Quit Sugar once and for all with these Simple Tips and Substitutes

A diet without refined sugar can bring amazing health benefits. Controlled blood sugar can help increase energy levels, boost your immunity and improve your weight-loss efforts immensely.

High blood sugar impairs many bodily systems, including immunity, digestion and hormone balance. It contributes to obesity, acne, allergies, digestive disturbances, eczema, cancer, epilepsy, diabetes, hyperactivity in children, mood swings, depression, nutrient deficiencies, addictions to alcohol and so many other dis-eases, syndromes and symptoms.

The transition from sugar to a diet without can seem next to impossible, especially if you have a long seated relationship with sweets like high fructose corn syrup in sodas and white sugar, refined from beets, in just about everything else.

Want my secret tricks to going sugarless?

For most, it only takes a few days to break your sugar addiction as long as you replace refined sugar products with natural whole foods. These slower releasing carbohydrates balance sugar in your bloodstream, while increasing your nutrition and reducing your cravings at the same time, more about this in a bit.

Whenever we eliminate a specific food from our diet a slow and gentle process works great. It’s more effective and kinder to add replacement foods first, then remove all sugar products gradually.

Here’s another trick.

You’ve got to keep focus by remembering why you wanted to kick sugar in the first place.

Why did you want to transition to a sugarless diet again?

Was it to lose weight?

To look and feel better?

To have more energy?

To reduce your risk for dis-ease?

To reduce an alcohol addiction?

To be here and healthy for your kids?

To have the energy to keep up with your grandchildren?

To boost your immunity?

To live longer?

There are a whole lot of reasons why someone would give up processed sugars. Try to stay focused and remember your WHY for kicking the sugar habit.

Want to know the easiest way to eliminate cravings for sweets?

Our bodies don’t crave calories, nor do they even know what they are, rather we crave nutrients.

Metabolizing refined sugar regularly requires digging into your own store of nutrients and using them up, so the constant intake of refined sugar will cause your cravings for many foods to increase.

From an Eastern perspective, the Chinese philosophy of Yin and Yang, or universal balance, effects our bodily systems by influencing what we choose to eat. Yin represents expansion and includes sugar, fruits, leafy green vegetables, nuts, seeds, root vegetables, beans, pork and milk. In contrast, wheat, buckwheat, rice, corn, fish, cheese, beef, eggs and poultry are Yang foods, representing contraction.

Sugar for instance is at the extreme end of Yin. Eating foods on the extreme end of Yin or Yang causes imbalance, and cravings for the opposite extreme. This explains why eating yang meats, eggs and salty cheeses, promotes cravings for sweet foods, alcohol and coffee, all Yin foods. (Kushi, 2004)

Replace your sweets with these naturally sweet treats

Treat yourself to these naturally sweet treats to replace foods with refined sugars. Once you’ve completely transitioned you can cut back gradually on fruit intake. If you simultaneously increase all macro and micronutrients, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, raw proteins and raw healing fats your cravings for sweets and carbohydrates will automatically wane as your body receives everything it needs.

Try naturally dried and organic fruits such as figs, apple slices, dates, apricots, raisins, cherries, blueberries, mango, papaya and pineapple. Mix them with organic seeds and nuts to make your own personal blend. Keep refrigerated and snack on them between meals. Raw Nut and Dried Fruit Nosh

Have banana or sliced fresh apple with peanut, nut or seed butter (watch for hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fat in peanut butter, 100% organic peanuts is best). Top with freshly sprouted alfalfa, red clover or other tiny sprouts, if you love them. Use fresh raw celery sticks, endive leaves or thick slanted slices of cucumber instead of bread.

Try naturally sweet apple butter on lightly toasted Ezekiel bread.

Buy unsweetened applesauce and peaches without added sugar.

What About Cookies?

Got a dehydrator? I hope so! Try these recipes and don’t stop experimenting. I got fanatical and now dehydrate everything.

In Fall our cupboards are full with dehydrated tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, cranberries, raspberries, strawberries, peaches, chopped celery, garlic scapes, kale, Swiss chard, lots of different herbs, spring onions and anything else I can fit in the dehydrator. You’ll save so much money and eat so much better if you dehydrate your favorite seasonal foods as they arrive in markets and stores.

Make dehydrator cookies with mashed banana, raisins, cinnamon or tiny chunks of apple and a few tablespoons of ground flax seed. Add a couple of mashed dates for more sweet flavor if you want.

These are soooo good: Cranberry Orange Cashew Cookies Raw Vegan Dehydrator Required

Stock up on frozen fruits

Use lots of fresh and frozen organic berries = less sugar and more fiber than most other fruits.

When you buy a large fruit such as pineapple, mango papaya, freeze any leftover chunks on a tray then pack in containers for use in smoothies (some papayas are genetically modified).

