Best Ways To Reduce Sugar On The DASH Diet

How can you possibly live on just one teaspoon of sugar per day? Most people put more than that in just one cup of coffee! Any soft drink contains more sugar than that. How are you going to cope with THIS requirement of your 1200 or 1500 calorie DASH diet?

 

If you plan on using sugar substitutes, like Equal, NutraSweet, Sweet’N Low or Splenda, I beg you to reconsider.

You see, you can endanger your health and still not lose weight or lower your blood pressure. So read on to find out better alternatives.

What’s wrong with sugar substitutes?

These products are based on harmful artificial sweeteners, such as sucralose, saccharin and aspartame. The reaction they cause in your body can result in weight gain, cell inflammation, and liver toxicity.

• These sweeteners make your liver work overtime, so you’re going to have a harder time losing fat, no matter how little you eat and how much you exercise.
• Aspartame is linked to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. It is a known excitotoxin that kills your brain cells.
• Cell inflammation means that your blood pressure might not go down after all.

Do you REALLY want to go through all this trouble just to get more health issues?

If you check nutritional labels, you will see that diet coke, diet pepsi, and many yogurt brands contain artificial sweeteners. Try to avoid them. You might not be able to avoid them everywhere, but at least don’t focus on these products as a holy grail for  reducing your blood pressure.

Healthy Alternatives To Sugar On The DASH Diet

There are two ways to deal with sugar  instead of using artificial sweeteners:

1. Reduce amount of refined sugar and get used to it.
2. Use natural sugar substitutes that help lower blood pressure and have other health benefits.

I found that there are two ways to reduce sugar – do it gradually or go “cold turkey.”  If you are working long hours, if your job requires attention and you absolutely cannot afford to live through the energy “crash”, you might want to reduce sugar in your diet gradually. Start diluting your soft drinks, adding less sugar to your tea and coffee, and avoid sweets and cookies. This gives your body time to adjust to your new diet. The problem with this approach is that you stretch your suffering out over a longer period of time. So you may lose motivation because the results of your hard efforts are not visible.

The cold turkey method is harder upfront, because sugar craving is an addiction. When you reduce sugar in your diet,  and your body starts adjusting, you experience fluctuations in energy levels, headaches, or other unpleasant symptoms. However, the paradox is that the further you go down this road, the more likely you are to stick to the diet. This is because you see the results,  you feel them, and this motivates you to stick to it.

Your choice also depends on your personality. Some people find it easier to go cold turkey, others simply cannot do it this way…

So once you decided how to go about reducing sugar in your diet, check out good replacements and additions to that teaspoon of sugar that you are still entitled to:

Natural sugar replacements suitable for your DASH diet:

•  Use raw honey. No, you cannot use MORE honey than sugar, but consider that honey contains 25 other compounds including proteins, amino acids and trace minerals. Try buckwheat honey. In Russia, it is used regularly for protection from many diseases.
•  Use sweet tropical fruit in your diet. DASH diet doesn’t restrict the type of fruit you are supposed to eat, so pick ripe bananas, pineapples, watermelons, and pomegranates. All these fruit are known to lower blood pressure due to Potassium, Magnesium, and numerous antioxidants they contain.
•  Eat more berries. We are making berry “ice-cream” at home and eating it as a dessert. Kids love it!
•  Use stevia, the only natural sugar substitute that is not harmful in any known way. Stevia is a plant with super-sweet leaves. I grew it in my backyard. Stevia is amazingly sweet, but it also has a special taste that not everyone likes. Try stevia and see if you can use it as sugar replacement. It is available at health food stores.

Hypertension and sugar are linked. Sugar causes inflammation in the body. So if you are eating it in excess, you are unlikely to succeed on the path of health and lowering your blood pressure. It’s a sad truth because sugary foods bring pleasure to our lives, pleasure that we have to give up to keep ourselves healthy.

But the good part is, once our sugar addiction is over with, we learn to find pleasure in other things, and life goes on. It’s a better, healthier life with fewer pains, less grief and less money spent on treating an illness, more on pleasures.

<h2>Share Your Experience In Reducing Sugar…</h2>

What challenges do you face trying to reduce sugar? Were you successful? If not, why not? Share your thoughts on reducing sugar in your everyday diet – leave a comment

 

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