The Sugar Smart Diet: Stop Cravings and Lose Weight While Still Enjoying the Sweets You Love (12 page)

Y
ou may have heard it said that our personalities are as unique as snowflakes. Your relationship with sugar, shaped by your personal history, is similar. At some point in your life, you learned to prefer sugary foods over others or sugar snuck into your diet without your realizing it. The Sugar Smart Diet is designed to help you unlearn those preferences and rightsize sugar’s role in your diet—as a small but enjoyable part of an overall wholesome and nutritious food plan. And it all begins with this Sugar Step-Down.

The purpose of the Step-Down is twofold. First, just like diving into chilly water, going from a sugar-packed diet to a sugar-smart one in a single leap can be a shock to your system. Over the next 5 days, you’ll follow your regular diet as you gradually taper
your intake of sugars from all three sources—Straight-Up Sugars, Secret Sugars, and Sugar Mimics. This approach gives you time to adjust and time to really understand the role that sugar plays in your diet. That brings us to our second purpose: to increase your sugar awareness.

During the first 2 days, you’ll eat the way you normally do and keep a food log, which you’ll use to help you examine your sugar preferences and patterns. On Days 1 through 3, you’ll complete an exercise designed to reveal three crucial facets of your unique sugar profile: the sugar sources that appeal to you most, the emotions that trigger your desire for sugary foods, and the habits of sugar consumption you follow. When you become conscious of these aspects of your current relationship with sugar, you can make better choices in the future.

During Days 3 through 5, you’ll take one practical action to prepare for Phase 1 of the Sugar Smart Diet, where you’ll be eliminating all forms of sugar, including fruit, for 6 days.

I can’t make this point strongly enough: You’re
supposed
to enjoy a chocolate chip cookie or a dish of premium ice cream. Humans are hardwired to desire sweet foods, so if you swoon for them, you’re only following nature’s operating instructions. Because food is a key part of socializing and celebrating, we’re especially prone to indulging when we dine out or on special occasions.

But if an out-of-control sweet tooth threatens your health or leads to weight gain that causes emotional pain, it’s likely that you overeat sweet foods for reasons other than pleasure. Two of the most common are stress relief and emotional comfort.

When you’re drowning in stress, sugar can seem like the friend who understands. But the relief it offers is temporary, and there’s a price to pay: You can begin to associate sweet foods with comfort. Gradually, you may turn automatically to that immediate, sweet shot of relief and away from healthier stress management techniques, like a daily brisk walk or some quality alone time.

Just as sugary foods can momentarily relieve stress, they can also soothe emotions you may want to suppress or ignore. But when you eat to fill yourself up emotionally, even the most delectable dessert or starchy comfort food can’t satisfy emotional hunger.

Often, bottled-up emotions are expressed through overeating. People who eat in response to emotions may snack when they’re not physically hungry,
experience intense cravings for a particular food, and feel unsatisfied even after they finish a hearty meal. They may also eat during or after a stressful experience or to numb their feelings. In a culture that pushes instant gratification, reaching for food is one of the fastest ways to cope with emotions that can be hard to express or even acknowledge.

The jury’s still out on whether it’s possible to be physically addicted to sugar. However, there’s no doubt that it can certainly feel that way. While not scientific, the quiz on
this page
can help you gauge the intensity of your emotional tie to sugary or starchy foods. If your results suggest a powerful bond, take heart. It is possible to break that food feelings connection, and this plan can help you begin.

Quick—what did you eat yesterday? Did you hit the drive-thru for a mega-sugary coffee drink and a bagel in the morning? Did you grab a smoothie after you went to the gym? Perhaps you relied on sweetened soda, a handful of candy from your coworker’s desk, or a second coffee drink to get you through the afternoon? Did you nibble on pretzels while you watched TV? Maybe you made healthy choices all day, but blew it by eating nearly an entire pint of ice cream or a “Nutella nightcap” (the jar and a spoon) before bed?

I’m guessing, of course. But to lose your sugar belly for good, you’ll need to identify the type of sugar you gravitate toward and how much of it you consume. That’s why I want you to keep a food log for 2 days. Record what you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and for snacks each day.

Look, I know you may not be a fan of tracking what you eat. Or maybe you’re eager to begin the plan and want to just get to it. But the information you’ll discover over this 48-hour period will be revolutionary. It certainly was for our test panelists. Most of them were getting around 20 teaspoons of added sugar a day, which is comparable to the national average. But Gayle and David were shocked: Gayle was eating 36 teaspoons and David 63, Jot down every bite, sip, and nibble for just 2 days. You can simply note what you eat, but if you want more information, add the serving size of each food.

What’s key is to track your mood and your hunger level before and after eat. Both of information are to tell a lot about your
emotional and physiological connection to sugar. You’ll be able to spot patterns that will increase your awareness of what you eat, when you eat, and why you choose the foods you do. That’s the first step to healthy change. You don’t have to write pages and pages. Just a few words will do. See the sample entry on
this page
to get an idea. And we’ve made the hunger assessment easy. Just jot down the appropriate number. Before you eat, rank your hunger level on a scale of 1 to 5.

1. Starving
   
2. Hunger pains
   
3. Hunger
   
4. Slight hunger
   
5. Neutral
   

Then do the same after you eat:

1. Still hungry. You could use a second helping.
   
2. Full, but not quite satisfied.
   
3. Content.
   
4. Stuffed. Your stomach may hurt because it’s so full of food.
   
5. Nauseous. You’re so full that you may feel sick.
   

Hang on to those logs. You’ll be looking at them closely over the next 3 days. As you do, a picture of your sugar habits will emerge in stark relief. No matter what you discover, the news is good. Once you’re aware of your high-sugar preferences—which is not always the case if you tend to eat without thinking—you can swap them for healthier alternatives that are lower in sugar but please your “sweet buds” just as much.

For example, you might be shocked to find that although you’re not a sweets eater, you pack away a ton of foods that act like sugar in your body. Or that your standard diner breakfast—scrambled eggs and homefries with ketchup—is full of Secret Sugar. Every tablespoon of ketchup contains a teaspoon of added sugar. If you’re a woman and use 5 tablespoons on your scrambled eggs and homefries—not hard to do if you don’t stay aware of portion sizes—you’re consuming practically all of your recommended daily intake of added sugar in ketchup alone.