what do you do to lower your sugar intake?

Yeah, my endocrinologist wanted to put me on statins for my triglycerides and that completely freaked me out, because I really watch my balance of types of fat and had never had lipid issues before. At the same time my blood sugars had gone pre-diabetic for several months at that point. I didn't need to lose more weight, but I had just lost weight recently.

Just from cutting down on carbs to control my blood sugars, my triglycerides got great I didn't change anything else at that point. I had read about the research on triglycerides and diabetes and metabolic syndrome, so it wasn't a huge surprise, but it was still a pleasant one.


I haven't read all the studies posted in this thread, but yes, scientists have been studying for a while now the effect of blood glucose on lipid problems. It's frequently discussed regarding 'metabolic syndrome', which usually includes overfat folks, but I have read studies that controlled even better for weight than most. I'll try to find a couple tomorrow, maybe.

Unfortunately the titles don't always hint that they used normal-weight subjects, so you have to wade through the plethora of studies that control for weight in ways but don't always investigate normal-weight folks as study groups. Metabolic syndrome is pretty darned important on its own, though, so even if it is extra weight that is causing sugar metabolism to be wonky, I think it matters. (And BTW, that's where a lot of research seems to lead: that weight problems can disrupt more systems than they previously thought. The issue of normal-weight folks also having to have the problem is indeed a separate question.)

Anyway, I do fit the normal-weight category nicely as a case study But I have hyperglycemia, so that explains my triglyceride problem right there and doesn't indicate that someone not getting blood sugar problems would see the benefit I did from reducing carbs. Dunno about that

3 week spells at various carb intake in a calorie deficit shows effect of carb intake on triglycerides (white triangles) :-



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4240601/
Overweight / obese subjects with metabolic syndrome.

Is there any evidence that sugar intake does not affect triglycerides ?

Eat low carb and high protein and fiber. I had gestational diabetes and that's all I did to keep sugars in line. Almonds are great. Believe it or not cinnamon will lower blood sugar. I made a pumpkin spice cake. It had lots of cinnamon. I ate it for breakfast and it lowered my blood sugar. Same with sweet potatoes with cinnamon.

Sbelcner wrote: »

Eat low carb and high protein and fiber. I had gestational diabetes and that's all I did to keep sugars in line. Almonds are great. Believe it or not cinnamon will lower blood sugar. I made a pumpkin spice cake. It had lots of cinnamon. I ate it for breakfast and it lowered my blood sugar. Same with sweet potatoes with cinnamon.

Also fiber one brownies or cookies...low in sugar/carbs high in fiber...they satisfied my sweet tooth.

goldthistime wrote: »

longlostsea wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

longlostsea wrote: »

Hello just wondering what changes any sugar lovers out there have made to lower their sugar intake?
I have a sweet tooth so to speak and have high chloresterol, and have been reading that it may contribute a bit to that. So as well as a healthier diet and more excersize I want to watch my sugars as well. I'm not sure about lowering the amount of fruit I eat because of nutrient content + I am a vegetarian.
Opinions? Methods?

As an ovo-lacto vegetarian, I found I routinely went above MFP's default goal for sugar - usually substantially over - just via the inherent sugar in no-sugar-added dairy and fruit (at non-ridiculous fruit consumption, like around 3 servings a day, none of them juice). The only added sugar I was eating then was a tablespoon of all-fruit spread to sweeten my oatmeal (it has a bit of apple juice concentrate in it, which is added sugar). (Yes folks, this is accurate. I'm very aware of food ingredients, and eat mostly one-ingredient foods I prepare myself.)

What did I do about going over MFP's default sugar goal? I stopped including sugar on my diary display, and replaced it with a column for tracking fiber.

In your case, if the problem is an attachment to sweets that aren't very nutrient dense (cookies, candy, cake, etc.), this is something I had adjusted in my own eating well before losing weight. Everyone's different, but what helped me was consciously trying to increase my whole-fruit consumption to about 3 servings per day. That helped me reduce my cravings for less-nutrient-dense sweets. I may eat less fruit than that on average now, but it got me over the habit/cravings hump at a point in time. Now, heading into maintenance weight, I still eat very little added sugar.

I had high cholesterol, too: In late 2014, my cholesterol was 230, and my triglycerides were 193. In late 2015, 54 pounds down, my cholesterol was 176 and my triglycerides 82 - solidly in the normal range. HDL was up from 45 to 65, ratio down from 5.1 to 2.7, LDL down from 146 to 95, VLDL down from 39 to 16.

