Anyone track sugar?

Someone else was mentioning this today, and I checked my sugar on here. I was way over. I eat really good food, so I am not worried. I do not eat refined sugar, so it is from fruit and such. I do not care.

I'm always over on my sugar. Most of the time it's from fruits but that was not the case today lol

Sugar is a carb. For me the difference between refined sugar and the sugar / carbs in fruit is the nutrition. If you eat refined sugar it generally comes in high calorie foods (desserts, low nutrition cereal, etc.) Eating sugar in fruit comes with lower calories, low fat, higher fiber and way higher vitamins. I try no to eat any refined sugar. The bang for your buck isn't there.

I have been tracking sugar ie carbs for decades. I successfully followed the Atkins diet for 30 years and, with aerobic exercise, maintained a healthy weight. But it meant learning everything about sugar ie carbs and being quite restrictive in food.

If you are a veteran of sugar restriction, skip the next two paragraphs.

A persistant myth is that there a inherent nutiritonal difference between refined "bad" sugar and "good" sugar, namely the slow-digesting sugars, insofar as caloric nutrition. A fructose calorie from a piece of fruit is equivalent to a high fructose calorie from corn syrup which is in almost all processed food. The difference is the other (beneficial) nutritional ingredients in the sugary food and in how it is processed once it hits the body. This would be of importance to people with diabetes, hyper-glycemic insulin responses or emotional dependence on the comforting feel and taste of food ie instant sugar highs (donuts, cookies etc). For the rest of us, most of the tag-along nutiriton in the "good", slow-digesting sugars found in veges and fibrous foods is obtainable elsewhere at reduced caloric cost.

All forms of sugar in all foods eventually are broken down by the body to a simple glucose molecule. All carbs contain 4kcals/g of energy but are eventually transformed to sugar in the blood. The body will work a little harder at breaking down the more complex carbs found in vegetables and the energy of that breakdown minimally offsets the caloric impact of that complex carb--hence, the nomer "good sugar". Additionally, fiber foods with a carb can also result in stealth carbs which do not get absorbed and cause the hyperglycermic response of simple sugars.

I am not diabetic or even pre-diabetic, but am in the "insulin" group and am aware that sugars, regardless of which food may house them, will stimulate an insulin response and result in fat deposition. So, I track my sugars very carefully and stay under 50g/day (200 sugar calories) while on maintenance. I take occasional excursions over that, of course! I also take a daily quality multivitamin and a fiber supplement.

While in weight loss mode, I track sugars and stay under 20g/day (80 sugar calories) until goal weight and then switch to maintenance. This makes weight loss fairly painless as the appetite is suppressed from the resulting (benign) ketosis of such a low carb intake. In this state, one must actually remember to eat so as to not slam the brakes on your metabolism! (Low sugar intake is not unhealthy for non-diabetetics and carb control actually forms the principal of a diabetic diet. The optimum recommended carb intake for diabetics is between 15-60g per meal.)

Another thing I found is that sugar intake begets more sugar intake. Once you start the cycle, it is much more difficult to break out of the spiral than simply avoiding the stuff altogether. Anyone else found this to be the case?

Unless you have diabetes or are at risk of diabetes...i.e. your blood work is showing very high blood sugar levels (amongst other things) then it's really a non-issue so long as it fits in your macros and calories.

As a matter of general nutrition, I try to avoid refined sugars and get most of mine via fruits and vegetables...doing so also helps you if you're haviing blood sugar spikes. The only micros I track are Sat Fats (for my high LDL) and sodium and potassium (hypertension)...otherwise I just focus on my macros. My blood sugar levels used to be pretty high, but since I started getting most of my sugars from fruits and veg it has stablized.