Sugar is everywhere you look. And if you’ve ever tried to cut sugar from your diet, you know how difficult it is. Even foods you wouldn’t expect, like carrots, have sugar. The reality is that minimizing sugar intake is vital for our health. This anti-nutrient can prevent you from losing weight (no matter how hard you try), deplete minerals in your body, stress out your liver, increase bad cholesterol levels, cause sleep problems, and lots more.
To help you quit sugar and improve your health, why not try a sugar detox?
What’s a Sugar Detox?
In the simplest terms, a sugar detox rids your body of sugar. There are different ways to cleanse your body from sugar, but probably the most effective one is to quit cold turkey for a few days. Then you can gradually introduce natural, “healthy” sugar (like from fruits), back into your diet.
But, before we go into more depth about how to do a sugar detox, let’s go over the different kinds of sugar and how they can affect your health.
What Is Sugar, Exactly?
Sugar comes in four different forms:
- Fructose
- Sucrose
- High fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
- Glucose
Fructose is the kind of sugar that occurs naturally in fruit. But still, consuming too much fructose can indeed be bad for your health. The only organ in your body that can break down fructose is the liver. It turns fructose into triglycerides (which can damage liver function), free radicals (which can damage cells), and uric acid (which may cause damage to your arteries).
Sucrose is table sugar, the kind that is added to baked goods, candy, and most foods. Sucrose is composed of a mixture of glucose and fructose. The part that is glucose gets sent to your bloodstream, causing a spike in blood sugar. The part that is fructose gets sent to your liver to be metabolized.
High fructose corn syrup is made from cornstarch. Like sucrose, it’s about 50% fructose and 50% glucose. There’s debate whether it’s worse for you than sucrose, but there’s yet to be enough evidence to support any conclusion. Regardless, HFCS isn’t healthier than table sugar and isn’t a good substitute.
Glucose is your body’s primary source of energy. You don’t need to consume glucose; by eating the right foods, your body creates glucose for you. Having too much glucose in your system causes your blood sugar (otherwise known as blood glucose) to rise, possibly to unhealthy levels. Having too little in your blood can also be unhealthy.
How Much Sugar is Healthy?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there’s no nutritional reason to include added sugar, like the sugar in soda and sweets, in your diet. But if you do, the WHO suggests that a person with a healthy BMI consume no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar a day. That’s 25 grams.
Even if you follow a healthy diet, it’s possible that you’re consuming way more sugar than this recommended amount.
Our sugar consumption has risen dramatically over the past 200 or so years. In 2005, Westerners consumed, on average, 152 pounds of sugar a year, compared to 6.3 pounds per year in 1822.
Part of that increase is due to lifestyle. Part is due to the amount of sugar included in basically every processed food and drink. And part is because a lot of people don’t know how ubiquitous sugar is. It’s included in products you’d never imagine, like dressings and sauces. One brand of popular pasta sauce has more sugar in one serving than two Oreo cookies!
Best Sugar Substitutes
For a sugar detox, and for long-term health benefits, it’s really best that you take sugar out of your diet completely. It will help get rid of your cravings for good. But if you choose to replace some of your sugar intake with sugar substitutes, there are some that are worse than others.
Best sugar substitutes: natural sweeteners like stevia, pure maple syrup (but in small amounts), dates, and berries.
- Stevia is derived from highly refined stevia leaf extract called rebaudioside A, has no calories and is 200 times sweeter than sugar (so you can use less and get the same sweet effect).
- Fresh dates have high levels of antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. There are about 20 calories per date, but this depends on the size of the date. The smaller the date, the fewer the calories.
- If you opt for maple syrup, only pure maple syrup is acceptable. Pure maple syrup contains only natural ingredients, no added sugar, and no artificial color or preservatives. This sweetener contains different vitamins and minerals. It’s especially high in zinc and manganese. However, ⅓ cup of maple sugar contains about 60 grams of sucrose, which is higher than the recommended daily intake.
- Fresh berries have a lower sugar content than other fruit and can be the best option to naturally sweeten foods like oatmeal and cereal, and drinks like water.
Worst sugar substitutes: artificial sweeteners like saccharin (sweet n low), aspartame (equal), and acesulfame K.
- Saccharin is linked to inflammation, hormonal imbalance, and chronic illness.
- Aspartame is linked to headaches in people and cancer in animal studies.
- Acesulfame K contains the carcinogen methylene chloride, which can cause headaches, depression, nausea, confusion, and possibly cancer.
How Sugar Impacts Your Blood Sugar
Blood sugar, also known as blood glucose, is affected by how much sugar you eat. Seems kind of obvious, right? You eat a lot of sugar, your blood sugar goes up, and when you eat very little or none at all, it goes down
Turns out, blood sugar is a bit more complicated than that.
How does blood sugar work?
