I was watching Dr. Oz the other day and his guest was a woman with a major sugar addiction. Through the foods she consumed, she was ingesting about 84 tablespoons of sugar daily. Can you believe it? With holidays on the horizon, I want to be sure to control my own sugar intake.

How about you? What are your eating habits when it comes to sugar? Do you read labels? Do you realize how much sugar is actually in items that we don’t consider “sweet”? Take pasta sauce for example; one serving can have 11 grams of sugar or more. Even the breads we eat often contain sugar. I just checked a bag of sandwich rolls and they contain 7 grams each.

So, while we may feel that a few cookies or ice cream is not that bad, we need to consider our sugar intake for the entire day before we splurge on dessert. Many of us tend to have a sweet tooth in the late afternoon or after dinner. Try to track the amount of sugar that your are eating the rest of the day so that a small treat is not putting you over the edge.

While there is no RDA (recommended daily allowance) for sugar, the Department of Agriculture does recommend that sugar intake not exceed 8% of our daily diet. For an average woman, that is approximately 40 grams. It can be cumbersome to spend your entire day reading labels; and if you get food on the run, there is often no label for reference. Keep the following tips in mind to help reduce your overall sugar intake:

Skip the soda!
This is a sugar bomb! Drink water with a little lemon or lime for flavor.

Eat healthy foods first.
Load up on the healthy stuff containing fiber and complex carbohydrates. Nuts and proteins are a great option. You’ll feel full and satisfied and have fewer cravings.

Try a low-sugar sweet like dark chocolate.
A good dark chocolate does not have sugar as the first ingredient. It also contains healthy antioxidants. Remember that a small piece goes a long way. Savor each bite.

Another thing to consider is that eating too much sugar may actually affect your immunity. A study in the American Journal for Clinical Nutrition found that eating 100 grams of sugar (about 3 cans of soda) can decrease the ability of your white blood cells to kill bacteria for up to 5 hours afterwards.

I hope this article has helped you to consider your daily sugar intake. Take some steps to modify your diet. Let us know what other ideas you have to help reduce sugar in your diet and combat cravings.

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