For anyone trying to use less in tea/coffee, buy sugar cubes.
Standardised amount
If it's a standard amount you're never going to less than 'one' though.
What I did was taper off. I used to take two heaped teaspoons in both tea and coffee. Over time I went to less heaped spoons, to one and a half, to one... Today I find sugar in tea to be spit-across-the-room disgusting, it's rank. Coffee I still have half a spoonful, but I've mostly switched to granulated sweeteners (the little tablets are too much).
Thinking about it, I have very little refined sugar any more. I'll have the odd chocolate bar occasionally, usually if I'm out and about and have missed a meal. Even then I'll often pick a flapjack or similar. I still have an untouched Easter egg in the cupboard, that'll probably last me till Christmas.
I used to get kilo tubs of Haribo and nip a few occasionally but since inheriting a brace of 20-somethings in the house I gave up even doing that because they get through an astonishing and frankly scary amount of sugar. Non-stop sweets, cake, chocolate, they drink full fat pop like it's... uh, pop. They're surely on a fast-track to diabetes and no teeth in their heads. Bringing more sweets into the house would be a ludicrous thing to do because there's never the remotest chance of a shortage and they'd probably scoff it before I got a look-in anyway.
Evil stuff and it irks me that it's the norm. Buying a drink in smaller shops especially, you've often to really hunt for something that isn't laden with sugar. Looks like I'll be paying twice the price of petrol for a bottle of something that's literally fallen out of the sky, then.
So I looked further into the Cologran Stevia powder and seems it’s 98% Maltodextrin. So why doesn’t say MALTODEXTRIN on the front instead of STEVIA?
The problem is, most sweeteners are really strong compared to sugar. It's bulked out, well, yes, because it's probably cheaper, but so that you can use it like granulated sugar. 2% Stevia in that tub there, if it was neat you'd have to measure out 1/50th of a teaspoon. You probably wouldn't want to pop one of those little Hermesetas tablets on your cornflakes.
Always someone on this forum with a solution….👍
Cost Cutters, was that supposed to be?
Bulked out with....
Maltodextrin has 4 calories per gram — the same amount of calories as sucrose, or table sugar.
Now sweeten porridge with whatever fruit we have in
Porridge tastes better with a pinch of salt rather than a pinch of sugar.
Irn Bru however needs to be the traditional sugared recipe to retain its hangover curing properties.
Im in the same boat, trying to cut down as i found myself eating a lot of stuff with sugar, breakfast was porridge with sugar on top, possibly a banana.
3 bits of fruit a day as snacks, then normally a big choccy bar or bag of sweets like fruit gums in the evening, not your normal small bars a proper big bar/bag meant to "share".
Ironically i cant stand fizzy drinks unless theres booze in it, but thats a different hurdle for a different time.
I cant go cold turkey, so started by just having plain porridge in the morning and treat myself once a week to a bit of sugar added, swapped a couple of peices of fruit a day for two boiled eggs with a pinch of salt.
And slowly cutting down to one evening a week where i allow myself to have a chocolate bar/bag of sweets, usually a friday.
Going well so far and by not cutting it out altogether means that my brain doesnt go all out craving it all the time.
Ironically i cant stand fizzy drinks unless theres booze in it
Ice cold FLAT diet pepsi and vodka. Remarkably good.
No no no, after some really sensible advice from loads of people the creep is creeping back, face it, if you need to sweeten it there is something wrong with the thing you are eating..or you, there is something wrong with your taste buds, when you stop eating sugar you don't die, or feel pain, you just change and then when used to it sugar tastes horrible...this is you tasting it properly for the first time.
Sweeteners are like vaping, an artificial substitute that poisons you in a slightly different way while you pander to your childhood craving, it can be different, you can be free, have a six pack and wear those jeans you can't put out on the washing line without sunbathers wondering what blocked out the sun, you can do this people(my boss actually said that once) (actually ex boss, turned out he couldn't do it) it's time for the change, more energy and less waistline awaits, and all you have to do is nothing, less than not doing something, just don't put it in, save yourself 99p or whatever sugar costs(the shame of knowing that eh?) and discover if you actually like the taste of normal tea and coffee or if you are just drinking it as an Iron Bru substitute.
It's time people, you know and that is why you are here, this is the push you need, you can do it and you are worth it.
dcwhite1984 - Im in the same boat, trying to cut down as i found myself eating a lot of stuff with sugar, breakfast was porridge with sugar on top, possibly a banana.
3 bits of fruit a day as snacks, then normally a big choccy bar or bag of sweets like fruit gums in the evening, not your normal small bars a proper big bar/bag meant to “share”.
Ironically i cant stand fizzy drinks unless theres booze in it, but thats a different hurdle for a different time.
I cant go cold turkey, so started by just having plain porridge in the morning and treat myself once a week to a bit of sugar added, swapped a couple of peices of fruit a day for two boiled eggs with a pinch of salt
And slowly cutting down to one evening a week where i allow myself to have a chocolate bar/bag of sweets, usually a friday.
Going well so far and by not cutting it out altogether means that my brain doesnt go all out craving it all the time.
Switch out 'sugar' for heroin and this reads strangely normally like a well managed substance abuse situation.
swapped a couple of peices of fruit a day for two boiled eggs with a pinch of salt.
There's nothing wrong with eating fruit. You are an animal that's literally designed to run on eating fruit and veg. The sugar in veg and fruit while being the same thing chemically, as processed sugar is not treated in the same way as added sugar in your body. That's because of the way sugar is contained in fruit and how it's processed by your liver, and the fact that it's almost impossible to eat sufficient fruit to do you significant harm.
The sugar you need to cut from your diet is the added sugar, put there by processing, or by you throwing refined sugar on your cereal or tea. Naturally occurring sugar is just fine, even to the point of the dried fruit in your muesli, or adding a banana to your porridge, these aren't going to do you any significant harm and can stop you going mental.
Just cut back on Mr Kipling, Coke/pepsi, Twix/mars/Snickers/Tangfastics, and the all the rest of the processed shit.
Whittle one of your fillings out, jobs a good en.
an artificial substitute that poisons you in a slightly different way
Everything else you said I agree with, but this is nonsense.
exactly what nickc says.
"4. cook most of your food from scratch with ingredients."
I'd agree this is a great way to tackle it. Start here and GET to dealing with sugary bits. But start here. The *slow* buildup of GREAT habits is the only real path to lasting change
I often find when you muscle in good habits, it leaves less and less room for the bad ones. Rather than you having to tackle the bad habits face-on, then to be left with only average habits to then deal with, if ygm..
Some good advice here, IMHO:
The *slow* buildup of GREAT habits is the only real path to lasting change
I often find when you muscle in good habits, it leaves less and less room for the bad ones. Rather than you having to tackle the bad habits face-on, then to be left with only average habits to then deal with, if ygm..
+100
I cant go cold turkey, so started by just having plain porridge in the morning
For me that is cold turkey! I started putting chopped apple in my porridge oats, with a very small pinch of salt. Now will add any fruit going. I don’t see an apple or banana or some berries every day as a bad thing.
