Small Steps Lead to Big Changes: Eliminating Sugar

One of the first questions Mary asked me when we first spoke was if I used sugar in my coffee. Um, yeah, of course, but I knew where she was going even before she said it. Sugar = bad.

I knew that was going to be the hardest change I would have to make because up until this moment, my coffee with sugar was non-negotiable. Laith tried to cut out sugar in his coffee many times, and I secretly thought to myself, "Yeah, good luck with that, you'll be back to using sugar.” I was right, but intellectually I knew he was right, and good on him for trying different sweeteners, at least he was open to it.

Mary gave me some suggestions to try cinnamon or non-insulin-spiking sweeteners, like Monk Fruit. I wasn't crazy about either option, but to my surprise, I liked cinnamon, and I had never heard of Monk Fruit.

We tried a couple of variations of hot coffee and cold brew coffee to find what tasted good and settled on cold brew, black, no sugar. We eventually added organic half-and-half or heavy cream for our weekday coffee, and on weekends, we splurge with a bit of erythritol. Occasionally, we add keto caramel or homemade keto marshmallows for when we want a fancy coffee.

Small steps lead to big changes. Our first step was to eliminate added sugar in our coffee. Why was it important to do this? We didn't eat breakfast, so we were spiking our insulin first thing in the morning and not taking advantage of additional intermittent fasting hours.

Do a Google search on "sugar is bad" and you'll get about 3.8 million results providing information on why it's bad for humans. It is the number one cause of inflammation in the body in addition to a host of other preventable chronic diseases.

"The effects of added sugar intake — higher blood pressure, inflammation, weight gain, diabetes, and fatty liver disease — are all linked to an increased risk for heart attack and stroke," says Dr. Hu. Source Harvard Medical School

Laith and I both quit cold turkey, it wasn't difficult for our morning coffee. We still use a little bit of sugar for certain things like adding to yeast for bread making, however, 99% of regular sugar has been eliminated from our diet. We found that sugar substitutes like erythritol and allulose allow us to create delicious sugar-free treats that satisfy the proverbial sweet tooth, especially my husband's!