tracking sugar vs carbs

Le_Joy
Le_Joy Posts: 593 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Just curious as to people's opinions about sugar intake vs overall carb intake. If I track sugar I am pretty much always over by quite a bit - like 3-4x as much as I should be. It's summer time and I like fruit & have ice cream a few times a week. I stay within my total calorie limit and don't go over on total carbs very often, and when I do it isn't by very much. Just curious what people think about tracking sugar vs carbs ie does it matter so much about going over on sugar if total carbs are good.

Replies

  • yarwell
    yarwell Posts: 10,477 Member
    I would track carbs. White bread and white sugar have the same impact on your blood sugar.
  • jmoralesx5
    jmoralesx5 Posts: 128 Member
    As a matter of opinion as I'm no expert, I would say you need to limit your sugars as much as possible. I love fruit too, but in reality all the extra sugar you take in be it natural (fruit, etc) or imitation (twinkies) turns into fat if your body doesn't need it. Same thing with carbs, but if you are working out you should hopefully be able to burn those off.

    I'm on "The 17 Day Diet" and it limits me to 2 servings of fruit a day and 2 servings of carbs and they both need to be eaten by 2pm. This gives your body the best chance to burn them off before they find a spot to sit in your body as fat.
  • Raw_Bean
    Raw_Bean Posts: 293 Member
    Bumping for opinions!

    I always thought if I limited my "sugars" it would automatically limit carbs which I think is true for the most part and given what I ate when I was being being mindful of "sugar" limit I didn't run into anything that would lead me to believe differently.

    I was doing a food exercise with my young daughter last night and looked up kids daily sugar limit. We wrote out her day, which included pasta for dinner, I expected the pasta to be through the roof but when I looked up the actual "sugar" amount in pasta it was minimal! I know the effect pasta has on my body and it isn't good.

    What is the difference between sugar vs carbs? Is one more important over the other?

    I'd guess it would be better to be more mindful of carbs than sugar...given the pasta example.

    Thank you.

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