Question about amount of allowed sugar grams

jeaniepolson
jeaniepolson Posts: 2 Member
edited November 2023 in Getting Started
Let me start by saying I'm new to mfp. I had heard all my life that you lose weight more easily if you have a food diary. That was always too much trouble for me to bother with. But then I found mfp. I'm amazed how easy it is. I talked my husband into using it. He was amazed how many calories he ate in an average day.

My question is in the amount of sugar mfp says you can have. I understand the number of fat, protein, and carbohydrates you're allowed is based on a percentage of the total calories. But where did they get the sugar allowance? We rarely use added sugar on our food, and we don't eat sweet desserts. Mostly our sugar comes from fruit or some other natural food. But we seem to go over the allowance every day, usually before dinner.

Anyone know?

Replies

  • mrsamanda86
    mrsamanda86 Posts: 869 Member
    I just recently stopped watching my sugar. Apparently, people have told me it's set VERY low on the site, and not all that important. Obviously, if you were eating like cans of sugar a day, it would be. But if your sugar intake is from healthy foods I wouldn't worry about it too much.
  • albertine58
    albertine58 Posts: 267 Member
    I ignore it. It's set way too low on MFP, and I don't really care about my sugar intake as long as I'm eating a balanced healthy diet & I'm within my calories. I went over on my sugar today just from 3 servings of fruit!

    That said, if someone is having trouble sticking to their calorie allowance and claiming they're always hungry, I'd advise them to look at their sugar intake and see if they can't reduce the added sugars in their diet in order to eat more calories from more satisfying food! So tracking sugar could be useful in that way...but MFP is set waaaay too low.
  • schmenge55
    schmenge55 Posts: 745 Member
    It is meant to be, I think, added sugar. What I do is subtract sugars from natural sources like fruit
  • jeaniepolson
    jeaniepolson Posts: 2 Member
    Thank you all. We were thinking the same thing.
  • Just_Scott
    Just_Scott Posts: 1,766 Member
    ^^THIS^^
  • CyberEd312
    CyberEd312 Posts: 3,536 Member
    I don't track sugar, I watch my caloric intake and watch my 3 Macro's (Carbs,Proteins, and Fats) and keep an eye on Fiber... Best of Luck
  • xoeva
    xoeva Posts: 209 Member
    I had the same question about the sugar.... and I emailed tech support and they said that they are not set up for making a distinction between natural sugars , such as in an apple, and added sugars, such as in a cookie or processed food. They said hopefully in the future they'll have 2 different columns. I just ignore it because I know that if I eat 2 apples in one day go over ....
  • susannamarie
    susannamarie Posts: 2,148 Member
    The sugar allowance at MFP is set up for the normal recommended amount of added sugars.

    Even when I go over from added sugars it hasn't hindered my weight loss. I just track fiber instead now because that's something that's a lot more important to me.
  • ksmartbraden
    ksmartbraden Posts: 2
    I had that same question, and asked the online help at myfitnesspal. They replied and said to disregard the fruit sugar grams, and only count the processed sugar food grams. That they use the FDA measurements, and it does not separate the sugar sources... so we have to do that ourselves. Hope that is helpful (I'm a recovering sugar addict, so I appreciated the answer) Diabetics will have to watch both sugar gram sources so they are choosing to keep the system set up this way for now.
  • margaretamartin
    margaretamartin Posts: 4 Member
    I'm glad to hear that the powers that be are at least aware of how useless this number is for the majority of their users, but I wish they would fix it. I'd love to know how many grams of naturally-occuring sugar I'm eating vs. how many added grams. But no, I'm not going to do it "by hand".

    That said, there's a lot of junk "science" behind recommendations. I found this interesting overview of where these numbers come from:

    http://www.thedailymeal.com/what-s-recommended-daily-allowance-sugar

    As a result, I went in and bumped up my sugar allowance to 50g. That should keep me from being so deeply in the (literal) red. (I admit, I can't ignore it. Bugs me every day to see that I'm breaking my goals because I eat fruit.)
  • Bry_Fitness70
    Bry_Fitness70 Posts: 2,480 Member
    I created a category for unrefined sugar and ignore the sugar grams logged there.
  • fairyt4l3s
    fairyt4l3s Posts: 31
    I don't watch my sugar as I go over on fruit everyday!
  • fitnessn00bie
    fitnessn00bie Posts: 20 Member
    If it is really annoying to always see the red numbers at the bottom for sugar (I get this - very childish of me haha) then you can change the settings so that it shows sodium or something else that may be more interesting for you - just click on 'diary settings'
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