Rule Number Seven

Good Health Guideline 7: Limit your sugar intake.

Hmm. "Limit". Not much guidance in that guideline. How much qualifies as "limited"? 10 grams a day? 25 grams a day? 100? Is it a before-and-after type thing? Am i supposed to try to eliminate sugar altogether? It just seems way too subjective to qualify as a real guideline.

So let's consider a typical sugar-intake day for me pre-Weightwatchers:

Cereal (let's say the Kashi shredded wheat, that's one of my favourites) for breakfast: 18g
Milk to go with the cereal: 26g
Banana to go into the cereal: 14g
Apple juice: 27g
Yogurt at lunch: 11g
Strawberries to go into the yogurt: 7g
Cookies (let's say 3 chocolate chip): 30g
M&M's from the community jar at work: 132g (conservatively assuming a few handfuls result in a serving approximating one cup)
Ice cream when i get home from work (let's say Ben & Jerry's Cinnamonbuns, one of my favourites): 28g (conservatively assuming i ate only a half cup)
Peanutbutter Twix after dinner (king size): 46g

Total: 339g Remember, this is a conservative estimate.

Now, let's consider a high-sugar-intake day for me now. We'll use yesterday as the example, since i ate something sweet at every meal:

Cinnamon oatmeal: 7g
Apple: 13g
Strawberries: 7g
Yogurt: 11g
Bread on my sammich: 3g
Cheese on my sammich: 1g
Pluot: 15g
Sweet potato: 6g
Green beans: 2g
Skinny Cow ice cream sammich: 4g

Total: 69g That's a significant reduction in sugar from my previous eating habits, plus most of that sugar came from fruit (ultimately, i'm not sure that makes a difference, but i've heard that fruit sugar is better for you than refined sugar).

In comparison, i would say that is DEFINITELY limiting my sugar intake. But could i be doing better? I eat some kind of whole-grain cereal for breakfast every morning (usually oat meal or oat bran or the non-sweetened shredded wheat) with some kind of fruit. I could opt to eat eggs or a bagel with cream cheese instead, thus reducing my sugar. I could switch my yogurt to a different brand; I found a Dannon one that only has 5g, but i don't like it as much as the 11g Yoplait. I could choose to eat more vegetables than fruits, seeing as how out of my five servings a day, three or four of them are usually fruits. I could opt to only eat one dessert a day instead of something sweet at lunch AND after dinner. Or cut dessert out altogether.

But one of the things i really like about Weightwatchers is that you can have normal food, including normal sweets, and still lose weight. This is one of their bragging points, as a matter of fact, so i think that eliminating sugar completely goes against the spirit of still eating "normally".

I'm still no closer to deciding what qualifies as "limited" sugar intake.