I had brought my levels down a bit by changing what I ate without losing weight (in early 213, they were cholesterol 253 / triglycerides 402!). But weight loss was what really brought the blood-test results . . . and lots of other improvements, too.

Congratulations on your weightloss.
I usually have about 3-4 servings of fruit a day during the week, and try to have oatmeal or salad etc for lunch. But I also crave sweets when I get home and after I eat dinner.. like crazy.. and thats when things get sketchyyy.. and there may be a few undocumented peices of chocolate or spoons of nutella going under the radar.

It's a slippery slope when you don't log everything. People are not going to think less of you, most of us regularly indulge on purpose or slip up accidentally.

+1, +many: Accurate food-logging data is going to be useful as you monitor/adjust your loss rate, and eventually when you want to estimate maintenance calories. Don't cheat yourself - log it. Psychologically, it may also help with keeping the "is it worth it" question in the front of your mind (sometimes it is; sometimes it isn't).

hanniejong wrote: »

I do not have real sugar or artificial sweetener. BUT the one thing I do, do which is working for me is to have 1teaspoon of cinnamon in the morning and at night, since doing so my sugar levels which were getting out of control are now almost perfect and IO am able to gradually lower my insulin levels. Google cinnamon for yourselves, it is an interesting article to read.

Do you know what type of cinnamon you are using? Last week I was just reading about the benefits of cinnamon for digestion. But from the research I did, it seemed to me like there's only one variety of cinnamon that works, and it's an unpopular variety.

Most baked goodies and chocolate are devastating on the waistline not from their sugar, but from their fats. That's why they're so calorie dense.

I dont want to beat a dead horse, but I have to point out that glucose and fructose (both sugars) TASTE identical to each other, but are chemically different and are used by the body in different ways - just google "difference between glucose and fructose" and you will be able to find plenty of information that talks about this distinction.

Glucose
The most important monosaccharide is glucose, the body’s preferred energy source. Glucose is also called blood sugar, as it circulates in the blood, and relies on the enzymes glucokinase or hexokinase to initiate metabolism. Your body processes most carbohydrates you eat into glucose, either to be used immediately for energy or to be stored in muscle cells or the liver as glycogen for later use. Unlike fructose, insulin is secreted primarily in response to elevated blood concentrations of glucose, and insulin facilitates the entry of glucose into cells.
Fructose
Fructose is a sugar found naturally in many fruits and vegetables, and added to various beverages such as soda and fruit-flavored drinks. However, it is very different from other sugars because it has a different metabolic pathway and is not the preferred energy source for muscles or the brain. Fructose is only metabolized in the liver and relies on fructokinase to initiate metabolism. It is also more lipogenic, or fat-producing, than glucose. Unlike glucose, too, it does not cause insulin to be released or stimulate production of leptin, a key hormone for regulating energy intake and expenditure. These factors raise concerns about chronically high intakes of dietary fructose, because it appears to behave more like fat in the body than like other carbohydrates.

Because fructose does not stimulate insulin secretion from pancreatic β cells, the consumption of foods and beverages containing fructose produces smaller postprandial insulin excursions than does consumption of glucose-containing carbohydrate. Because leptin production is regulated by insulin responses to meals, fructose consumption also reduces circulating leptin concentrations. The combined effects of lowered circulating leptin and insulin in individuals who consume diets that are high in dietary fructose could therefore increase the likelihood of weight gain and its associated metabolic sequelae. In addition, fructose, compared with glucose, is preferentially metabolized to lipid in the liver.

What would that mean? Most "sugar" is a combination of sugars.

Also see:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/fructose-fruit_b_3694684.html

Sophie Egan did an excellent job in the Well blog of this week's New York Times making the case for eating fruit. The question of course is why does anyone need to make a case for eating fruit? We have cited the combination of "fruits and vegetables" as the cornerstone of healthful eating throughout the entire era of modern nutrition, and it has been so since before the advent of modern humans. Homo erectus ate mostly plants, and their predecessors -- the australopithecines and such -- ate nothing but....

