Helpful hints to lessen sugar intake

Perhaps you’ve read Sugar Addicted? Try a three-day sugar fast (see link below) and decided to give up sugar for a while. Maybe it was a New Year’s resolution, deciding it was time to make a positive change and sugar had to go. Whether you’re skilled at letting the sweet stuff go or need some helpful hints, the suggestions below may be new to you, and my hope is these ideas help you to lessen sugar in your diet to bring you closer to balanced health.

Don’t eat sugar two days in a row. If I follow this rule, the addiction doesn’t have a chance to set in, I get to exercise my will, and I can have sugar every now and then. This doesn’t mean it’s OK to eat it every other day. It means don’t go on a run of eating sugar for days on end. Have some cookies one day if you haven’t had sugar in a while and just want to indulge. But stop there. Otherwise you will get your system readdicted and you’ll have to go through the withdrawal process all over again. Don’t start another chain of events. Don’t link one day of eating sugar to the next. You want to break the chain, not start one.

Another alternative is to go sugar-free Monday through Friday and allow yourself a moderate amount of sugar on the weekends. It’s like a reward for being good most of the week. It is the excessive intake of any toxic substance that creates the downfall of health. I’m not a big believer in complete denial or deprivation; moderation is the key here. Allow yourself some pleasure, but keep your sugar intake in check. Remember, you control how much sugar you eat; don’t let sugar control you.

If you don’t crave it, don’t eat it. Sometimes eating sugar is just a habit. Jars or bowls of sweets are lying around your home or office, so you constantly have visual cues to eat the sweet stuff. If this is true, it will be hard to just walk past that dish full of jelly beans or M&Ms, but you’ve got to give it a shot. Sometimes you have to forgo the good stuff to get to the great stuff, which in this case is clear skin (if you know you're sensitive to sugar). So if you aren’t going crazy with a sugar craving, pass up the sweets.

Don’t buy things you know you’re going to eat. If you are anything like me, when it comes to the junk foods you love, you have faulty willpower. I sometimes buy a sugary food thinking, “Well, I just want it around in case I have an uncontrollable craving.” And the truth is, at the moment I hold that item in my hands, I know in my soul that I will be eating it as soon as I get home. This is not to say I don’t give in to my cravings from time to time. But if something is sitting around my house, and it’s one of the junk foods I like, I will eat it. So my suggestion is this: don’t buy foods to keep around the house you know you don’t really want to eat or shouldn’t eat. When that major craving comes along and you decide to give in, go out and get the sweets you crave at that moment and be done with it. Make it a one-time deal. Don’t keep poor-quality foods lying around in your kitchen calling you to “come and get it.”

Not buying the sweet things you like may seem like a simple concept, but just wait till you’re in the grocery store eyeballing all those sweet delights. You may think to yourself, “I’ll just get one (box, bag, or pint) and keep it for emergency sugar attacks.” Or you may think if you buy your favorite candy you’ll be able to eat “just one.”

My objective is to take you to the land of awareness, and to help you realize you have the ability to affect the health of your skin. In order to do this, you need to understand the correlation between sugar and your skin problems. It is within your power to say yes or no to sugar. Now you can decide if you want to contribute to your breakouts or not.

For more information, see:

• Sugar Addicted? Try a three-day sugar fast
• Hidden Sugar: Sugar in Unsuspected Places
• Sodas, sugar and your skin
• I’m sensitive to sugar—are you?

Um—I think it was not within her power quite yet