To Sugar or Not to Sugar, that is my question...

traccie2

Ok... so, I hit this spot where I'm not losing anymore weight. Period. I figured maybe I would go over my diary and see if I could find a bad habit or something I was doing wrong and I think I found it.

I eat alot of fruit and yogurt... and I mean alot. I don't go over my 1200 calories but I am taking in alot of sugars with the fruit and yogurt. Then add the coffee and the sugar I have in that and there you go.

So I'm considering switching to a sugar substitute, dropping some of the fruit and adding veggies.

Do any of you use a sugar substitute and if so, what kind? I used Splenda back when it came out but really don't care for it anymore. I've tried Stevia and the after taste was AWFUL!

Have any of you had to drop your sugars even though your calorie intake was ok?

traccie2

Anyone? Someone? Bad Topic?

skinnyforhi

Great topic--and it is all over the forums too so many people have this on their minds. I personally don't eat sugar substitutes because I try to eat organic and I think the chemicals probably aren't that great for you. I also can't lose weight when I drink diet sodas--go figure.

If you're at 1200, many people (including me) have had success breaking through a plateau by increasing the daily calorie intake. 1200 can be too low for many people to lose weight.

Just an idea. Good luck!

traccie2

Thanks! I don't think they are that good for you either. I rarely drink sodas or carbonated drinks of any kind and haven't for years. I had a friend many years ago who lived on Tab... Does anyone remember Tab? anyway, she got pretty sick and her doctor told her it was the diet soda, the Tab, she was living on. I pretty much quit drinking diet sodas then. Every so often I'll have one but it's a rarity.

I may try increasing my calories if I don't see a difference after cutting my sugars out for a little while. Thanks for your input!

SailorSarah311

I personally love Stevia. I use the powder form of Truvia. Not a big after taste to it. Splenda is NOT healthy for your body. Once ingested your body has no idea what to do with it. A lot of people who practice yoga or stick to an Ayurvedic diet will agree with this. What brand of yogurt do you eat? There are some brands that pack a lot of sugar into their containers. Check the labels closely to be sure.

traccie2

I'll have to check my yogurt, I hadn't thought about checking sugars on yogurt, I've been checking calories and fats...

I tried the Stevia and for some reason I thought it really tasted bad... Everyone else I've talked to who uses it loves it. I bought some of the monk fruit sweetner today, it's not too bad.

Sboobs96

Ditch the sugar and the substitutes. Honey is the way to go!

litatura

I refuse to drink my calories, so if I'm having coffee or tea, I use Splenda instead of sugar and I drink Diet Coke or Coke Zero instead of regular pop. However, I do try to limit the artificially sweetened drinks to 2 packets/day. I figure I'm less likely to grow a third head that way.

traccie2

LOL!!! A third head, LOL!

CoraGregoryCPA

I wouldn't advise trying to use a sugar substitute. I had a horrible crutch for Sweet N Low for YEARS! I loved it in my sweet coffee every morning. I gave it up at the beginning of this year. I wanted to see if my cravings for chocolate and sweet foods would go away. But I was still craving the sweetness. My coffee became bitter without the sweet n low and less desireable. I ended up giving up coffee a week ago, no headaches, and started losing weight and I don't have cravings at all anymore. I don't constantly watch my watch to see when the next time I can eat. All of a sudden, eating got easier.

I would advise just cutting back on the fruit. Use half as you usually would or eat vegetables instead. Try to cut back slowly, don't find a replacement unless it's a vegetable.

CoraGregoryCPA

Oh yeah, another thing you can do is try to make things on your own instead of buying them premixed. For example, your yogurt. Buy plain yogurt and add your own fruit. That way you can control the sugar.

szarlotka717

Have you tried reducing the amount of sugar you add to coffee and tea? I gave up sugar in tea before I gave up sugar in coffee, but gradually adding less and less helped me just skip the sugar altogether.

Do you eat flavored yogurt or plain? Up until a few years ago, buying plain yogurt never occurred to me, but now I hardly ever eat flavored. If you still want the fruit flavor, you can add some fresh fruit to the yogurt.

As skinnyforhi mentioned already, 1200 might be too few calories for you. It might be ok for short bursts, but you might be accidentally going into "starvation mode" if you stay at that level for a long time. This has been discussed many times on MFP forums.

In the last week or so, there was a great thread on MFP about how hard it is to measure food accurately, and how many people may be logging calories inaccurately because of it. You might still lose weight when underestimating your calorie intake when there's a bigger gap between your calorie goal and your TDEE (how many calories you need to maintain your weight), but if you don't have much left to lose, that gap becomes much smaller.

sarah11918

Yogurt can be a HUGE sugar culprit.

This is a long article just published recently, and someone posted it in another thread, but I think it relates:

The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&pagewanted=all&

An exerpt:
"The company’s Yoplait brand had transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General Mills’ marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms. And yet, because of yogurt’s well-tended image as a wholesome snack, sales of Yoplait were soaring, with annual revenue topping $500 million. Emboldened by the success, the company’s development wing pushed even harder, inventing a Yoplait variation that came in a squeezable tube — perfect for kids. They called it Go-Gurt and rolled it out nationally in the weeks before the C.E.O. meeting. (By year’s end, it would hit $100 million in sales.)"