The only real problem with the "fructose is toxic" platform, other than all the ways it's misleading and wrong, is that the one place fructose, per se, is found in our food, is fruit. Dr. Lustig is quick to point out, as he does in Ms. Egan's column, that fruit is fine. But that's one whopper of a proviso. Fructose is toxic, it seems, except for the one place you will actually encounter pure fructose. [note as Dr. Katz of course knows, but to make sure the point is not missed: you will also encounter glucose and sucrose, at least, along with the fructose, but the fruit contains uncombined fructose, as well as glucose and sucrose even before your body breaks the sucrose down into, well, glucose and fructose]

Lustig's real nemesis, of course, is high-fructose corn syrup. But that's really just sugar. Table sugar is 50 percent fructose; high-fructose corn syrup is, at most, 55 percent fructose. They are all but the same thing, and are the same in all ways that really matter. We eat too much added sugar, but that message, I guess, lacked the sex appeal and conspiracy theory edge of "fructose is toxic." But now we reap the fruit sown of that misguided seed: We have to tell people it's okay to eat fruit.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/fructose-toxic_b_3529120.html

If "sugar is poison" is wrong, perhaps "fructose is toxic" is still a viable claim? No, it's not.

When serious scientists, most recently the widely-respected Dr. David Ludwig at Harvard, but others before him, have reviewed the contention, they have found it exaggerated and distorted. The levels of fructose intake invoked to produce end-organ damage in provocative articles do not occur under real-world conditions. Pushed to comparable extremes of dosing, articles about oxygen would reach far grimmer conclusions, concluding the compound is not just toxic, but uniformly lethal over a span of mere days.

Nor under real-world conditions is there clear evidence that fructose is any more harmful than the other sugars with which it is all but inevitably associated. Fructose and glucose, both of which are found in table sugar, both of which are found in high-fructose corn syrup, are metabolized differently -- but the best assessments of the implications of that suggest that excesses of both or either can be harmful, as can the associated excesses of calories. Neither is uniquely toxic.

It is very late here. It is explaining the difference between glucose and fructose and how they are metabolized in the body by different pathways. It also explains why high fructose corn syrup is so bad. Most natural foods have both fructose and glucose. Processed foods (sugary drinks, anything with high fructose corn syrup,etc) are very high in fructose. Natural foods (fruits, vegetables, beans, etc) also have fiber, minerals, vitamins.

HFCS=55% fructose.

Also, why are we off on HFCS? Most people seem to be focused on "added sugar" and personally the added sugar I eat is mostly sucrose (which, of course, is 50% fructose, so not much of a difference, but let's compare with various fruits).

What do you have to say in response to the two David Katz articles that I linked and quoted, that directly discuss this issue?

Wiki on Katz: David L. Katz (born 20 February 1963 in Los Angeles, California) is a nutritionist and the founding director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University, as well as an associate professor of public health practice at the Yale University School of Medicine. In 2005, Katz was appointed the associate director for nutrition science at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale.

OMG i'm such a sugar-holic. But I've lost 125 lbs and kept it off (mostly w/in 20 lb range) for 8 years.

First of all, there are many things I had to learn that have more sugar than you'd imagine:

• Yogurt that isn't plain
• Ketchup
• Salad dressings (sometimes...especially the 'fat free' ones - make your own)
• Wine & beer
• Almost ANYTHING "lowfat" or "nonfat" (then conversely, many "sugar free" things are packed with carbs)
• Some brands of peanut butter (go all-natural!)
• BBQ sauce
• Protein bars
• Most non-dairy milk
• Chinese food (most)
• Dried cranberries (really any dried fruit, but dried cranberries have a CRAP ton)
• Energy drinks (and soda, of course)
• Pasta sauce (sad but mostly true)
• Granola (HOLY COW, SO MUCH SUGAR!)
• Store-bought cole slaw
• FRUIT JUICE - this stuff is often just as bad as soda and we give it to our kids & it rots their teeth.

Second, you can get nutrients from things other than fruit. Go, veggies!

Third, if my sweet tooth gets out of hand, I do a 5-10 day no-added-sugar extravaganza.
Basically, I "re-set" my tastebuds & body (totally scientific term here, guys) so that I don't crave sugar anymore. It's amazing how well it works. My general rules are NO artificial sweetener, NO sweetener in tea or coffee, NO juice, soda, wine, beer, LOW or NONE of most of the items listed above. I might have a couple raisins every other evening so I get a bit of sweetness. I highly recommend it It certainly won't hurt - and at the very least you'll see how much your habits are based around high-sugar things, if you have to think twice about it!