How to Increase Your Energy by Eliminating Sugar

Increase Your Energy by Eliminating Sugar with These Effective Ways

When it comes to energy, sugar is bad news. You may think it’s giving you an energy boost, but the facts tell a different story. Although sugar in your diet might temporarily give you a short lift, it’s invariably followed by a crash that leaves your energy in the dumpster.

Anyone wanting sustained energy, a clear and focused mind, and laser-sharp concentration and performance is well advised to do an exorcism as far as sugar in the diet goes.

I could go on. (And frequently do, especially when I’m giving talks about the effect of sugar on weight, hormones, cravings, fat storage, the immune system, athletic performance, and general health. The executive summary: Sugar does nothing good and plenty bad). The bottom line is that if you want to be at the top of your game, energetically speaking, you’d be well off removing as much sugar as humanly possible from your everyday diet.

It is easy to “get the sugar out”? Heck, no. It’s in everything. But you can make a serious effort, and if you aim for the bulls-eye, you’ll be close enough to make a big difference in your energy and well-being. Here are eight great tips to get you started on the path to a high-energy, sugar-free life!

Don’t Add Sugar or Salt to Your Food
First principles first. Don’t add sugar to your food, and this includes coffee and tea. As someone who used to sweeten coffee with 3 teaspoons of sugar (granted, that was twenty-five years ago, but I still remember), I can assure you that you can learn to enjoy it without the added health hazard. Recent research indicates that added salt can, paradoxically, increase the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, and in addition, you don’t need that additional sodium. Which leads to principle number two.

Learn What Real Food Tastes Like
You know, back in the day when my body was, shall we say, a bit more “polluted” than it is now (hey, that was back in the 60s and 70s, what do you expect?), I could have taken a horse tranquilizer and barely noticed any effect. After I got completely clean, I noticed any effect. After I got completely clean, I noticed and aspiring! That’s what happens when you clear your body of toxins, and it’s also what happens when you clear you palate of the taste of super-sweet and super-salty. Your senses become fine-tuned and you can actually start noticing real flavors.

It’s true. Once we stop adding salt and sugar to everything, our taste buds quickly adapt and start to respond to subtle tastes that we never noticed before. Want proof? Try an heirloom tomato without anything but some pepper on it. But be forewarned – it may spoil you so you’re never again satisfied with the run-of-the mill, uniform steroided-out giant red suckers that taste like wet cardboard. But you’ll be developing a taste for real food.

Experiment with Spices
Once you break the sugar and salt habit, there’s a whole world waiting for you in delicious, nutritious spices that can not only add to your eating pleasure but also provide a cornucopia of medicinal benefits. Try turmeric on your eggs or vegetables. Give lemon pepper and Celtic sea salt a try while you’re at it. And cinnamon and nutmeg aren’t only for Thanksgiving – they’re both healthy spices that can easily take the place of sugar with a lot more health benefit to boot. By the way, they taste great on mashed pumpkin with butter, an energy food if ever there was one!

Beware of Fat-Free Food
Fat-free food is so yesterday. Forget it. If you’re eating real, whole food, you don’t need it. Fat will keep you full longer, making it less likely that you’ll overeat. And remember, according to Walter Willett, M.D., Ph.D., lead researcher on the thirty-plus-year Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, there’s no relationship between the percentage of fat in your diet and any major health outcome. Eat food the way it was intended to be eaten and you won’t need all the added sugar. Virtually every fat-free fake food I’ve seen is manufactured with a ton of sugar, which food producers use to make up for the missing fat. From an energy (and a health) point of view, you’re way better off with the real thing.

Be a Smart Label Reader
Sugar comes in many disguises. High-fructose corn syrup is the nastiest and most prevalent, but beware of brown rice syrup, invert sugar cane juice, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, and anything ending in “ose”, which includes fructose, lactose, glucose, maltose, and sucrose. Manufacturers frequently use a combination of these so they can hide the actual amount of sugar in any product. By law, ingredients have to be listed in order of weight, so by using just a little of five different sugars, sugar won’t necessarily be the first ingredient on the label, even though the product in question may have more sugar in it than any other ingredient! These manufacturers can be sneaky devils!

Use This Natural Crave-Buster
If you experience sugar cravings, try glutamine. I wrote about L-glutamine in The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth for the simple reason that it is a great natural crave-buster. An amino acid, glutamine is a natural energy fuel for the brain, and a spoonful of the powder in a glass of water will do wonders for knocking your sugar cravings right out of the park. (You can find powdered glutamine on my website, www.jonnybowden.com, as well as in many health food stores). If you’re interested, it’s also good for alcohol cravings, which are often sugar cravings in disguise.

Learn about Lo Han
No, not the bad-girl teen-queen actress, the sweetener. Lo Han sweetener is made from the Chinese fruit of the same name, is all natural, and offers a multitude of health benefits. It’s a great alternative to sugar; it is a couple hundred times sweeter than the white stuff, has zero calories, and is safe for diabetics. Lo Han is available at many natural foods supermarkets and health food stores.

Try Xylitol
This is one of my favorite sugar substitutes. It’s actually a sugar alcohol, and although it has some (very few) calories it has a vanishingly small effect on blood sugar, helps prevent bacteria from adhering to surfaces (such as in the mouth, making it a key ingredient in “healthy” chewing gums), and looks, tastes, and cooks like the real ting. It’s particularly great in energy smoothies.