Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I'm cutting back a bunch on sugar, the hardest part so far is no longer drinking it in my coffee, but even that is making a huge difference, as I was drinking like 3-5 coffees a day.

I still have instant oats with sugar in them and a few lara bars and I'm not going to waste food but it's been like 3 days just cutting out coffeesugar and obvious desertythings and my skin is already starting to clear up!

How's reducing sugar going, boober?

good! still working my way through instant oatmeal, but generally sugar free!

I'm doing this for the month of March, possibly longer. Already working my way down to nothing so I can start off March and not freak out! Oatmeal is hard, as boober is experiencing, but I try to pack it with fruit so it's not as unpalatable. Ripe bananas and blueberries really help a lot.

Awesome, Boober!



"Whipping" ripe bananas into my oatmeal has been the key to me giving up sweetening my oatmeal. I just cut the bananas up, and cook them right into the oatmeal. So delicious, and it's definitely sweet :)

Yeah, it's really not bad at all. I don't cook the bananas or anything – just make sure I get a piece of banana in every bite (I slice the banana lengthwise down the middle and then slice widthwise into 1/4" half moons). It works.

Fridays are particularly hard for me, as I usually drink or have something nice that day for completing yet another work week. I had a tofu-raw pepper-lettuce-avocado vinaigrette wrap instead, followed by an apple for "dessert". Thank god it was delicious!

Doing this isn't easy, but I always feel better when I do it.

The other day I microwaved my oatmeal but put some small diced apple in it at the microwave cooked it all up. Added cinnamon and nutmeg and had apple pie oatmeal. Pretty darn tasty

Mmmm yummy. I bet it'd be good with some raisins too.

i have also say No to sugar but after my doctors strict warning !! it was very difficult in starting , but now i somehow managed it !!

Okay, I'm on this thing now, partly for moral support (boyfriend is having to cut down) and partly because I am just eating too much sugar and using it as a dietary crutch. Riding my bike as much as I do, I need to take in quite a few calories, but I don't want to take them in the form of junk, meaning, if I need to get 500 or 600 calories in after a ride, I'd rather get that from nutrient-dense foods rather than just eat two giant pieces of coffeecake or something that will give me the calories, but not much else. I don't know if I'll be able to cut out sugar completely, since I can pretty much only digest things like gels and gummies when I'm on long rides (though I'm going to try and eat fruit-based stuff instead of the straight up glucose/maltodextrin stuff when I can), but I'm going to be trying hard to get off the sugar where I can.

Does anyone have any good snack ideas? Blogs they'd recommend.

Is fruit leather an option? Seems fairly portable on a ride, though not very filling. For me, anyway.

Yeah, I do eat that kind of stuff, but yeah, not enough calories, and relatively hard to eat. I'm not worrying about cutting stuff out on rides. It's more that I want to cut it out aside from when I'm riding, because I'm getting big chunks of calories from sugary snacks rather than healthy foods.

Gotcha – so you're mostly just looking for everyday snack-type foods? I do whole fruits (right now oranges & apples), sometimes popcorn (not doused in EB, obviously), carrots and hummus, nuts, that type of thing. Nobody's stopping you from having a smoothie with protein stuffs for a snack, either. You're obviously active enough, and that's a pretty damn good way of getting a ton of nutrients in a filling way.

I also found this really good avocado vinaigrette dressing. I'm a little obsessed with putting it in wraps. This is it. It is so good. Really, I was shocked by how delicious it was.

Hope that's helpful!

I'm 3 days in, having sugar in 1 cup of herbal tea daily. I've had a dull headache for 2 days. But it's not as bad as caffeine withdrawal.

I've been doing pretty well with this. Eating a bit of maple syrup, and my mom accidentally bought sweetened applesauce this weekend so I ate that, but otherwise pretty much sugar free. Also keeping my fruit consumption low, although I went a bit crazy on the fruit at my parents' house this weekend - they had so many berries!

Since my last post I've definitely gone a little overboard on the sugar and I'm craving healthy food like crazy! So tomorrow starts one week of no sugar, just to give myself a little kick in the butt.

Ugh, I'm feeling really frustrated on the sugar front. I eat really healthy, with the occasional indulgence in say...kettle corn... at work, but some how all the veg and fruit I eat go well over 60g of sugar a day before any little treats. Do any of you have any good resources on low-sugar vegan meals? I feel like sugar might be the culprit in my adult acne...but, MANGOS, y'all. Help please!

and what is wrong with sugar from fruit and veg...?

@VeganinBerlin I think nothing, objectively, I just feel like my diet is really high in sugar and it's causing some anxiety. I only started tracking it because of my (problem) skin (I try to avoid tracking my food intake for other reasons!) and am feeling a little panicky that I'm eating like 100- 120g of sugar a day! Is that OK if like 95% of that comes from fruit, grains, and veg? I'm not finding any good information on this sugar thing, so I'm hoping some of the no-sugar gurus can give me some advice :)

If most of your sugar intake is from fruit, grains, and vegetables...I don't really see how you could cut back on your intake too much, unless you wanted to go paleo. And you know, then you'd have the problem of not having enough glucose for brain function and your kidneys would have to break themselves down so your brain could work and...well, you're not going to do that.

If you're worried about spikes or dips in your blood sugar, the key is just to make sure that you're eating high-fiber carbohydrates (so your body digests them slowly, and you don't get "crashes"). But unless you're drinking half a carton of juice in a sitting or eating seven apples a day, you should be fine. Most fruit has enough fiber in it and vegetables are pretty much all fiber. You can look up "glycemic load", if you'd like (note that glycemic load is different to glycemic index, the latter of which isn't as accurate).

I just think it might drive you bananas if you're trying to cut out foods that are staples of anyone's (save the Cave-people) diet.

Yeah I totally agree tinglepants! I know in the past, when I've tried to limit my sugar intake from natural sources, it's brought up lots of not fun disordered thoughts. It's just not worth it.

My sugar intake today was 123 grams!! Most of that was fruit, so I'm choosing not to worry about it, but it sounds kind of bad.

After reading your responses, I'm choosing to not worry about the fact that I eat a lot of fruits and therefore, a fair amount of sugar! I guess I'll just keep keeping an eye on the extra sweeties from treats and booze ;-)

Fun fact: booze will usually dip your blood sugar rather than spike it. Most alcohol has zero residual sugar and rates a 0 on the glycemic index (I'm fairly certain some of the 9% ABV Belgian beers have residual sugar--but that's just a guess). The thing with alcohol is that having more than a single drink puts you at risk for hypoglycemia--and a dip in blood sugar feels like the "crash" you get after having too much. Hypoglycemia's definitely not good for you either, though--and for anyone who's diabetic (or pre-diabetic), a dip in blood sugar is just as bad as a spike.

(I know all this because I was pre-diabetic and my doctor told me to go paleo. I met her halfway by learning what the glycemic load was...and I was surprised to learn that alcohol actually does the opposite of what most of us think it does).