strawberries which is 6 grams. I also didn't have my greek yogurt nor sweet potato.

I try to stay within (sugar) goal however, it's not the end of the world because I normally do not use "added" sugar. It's all natural.

ruststar

Half of baked sweet potato, FF milk and my medium apple sends my sugar allotment sky high.

Today I'm okay because I traded my apple which is 16 grams of sugar for strawberries which is 6 grams. I also didn't have my greek yogurt nor sweet potato.

I try to stay within (sugar) goal however, it's not the end of the world because I normally do not use "added" sugar. It's all natural.

I'd really like to keep my sugars from all natural sources, but skipping out on fruit altogether wasn't doing it for me. Strawberries are a great substitute, as are raspberries and kiwi fruit. I'm going to keep researching fruit looking for those with the lowest sugar counts and stock up on those.