by Olwen Anderson

Created on: September 20, 2010   Last Updated: September 21, 2010

Many people have found it easy to lose weight and avoid the energy rollercoaster just by cutting sugar out of their diet. Curiously, as you do this, your diet will naturally become healthier too; with more unprocessed food, more fibre, more protein.

Here are seven ways you can make it happen; and a tip: Don’t try to do them all at once! Pin this article up on your fridge and do step one in week one; then move onto step 2, and so on. By the time you get to step 7 you won’t be missing sugar at all.

1. Leave sugar out of your cuppa. If you routinely scoop two heaped teaspoonfuls of sugar into your coffee or tea, you may be shocked at the total amount of sugar you’re taking in each day. You can go ‘cold turkey’ and just stop, or do it the easy way - reduce the amount of sugar in each cuppa by ¼ teaspoon each time.  There’s another, less obviously sugar-laden culprit that I see taking up shelf space beside coffee machines in -  flavoured syrups. You don’t need them; enjoy the real taste of coffee instead.

2. Stop using soft drink, cordial and fruit juice. Huh? Isn’t fruit juice healthy? Well, many actually have sugar added (sometimes labelled as ‘fructose’). Give yourself a fibre boost by enjoying a piece of real fruit and a glass of water rather than a sugar-laden juice.

3. Stop adding sugar to your breakfast cereal. Most of them already contain sugar, especially so called healthy muesli. Check the label – if your favourite muesli contains more than 10g sugar per 100g, it's officially ‘high’ in sugar content.

4. Examine every packet before you drop it in your supermarket trolley. Reject any that include contents of ‘sugar’ ‘corn syrup’ ‘fructose’ ‘glucose’ or any other type off added sugar. By the time you get to the checkout you’ll find your supermarket trolley full of real food: fresh vegetables and fruit, meat, nuts, legumes, whole grains.

5. Fabulous.Be suspicious of naturally fatty foods labelled ‘fat free’ – especially yoghurt. They often have lots of added sugar to make them taste better. Compare the ‘sugars or carbohydrate per 100g’ on the nutrition label with ‘plain natural yoghurt’ to know for sure.

6. Watch out for ‘sugar free’ spreads. Often the manufacturer has used fructose (fruit sugar) instead of cane sugar, but its still full of sugar. The nutrition label listing the amount of sugar per 100g will help you decide.

7. Take sugar and syrups out of your house. All the white sugar, raw sugar, golden syrup, maple syrup, treacle, honey…… If it's not in the cupboard, you’re likely to find something else sweet to eat...like fresh fruit.

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