Monday, March 17, 2008

so how bad is sugar...

It’s like I’ve adopted a whole new set of taste buds.

Coffee without sugar/sweetener is definitely different. I used to have it either with sf hazelnut creamer or with heavy cream and Spelnda. Now I can’t have either. I had my coffee with about double the heavy cream I usually use (which I’m sure is worse for me than the sweetener) and no sweetener. I can’t say it’s bad. Just different. I found a ff hazelnut creamer that’s sweetened with “sugar” and “corn syrup solids”. I’ve always heard corn syrup was just as bad for you as sweetener but Wikipedia touts it as being good because it comes from glucose which is supposed to be good for you. So now I’m confused.

I was sitting there comparing regular creamer with 6 grams of sugar and fat free creamer with 4 grams of sugar. Sure they both have drastically different calories (regular has 40 and ff has 15) which make the points go up, but it almost seems like it would be worth the exchange.

I'm thinking that my body needs sugar. Not alot. But a healthy balance of sugar. I've been dieting for almost a year and in that time I've almost entirely eliminated sugar from my diet (except for the occasional splurge). And last week when I hear that my brain might be suffering from the effect of low sugar levels in my blood stream because my heart rate was over 160 bpm while I was on the elliptical for a half hour it got me to thinking that maybe I need to keep a healthy level of sugar in my system. Real sugar.

Okay, I’ve got a question. Being as now I’m cutting out the artificial sweetener, I’m going to start adding small amounts of real sugar back into my diet but I don’t know how many grams of sugar are “reasonable” to have each day. Or does it even matter. Is it simply based on calories??

I always thought sugar was a bad thing for you. Now I'm learning that it's only bad in excess. Who knew?? Sugar is actually good for you.

4 comments:

FluffyDonna said...

Wow! You look fantastic! I hope you don't get tired of hearing that. I googled "recommended daily sugar intake" (don't you love Google?) and this is what I found.

Do you mind if I add you to my list of blogs I read? :)

FluffyDonna said...

Wow! You look fantastic! I hope you don't get tired of hearing that.

I googled "recommended daily sugar intake" (don't you love Google?) and this looked interesting.

http://www.aboutaerobics.com/sugar-facts-fiction.html

Do you mind if I add you to my list of blogs I read? :)

Christina said...

way to go! You will get used to no sugar in your coffee, I can't ever go back :)

--cara said...

Donna, thanks for the link. It helped me figure out my daily allowance. I'll post about it soon.

Christina, you're right, I don't mind there not being any sugar in my coffee. It's different, but it's okay.