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.
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.
