How I'm cutting down sugar?

Whenever we decide to start eating healthy, the first thing we start off with is to cut down sugar in our tea/coffee. We get all pumped up, make the cup of tea without any sugar and take one long sip and…. it tastes so bad! Without giving up, we try one more time, it still tastes bad and with all the mighty power, we gulp it down.

We might try the same thing again the next day or two but then it's a struggle. We end up going back to the old ways. If you are able to eliminate sugar in one go, hats off to your willpower! But this post is for the rest of us who wants to cut down sugar but want a better route rather than the sudden change.

A couple of years back, I used to have my tea with 2 tsp of sugar (1 tsp = 5 grams). I usually have 2 cups of tea in a day, which means 4 tsp of sugar. I have almost cut down on other sugar-based sweets/chocolates/cookies/cakes. They are occasional visitors though.

Gradually, I reduced the sugar in my tea to 1.5 tsp, tried this for a couple of months and my taste buds got used to it.

Then I changed the spoon in my sugar storage jar from a teaspoon to a smaller spoon, which is about 1/2 the size of a tsp. I don't have a measurement scale to know the exact quantity but you can see the difference in the picture.

Now I have been adding 2 smaller spoons of sugar (flattened, not heaped) for my tea, which is roughly about 1 tsp. I could have easily done the same experiment with the tsp, rather than a smaller spoon. But I deliberately played a small mind trick telling myself that I'm indeed adding 2 spoons of sugar :-)

I will continue to reduce the intake further, maybe I could try a much smaller spoon! Hope you get the drift. It's difficult to cut down sugar completely overnight. Take your time, consciously plan and reduce the quantity and soon you'll be able to eliminate it completely. Replacing white sugar with brown sugar/palm sugar/jaggery has its benefits, with the additional minerals we get. But do keep in mind, they all have the same calories.

And if you have the habit of drinking more cups of coffee/tea in a day, your sugar intake also increases accordingly. So try to keep it to max 2 cups a day. You can include buttermilk, barley water, lemon juice with a pinch of rock salt etc.

More than the sugar that you consume through tea/coffee, there is loads of sugar that enters your body in the form of cookies, biscuits, cakes, tetra-pack juices and other processed foods. Be aware of what you add to your shopping cart every time you go shopping (or order online) and ruthlessly eliminate the unwanted ones.