For added nutrition, frozen fruit can be blended with water and a couple heaping spoonfuls each of immune building ground flax seeds and brain boosting raw organic coconut fat, or fresh raw Thai coconut flesh.

Smoothies make great desserts as well as snacks and breakfasts. Add a handful of raw organic seeds or nuts, a chunk of fresh raw ginger and spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom pods.

Have lots of delicious, fresh fruits available.

Keep chopped tropical fruits fresh, frozen or dried on hand for a quick, healthy snack.

Use fresh fruit chunks to make kabobs on wooden skewers for parties or as a special treat for your children and their friends.

Make a large fruit salad and refrigerate for up to four days.

Keep apples, bananas and oranges on hand as well.

Mango slices are delicious on fresh raw greens, with a splash of white wine vinegar, unrefined olive oil and a sprinkling of your favorite herbs.

Blend an orange with peel and bananas with water for a ‘cream-sicle’ digestive system (promotes bile flow, helping to release buildup in gall bladder and liver) cleansing smoothie. Orange Creme Cleanse

Chop fruit into salads, like Celery, Apple and Cranberry Salad

Transition to sugarless baking

Use mashed or blended fruits, berries, raisins, naturally sweetened cranberries, freshly blended fruit juice, dates, raw organic honey (that’s honey from bees fed on organic crops – ask your local beekeeper or apiculturist) and stevia as sweeteners in pies and cakes.

What not to eat

Eliminate the processed whites: White (hydrogenated) shortening, white flour, white sugar, white rice, white (iodized rock) salt, pasteurized dairy.

Forget processed foods, you can just feel how bad their energy is, how devoid their nutrition is.

This will go a long way to reducing damaging blood sugar fluctuations.

Refined grains equal sugar and sugar equals added fat, poor digestion, dis-ease, pathogens, acidic blood and a host of other symptoms and problems.

Pasteurized Dairy = Congesting Food

It’s a hard one to give up. Let me make it easy for you.

Go to the refrigerated health food section of your grocery store or your local health food store and look for unpasteurized or raw organic cheese.

You’ll have to look hard. Believe me, it’s worth it. That’s the only cheese you want to eat, in moderation, when you crave it.

Why raw? Because pasteurized cheese has been heated and the molecules of fat and protein become ‘denatured,’ which really means they have been melted and destroyed. Now their electrons are missing. Those fats no longer conduct electricity in your body and the protein chains are no longer fit for building anything. Congesting waste, with damaged nutrients, that’s it.

I thought we were talking about sugar?

We are.

Dairy products have lactose. Lactose is a sugar.

Don’t worry, you’ve still got raw organic cheddar cheese!

If you have the occasional slip up, forgive yourself and forget about it … moving on.

Go organic whole grain in moderation or no grain.

Whole grain products provide fiber, vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals, which have been stripped from processed grains.

Complex carbohydrates are slowly converted to simple sugars and released over a longer period of time helping you keep balanced blood sugar.

Genetically modified corn and other GMO’s are registered pesticides. The corn kernel in and of itself is actually a pesticide. If you eat any corn products or foods made with cornstarch, look for organic corn.

Soy? Organic and fermented only.

Canola okay? Just skip the Canola.

Just say NO to GMOs and all the chemicals, pesticides and devastation they foster in our world.

For grains, two or three small organic whole grain servings per day maximum is an excellent goal, providing you have lots of other raw, organic, nutrient rich foods.

What about sugarless sweeteners?

Don’t give them the time of day. They contain dangerous chemicals such as formaldehyde and methanol in Aspartame, and Chlorine in Splenda.

If you need to sweeten your coffee or tea, use a little unpasteurized honey or a pinch of the herbal sweetener Stevia.

If, on occasion a delicious piece of homemade birthday cake somehow wedges its way into your life, don’t stress, you’ll get right back on track. Besides, with all that nutritious food you are eating, a little homemade cake won’t be a problem for your healthy body.

How do you feel now?

Gradually as nutrient rich foods replace processed sweets in your diet, your energy levels will most likely rise and your moods may improve. That is my hope for you.

Your digestive system will function better, absorbing nutrients, helping to make plump, healthy skin and shiny, silky hair and improving the function of all bodily systems.

Next, symptoms of sugar overload disappear, along with yeast infections. Some people find that removing sugar takes their acne, eczema and other sweet/acid conditions away.

Your body will begin to use the extra nutrients to cleanse and rebuild.

With these new experiences and changes, you are well on your way to your version of optimum health.

RECIPE ALERT

These delicious smoothies will get you started. PLEASE use only organic fruit and nuts (almonds are pasteurized (irradiated) unless organic) 🙂 Enjoy!

Blueberry Banana Smoothie

1 ripe banana

½ cup wild blueberries, frozen or fresh

1 handful raw cashews or raw almonds – soaked for 4 hours, pour off soaking water

Ice or fresh water

Blend thoroughly, pour and enjoy. Serves 2.

Orange Julip Smoothie

1 banana