Is sugar the cause of your weight gain?

Taking care of your heart starts with your diet and making healthy changes. Cutting down on sugar, which experts say people consume far too much of on a daily basis, is the perfect place to start. Processed sugars add empty calories to your diet and can disrupt your metabolism, making weight loss or maintenance difficult and posing serious health risks.

To avoid extra sugar in your diet and get on a path to greater health, consider these simple strategies.

Shop the perimeter. Sticking to the perimeter of the grocery store is a good rule of thumb, as this tends to be where you’ll find the least processed foods, such as vegetables, fruit, dairy, meat and seafood, most of which are free of added sugar.

Read food labels. Seek out foods containing little to no sugar, being careful to read labels. You may have to look hard though, as sugar is ubiquitous. Bear in mind that ingredient listings on packaged foods are in order of volume.

Learn sugar’s other names. “Pretty much anything ending in ‘ose’ is a sugar. And whether it’s fructose, dextrose or sucrose, it will end up as a sugar in your body,” says Mandi Knowles, Registered Dietitian at South Beach Diet in the US. Avoid them if you want to eat less sugar.

Buy unsweetened foods. Look for food labels that say the food is unsweetened. Not “naturally sweetened.” Unsweetened. That means there won’t be any- thing lurking in there that could throw you off.

Make sugar swaps. Simple swaps can help you save on sugar. Swap soda for unsweetened iced tea and save 31 grams of sugar. Swap non-fat flavoured yoghurt for Greek yoghurt with fresh strawberries and save 19 grams of sugar. Swap your favourite vanilla latte for black coffee with a splash of cream and save 35 grams of sugar.