Cut down on Sugar.

Many people don’t realize that sugar is 50% fructose. What’s bad about fructose? Well the body immediately converts it into fat. No wonder so many people are becoming obese!

Cutting back on your sugar intake can help you to lose weight. But it's not always easy to know when you are taking sugar into your body.

Yes, of course you can cut down the number of spoonfuls you put in your tea or coffee. Or you can limit the sugar you have on your cereal in the mornings.

In fact, The World Health Organisation says we should reduce sugar consumption by at least 50%. And The American Heart Association gives the following advice: women should only consume a maximum of 6 teaspoons of sugar per day, the maximum is 9 teaspoons for men and it should be much less for toddlers and children.

But that’s the relatively easy part. What about the sugars you don’t know about?

 ‘Free Sugars’ can be a significant cause of increased body weight and obesity. They are the sugars which manufacturers, cooks and people themselves add to foods and are also found in honey, syrup, fruit juices, fizzy drinks, etc.

Now when you’re eating a meal, your body has a mechanism by which it can send you signals to let you know that you are full. Taking notice of these signals will help to prevent you from overeating and putting on weight. However, the liquid sugar hidden away in fizzy drinks, for example, somehow seems to get passed the body’s normal fullness triggers. So you continue to drink beyond your fullness level.

What this means, of course, is that people who drink a lot of fizzy drinks will put on weight. If you were to replace one fizzy sugary drink with water or a zero-calorie drink you would avoid taking in 10 teaspoons of sugar.

So just one fizzy drink can supply more than the maximum daily amount of sugar recommended by The American Heart Association!

If you want to lose weight without dieting, make sure you check the foods you eat for any added sugar and limit your intake.

For a more disturbing look at how sugar may affect your body go to my post, 'How harmful is Sugar?'.