Eliminating refined sugar from your diet...

One of the most crucial steps in converting to a Paleo style diet is to eliminate refined sugar from your daily diet. We all know that sugar is bad for us. It rots our teeth, it makes us fat, it creates an addiction leading to sugar rush and the dread sugar crash, it makes our blood sugar levels fluctuate and too much of it can make us ill in so many ways. Sugar stresses the adrenal glands and if you suffer from an auto-immune disease, such as thyroid disorders and diabetes it can exacerbate the symptoms of you disorder. And if you're like me, it turns almost instantly into fat - in my case giving me love handles.

So there are very good reasons for eliminating refined sugar from your diet. Removing it from your diet will reduce your carbohydrate consumption and avoid the previously mentioned problems. But it's not easy to do. We've been brought up with refined sugar in our diets from an early age. Remember the sweets we used to eat as kids? Our morning cereal as kids was probably something like Rice Krispies or Frosties, or maybe porridge with a dash of sugar sprinkled over it. Then we start drinking coffee and what do we do? We add sugar to take the edge off the bitterness of it.

So how do we start reducing our consumption of refined sugar? The simple answer is to stop eating foods and drinking drinks that contain refined sugar. But as I've highlighted, that's not so easy. By the time we reach our 20s we're probably addicted to sugar. I started to reduce my sugar consumption many years ago, moving from 2 tsp of sugar in my tea and coffee to 1 tsp, eventually reaching half. It was only in the last 6 weeks that I finally stopped putting sugar in these drinks, and that was purely because I had run out and at 4am I wasn't popping to the shop just to buy some more! But I quickly got used to the taste of coffee and tea without sugar. Try reducing your sugar consumption by using a 50-50 sugar/stevia mix, or try stevia only. Be careful with sweeteners though, as they don't produce the same effect in the body as sugar but their sweetness triggers the brain to expect that physical effect and can lead to greater consumption of sweet things.

When it comes to chocolate, move on from milk chocolate to dark chocolate. It may take a while, if you're used to the sweetness of milk chocolate you may find a strong dark chocolate (75% cocoa or more) to be too bitter, but over time you can work up to this. Stop buying standard chocolate bars, the ones that are readily available in newsagents, near the tills in the petrol station etc, and opt instead for bars of chocolate. Check the cocoa content of your chocolate and start with a 30% - 50% chocolate, most supermarket's own brand dark chocolate and Cadbury's Bournville is within this range. You'll find that the strength of the cocoa will actually mean that you don't need to eat as much chocolate - so not only have you cut back on the refined sugar, you've also cut back on the saturated fats. Once you're used to a 50% chocolate, seek out the more 'special' chocolates - Lindt, Willie's Cacao, and the supermarket premium ranges - and try a 60% or 70% chocolate. You'll start to find that the cocoa in these chocolates comes from different regions and has different tones - some are slightly fruity, some slightly nutty. These darker chocolates don't have to cost a fortune, you can get a perfectly tasty 74% dark from Lidl for just 79p, although the more expensive chocolates like Willie's Cacao have a much fuller flavour and are a lovely treat. From there you may be able to move up to an 80% or 90% chocolate - and if you're hardcore (like me) you might even be able to eat a 100% bar, these I've only seen available from Willie's Cacao and Hotel Chocolat. Remember, the higher the cocoa content, the less chocolate you will need to eat!

Fancy some fruity sweets? Love gummy bears, fruit pencils, strawberry laces? These were my biggest sugar problem. And cutting them out has been hard - particularly as I used to think that my migraines were due to low blood sugar so would instantly reach for these high sugar sweets. The problem with this, for me, was that  I didn't realise that this was just giving me a massive sugar rush followed by a quick crash. This crash explains why I can't, even now, just have a handful of these types of sweets. Once I start I just eat and eat until they're all gone. Even buying small bags doesn't help, because the bags are 39p each or 3 for £1 - so I still end up buying 3 bags and eating them all in one go. So to deal with this I now grab some fruit. Even a small handful of dried fruit - which is still sugary, but doesn't give the same rush and crash as sweets do. Remembering that Paleo is all about eating how our ancestors did, this is an obvious substitution. Paleolithic man didn't have refined sugar, so when they wanted something sweet they would eat whatever fruit was in season. Think strawberries, blueberries, kiwi fruit, apple, orange. Be careful with grapes and bananas as they have a very high sugar content and may still promote the same rush and crash.

Another major source of sugar in most people's daily diet is fizzy soft drinks. All those colas, lemonades, orangeades etc that we drink are loaded with sugars. And it's hard to give them up. Moving to the diet versions doesn't really help as they're loaded with sweeteners that make us want to drink more and more as the brain seeks the physical effect of sugar that the sweetness it's experiencing expects. My personal trick for dealing with this is to drink fruit flavoured sparkling waters. Make sure that the one you are buying only has a trace of sugar and no sweeteners. One particular supermarket brand has a very chemical taste to me. I recommend the sparkling waters as the carbonate provides the same fizz sensation as drinking a fizzy pop, and the fruit flavours make the water more interesting and provide a sensation of sweetness.

Eating a high-fat, high-protein, breakfast in an effort to avoid grains and cereals will automatically eliminate that source of refined sugars, but there are other things you can do to ditch the sugar. Try natural, or Greek style, yogurts with a small serving of fruit and/or nuts instead of a flavoured yogurt, or instead of the fruit and nuts sprinkle a bit of cinnamon over the yogurt. My latest trick for avoiding refined sugar when I just need the edge taking off my coffee is to add a dash of cinnamon to it. Cinnamon is a fantastic spice, it gives a sweetness to foods but is much lower in carbs than sugar and you only need a very small amount to give your food and drink a kick. Watch out for my next post about Cinnamon!