Blood sugar is the amount of glucose you have in your bloodstream. How does glucose get in there? From the food you eat. When your body digests foods, especially carbohydrates, it breaks down the different nutrients and sends them all into the bloodstream. One of those nutrients is glucose.
So, your blood sugar rises when you digest food.
What is high blood sugar?
High blood sugar occurs for a few different reasons.
Cause one is from eating a meal that’s high in carbohydrates. Sugar is a simple carb, which means the body is able to digest it quickly. This causes your blood sugar to spike.
Cause two is stress. When you feel stressed, your body releases glucose that your liver has been storing. If you’re constantly feeling stressed, your body will constantly be releasing glucose and raising your blood sugar.
Cause three is your sleep schedule. Cortisol, a hormone that signals your liver to release glucose into your bloodstream, is activated in the morning, when you wake up. In other words, your morning ritual may be accompanied by a shot of glucose.
When your blood sugar is high, your pancreas releases a hormone called insulin to lower it.
How to lower blood sugar?
High blood sugar signals insulin to get to work and lower the levels of glucose. Extra glucose can be stored as glycogen, which is found mainly in your muscles and liver. But when there’s no more room for glycogen, extra glucose is stored as fat.
There are other ways to keep your blood sugar low, so you don’t need to use as much insulin, and your glucose doesn’t get turned into fat.
One way to lower your blood sugar is to reduce the amount of carbohydrates in your food. Ideally you wouldn’t consume any added sugar at all. Stick with the fructose that comes in fruit, and only eat a small amount.
Another way to lower blood sugar is to eat complex carbs. Unlike simple carbs like sugar, complex carbohydrates take longer to digest. Glucose is released over a longer period of time, so your blood sugar doesn’t spike. Complex carbs can also give you more energy for a longer period of time.
Another way to lower your blood sugar is to lower your stress level. Reducing stress will reduce cortisol, which in turn lowers your blood sugar.
Why Healthy Blood Sugar is Important
When your blood sugar level is constantly high, it can cause a condition called insulin resistance. If your insulin is constantly at work, it can stop being effective. Instead, excess glucose stays in your bloodstream and your blood sugar is constantly elevated (called hyperglycemia). In the meantime, your body keeps releasing more insulin (called hyperinsulinemia), which ends up promoting fat storage instead.
High blood sugar can also lead to chronic disease, like type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and neurodegenerative disease.
Health Benefits of Reducing Sugar
A few health benefits of reducing your sugar intake have been mentioned throughout this article so far, but let’s do a quick round up of those benefits, and add a few more.
- Mindful eating: When you pay attention to which foods have sugar, you will begin to notice other important nutritional facts. This can lead to more informed eating habits.
- Improved dental health: Anyone with a life-long sweet tooth knows how negatively it can impact your teeth! Sugar can create an acidic, cavity-prone mouth.
- Weight loss: If your diet consists of a lot of sugar, it will be difficult to lose weight, no matter how hard you try. Reducing sugar can help you lose that stubborn fat.
- Improved energy: Highs and lows of a sugar-fueled diet become a thing of the past. Without sugar, your body can sustain a constant energy level throughout the day.
- Lowered blood sugar: Having high blood sugar can put you at risk for chronic health problems. Reducing the amount of sugar you consume can help lower that risk.
- Improved focus: Without sugar, you won’t deal with sugar crashes throughout the day, and your mind will be better able to concentrate on tasks.
How to do a 3 Day Sugar Detox Diet
For anyone who considers sugar a staple of their diet, the first few days without it can feel impossible. You experience side effects like sugar cravings and headaches. You may feel tired and queasy. The easy thing to do is reach for something sugary–and those symptoms go away. But that’s only a short-term solution, and an unhealthy one at that.
To get rid of those sugar cravings and begin your journey to a healthier you, the 3 Day Sugar Detox might be just what you need.
A few things to consider when planning your own 3 Day Sugar Detox:
- Breakfast should include about 35 grams of protein to help you feel full throughout the day.
- Include protein in every meal.
- Choose healthy proteins like eggs, poultry, fish, and beans.
- Limit red meat.
- Avoid processed meat like bacon and cold cuts.
- For every meal, include about half a plate’s worth of leafy greens, like:
- Spinach
- Arugula
- Kale
- Collard greens
- Chard
- Include about 44 to 77 grams of healthy fats, like avocado, fresh tuna, salmon, and sardines, flaxseeds, olives, and olive oil, every day.
Is a Sugar Detox Diet Right for You?
Added sugar provides no health benefits and can contribute to high blood sugar and other chronic diseases. If you already deal with low blood sugar or diabetes, you shouldn’t try a sugar detox without discussing the benefits and risks with your doctor. Otherwise, if you’re wondering if you should try a sugar detox, the answer is yes. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
