One of the first healthy living eating choices I made was to eliminating soda from my diet. I used to drink 2 diet sodas a day, and even though diet soda no longer has the salt content, water is still much healthier. I used to never think I could get used to the non-taste of water, but I found that keeping it properly filtered and particularly chilled helped a lot.

Our current goal is to greatly reduce the carbs, particularly high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or corn sugar – really all processed sugars, natural sugars like those from fruit is okay – and the amount of white bread we consume.

We recently switched to Welch’s reduced sugar grape jelly. I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t easy. They’re currently the only grape jelly on the market without HFCS and less sugar. Clearly no easy feat or there would be competitors. It took some getting used to, sugar is tasty after all, but now I am quite happy with it. The only drawback is only comes in the dorky kid-centric squeeze bottle, and the squeeze bottle costs a lot more than a regular jar. The alternative is to switch to a non-grape jelly, but what can I say, I’m a traditionalist when it comes to my peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches.

We’ve also been transitioning to wheat bread. We’ve been enjoying Wonderlight Smart Wheat bread, reduce fat Ego whole wheat waffles, and whole wheat buns for hot dogs. We even get whole wheat French bread, when our grocery store has it. One could argue that these aren’t necessarily the best choices, but they are better choices than pure white bread. Just like the reduced sugar grape jelly, it takes time to transition fully to the healthy choice.

The biggest issue for me is protein. I’m not a big lunch meet person, heck I’m not a big meat person in general. (If it flies or comes from the sea, I love it, but I rarely eat land dwellers.) My primary pre-dinner protein sources come from nuts. But I’m prone to headaches, which seem to come when I don’t eat enough protein. I’ve been trying protein bars, but unfortunately those come with a lot of extra sugar.

Is it working? Well, since the reduction of sugar in take and the switch to more whole wheat and whole grains, I’ve lost another 5 lbs, brining my total just shy of 10 by only dietary changes. I’ll take that.

Posted in Healthy Living | Tags: Low Sugar, Whole Grain