Want to kick your sugar habit?

If you’re all too familiar with the negative effects of a sugar binge and want to quit the white stuff for good, Nicole Mowbray explains how

sugar temptation is a feeling I know only too well. Five years ago, I wrote a book called Sweet Nothing about giving up sugar. I went cold turkey, jettisoning all my bad habits in one go. No more chocolate, honey, processed foods, juices, alcohol… even many fruits became contraband. It has done wonders for everything from my skin to my sleep, not to mention my weight, but I can’t lie: it’s often boring and extremely challenging during holidays when everyone is indulging.

Of course, I sometimes feel I’m missing out. And inevitably, I’ve occasionally thought ‘sod it’ and stuffed my face with Lindt balls. And it feels good! But mostly I stick to my low-sugar principles because I don’t want to be spotty, sleep deprived and exacerbate the polycystic ovary syndrome symptoms I have. A diet high in sugar is also linked to many serious health complaints, such as obesity and type 2 diabetes.

So what’s the best way to kick your sugar habit? And how long will it take to reset your body clock?

the timeframe

Consultant cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra has been pressing food manufacturers to reduce the amount of sugar in their goods for the sake of public health. He also wrote The Pioppi Diet (so named after the Italian town that’s home to the Mediterranean diet), which helped MP Tom Watson lose an incredible seven stone and reverse his type 2 diabetes.

‘Sugar is mildly addictive, which means going cold turkey may result in withdrawal symptoms for a few days,’ says Malhotra. ‘Most common is mild irritability or headaches, but cravings tend to disappear after about two weeks.

‘As sugar is an appetite stimulant (it affects the hormones that control appetite) once you cut it out completely, the feeling of being constantly hungry also diminishes significantly within a few weeks. Sugar – as well as other refined carbs [eg, fruit juice, white pasta and rice, cakes and pastries] – is the biggest dietary contributor to insulin resistance, which begins by inducing excess liver fat. Insulin resistance is at the root of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, but is also implicated in many other chronic diseases. Cutting sugar from your diet can reduce liver fat and improve general health within 21 days.’

It doesn’t take long to retrain your taste buds, either. ‘The palate adjusts within six weeks so you become more sensitive to sweet foods,’ says Malhotra. So things you previously may not have thought of as ‘sweet’, such as carrots, suddenly taste sweeter.

get to know labels

As a rough guide, 4g of sugar is equivalent to one teaspoon. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition says adults and children over 11 should consume no more than 30g of sugars per day – just over seven teaspoons. One can of Coke contains 35g (almost nine teaspoons).

There are four main types of sugars to be aware of, says nutritional therapist Ian Marber.

1. Added or refined sugar: the spoonful you add to tea, carbonated drinks and it’s present in almost all processed foods. Nutritionists are very concerned about fructose (a fruit sugar) that is added to most highly processed ready-made foods.

2. Foods naturally high in sugar: the paler the fruit – bananas, mango – the higher the sugar. Instead, choose dark berries, which are high in antioxidants and low in sugar. 3. Foods that quickly convert to sugar in

the body: such as white bread and rice, easily identifiable by their GI (glycaemic index). ‘The GI shows how quickly something gives up its sugars,’ says Marber. ‘Think of something over 100 as having a high GI, medium would be 35-60, low would score under 35.’

4. Masquerading sugars: eg, honey. While less processed than sugar, they are still used by the body in very similar ways.

beware the hype

Much-hyped ‘sugar alternatives’, such as maple syrup, date nectar and coconut sugar, aren’t necessarily better either. ‘Loading honey and agave on a bowl of porridge isn’t much better than loading it with sugar,’ says Ian Marber. ‘Often the difference is in the language used and the visual ‘natural’ image it creates, but in nutrition terms, they’re forms of sugar.’

While sugar alternatives are often grouped together as ‘unrefined’ sugars, many have been processed, unless they explicitly state otherwise. They are also high in calories. In fact, at 60 calories per tablespoon, agave is more calorific than refined sugar. The idea is, of course, to use less of it, but how many of us actually do?

Don’t be fooled by appearances, either – not all green juices are created equal or automatically ‘healthier’ than their brightly coloured counterparts. Take Pret-amanger’s ‘Daily Greens’ juice, made from pear, apple, cucumber, spinach, celery, lettuce, yuzu and lime. Over 50% of this is fruit, which explains how it contains 6.5 teaspoons of sugar per 400ml bottle. Look for a juice that has little or no fruit in it.

Finally, remember that artificial sweeteners are not your friend. Reported to be up to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar, research suggests sweeteners (hello, ‘diet’ drinks) may warp the body’s perception of sweetness, causing us to seek out sweet foods elsewhere.

Don’t beat yourself up

As Alexander Pope wrote, ‘To err is human; to forgive, divine,’ so if you fall off the low-sugar wagon, just get right back on.