5 Easy Tips to Cut Unnecessary Sugar from Your Diet

Published on June 23, 2015January 24, 2017 by juliavalley7 Comments

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about sugar. Growing up as a dessert lover, anything with a real kick of sweetness was good by me. I would stir a heaping 4 spoonfuls of sugar in to my tea after school, sneak sugar cubes out of the box from fancy parties, and lick the cake batter right out of the bowl. One of these things still stands true.

Over time, I obviously have cut down on my sugar intake, but I realized recently that I was still really going overboard without even trying! With the help of the My Fitness Pal app, I started tracking my food intake just on the weekdays to try to help myself from grabbing that third cookie or mindlessly eating chips in front of the TV after work. It’s been incredibly helpful with that, as well as helping me see the power of exercise (so many more snacks allowed on workout days!). What I didn’t anticipate was the insight it would bring to my intake on things like protein, vitamins, and mostly, sugar.

You all know I love sweets, and I’m totally fine with committing myself to a sweet indulgence, but I was hitting my sugar intake for the day by lunch time without even having one dessert! AHHHH! How was this even possible? Little did I realize, I’d been eating unnecessary sugar in so many of my foods. Though some of it was natural sugar from fruits and dairy, I realized how much I could cut down with a few simple changes in my diet. Check out my tips below to see where you can save sweetness for dessert and not keep it hidden where you don’t enjoy it:

5 Easy Tips to Cut Unnecessary Sugar from Your Diet

1. Breakfast cereals are FULL of sugar! Go to your pantry and check out the labels. If you don’t strictly eat plain Cheerio’s, you’re going to find anywhere from 8-15 grams of sugar per serving. This includes “healthy” cereals like Special K (which I eat all the time), yikes! Also, if you throw in 2/3 cup of 1% milk you get another 9 grams of sugar. This was insane to me.

In order to increase protein intake and cut the sugar, I switched my breakfast to 2 soft boiled eggs and a half a cup of strawberries. I can make the hard boiled eggs the night before and eat them quickly in the morning. They have less than 1 gram of sugar a piece and 6 grams of protein! The strawberries have only 4 grams of sugar, even though they taste so sweet.

3/4 cup of Special K Vanilla Almond Cereal with 2/3 cup 1% Milk vs. 2 Large Eggs

2. Fruity yogurts are sneakily sweet. I love grabbing Greek yogurt cups at the start of the week because of its great protein, calcium, and good bacteria properties. What I don’t love is that it costs me 17 grams of sugar to eat them.

By switching to a plain Greek yogurt and adding your own fruit, you can cut up to 10 grams of sugar and still get all the same benefits. What I do now is buy a large container of Chobani plain Greek yogurt (I’ve found it to be the lowest in sugar) and portion it out into Tupperware. Then I add fresh cut berries to the top and throw them in the fridge. Letting the fruit sit over the week sweetens up the yogurt and tastes just like the store bought fruity cups.

Dannon Oiko's Fruit on the Bottom Peach Non-Fat Greek Yogurt and Chobani Plain Non-Fat Greek Yogurt with Fresh Cut Strawberries — Dannon Oiko’s Fruit on the Bottom Peach Non-Fat Greek Yogurt vs. Chobani Plain Non-Fat Greek Yogurt with Fresh Cut Strawberries

3. Some fruits are sweeter than others. Obviously fruit is still good for you, but you can pick some that are a little easier on the sweet tooth than others. Raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries are the least sweet fruits you can buy, while cherries, bananas, and mangoes will put you into a sugar coma. Just swapping fruit choices will help you out, sometimes by up to 10 grams of sugar a serving!

One Banana and 1/2 cup Strawberries — One Banana vs. 1/2 cup Strawberries

4. You can have your cake and save sugar too! Ok, cake is a bad example, but you can still feel indulgent while not picking the sweetest desserts. Having dark chocolate versus milk chocolate will cut the sugar in half. A mixed berry cobbler with reduced sugar will also come in lower than lemon squares… but honestly I’m OK with committing to a sweet dessert. It’s dessert after all!

5. Other places sugar is hiding include fruit juices, pasta sauces, and granola bars – all things we expect to be full of nutrients and health benefits are also full of sugar. Try to avoid these if possible.

Don’t feel the need to go overboard, but try a sugar saving trick here and there just to see how you feel. Reducing sugar intake can improve your skin, energy level, and overall health, so let’s work on it. Do you have any other good tricks to share?

Christmas Breakfast: Gourmet Egg Tart Recipe

Published on December 22, 2014October 26, 2016 by juliavalley2 Comments

Christmas morning is possibly the best morning of the entire year. My siblings and I have always lined up at the top of the stair (even as our horizontal growing has made it quite a tight squeeze), and then rushed down to the glorious site of the tree all lit up, hot chocolate on the stove, and presents galore! Though present opening takes a good 3 hours and chocolate and candy canes seem like enough breakfast to tide us over until dinner, a fabulous breakfast treat is never turned away. Continue reading “Christmas Breakfast: Gourmet Egg Tart Recipe” →

Baby Barnaby’s Green Eggs and Ham Recipe

Published on June 3, 2014June 7, 2016 by juliavalley1 Comment

So there’s this magical little brunch place that my friends and I love to go to. There’s very little space and always a line, but if you have a bit of patience a brunch in the sun is lovely at Baby Barnaby’s. The menu has various delicious options with breakfast burritos, pancakes, and the like. But I come here for the Green Eggs and Ham. The eggs are quite literally green and the ham is actually apple sausage (amazing). I crave the green eggs so often that I decided to make my own homemade recipe to save a few bucks and a wait in line! The true version includes artichoke hearts too but I don’t usually have those on hand so I ditched ’em. Just grab a small can and sauté with the spinach to include them if you fancy!

Ingredients:

(Makes 4 servings)

8 Eggs
1/2 cup Milk
2 handfuls of Spinach
2 cloves of Garlic minced
1 Tbs Olive Oil
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack Cheese
Salt and Pepper

1. Put the oil and garlic in a large frying pan and sauté until the garlic has browned.

2. Add the spinach (and artichokes if you’d like) to the pan and cook until the spinach has all wilted.

3. Whisk up your eggs, milk, and a dash of salt and pepper in a large bowl to add fluffiness to the eggs. Pour egg mixture over the spinach and cook on medium low. Scramble the eggs while they cook to mix up all of the eggs and veggies.

4. When the eggs have almost fully cooked, add the cheese and mix around until it has fully melted.

Serve hot with some bacon and toast, or get really fancy and find some apple sausage at the grocery store to cook! You could open your own little B+B at this point.