It is a common perception that the foods that are rich in fats may taste better those do not. But you know what, the taste is more of a matter of choice and habit.
You must have seen people who like to eat sweets every time they would get a chance, whereas there are others who simply hate sweet stuffs. The reason is the latter set of people convince themselves that sugar is not good for health and therefore start avoiding sugar in all forms they can. In just a few weeks, the craving for foods that contain sugar, subsides and these people start seeing the benefits of sugar free diets. When one eats sugar all the time, the body forms a habit and there is a craving to eat something sweet even when one might really be full. Similarly, when you have been eating sugar free food for a couple of months, you start liking that food even though it might have taken a bit of an effort on your part initially to convince you to get on with the sugar free food!
How I gave up sugar and salt!
We, in our family, used to eat very spicy food. No wonder, I used to suffer from acidity and acid reflux disease. There was a time, I had to be operated upon for peptic ulcers but I could not keep away from the spicy food.
Apart from the suffering from acid reflux, we knew my family has had a history of hypertension as well as diabetes. Therefore it was imperative that I stop eating sugar and salt while I am young and do not have either of those diseases so that I can keep off the hereditary issues permanently away or at least for as much time as possible.
When you are used to a kind of food for your whole life, it is not easy to change those eating habits quickly. Frankly, it needs a lot of determination on your part. The best solution is to reduce the intake of salt and sugar gradually. You can follow the same process for cutting down on fat too. This is what my wife did to me! Without telling me, she quietly started using less and less salt in the food she cooked. Because the change in the salt consumption was so small, I hardly noticed it. A couple of days ago, I opened up a bag of potato chips and found them to be too salty. When I asked my wife if something was wrong with the bag of chips as it was like too salty for me, she revealed what she had done to change my habit! She said the potato chips contain the same amount of salt they used to, but I am not used to eating salt anymore! My salt intake had reduced drastically and since I never noticed, I unknowingly start liking the food I eat daily now. It also now became clear why my wife was insisting that she would love to cook food for me (because I am not a kitchen person) and we would have to cut down on eating out.
The onus of reducing the sugar was entirely on me. The coffee latte with extra sugar that I had during the day in office was that only I could control and I decided to. From drinking sweetened coffee I went to sugar free coffee in one day. Of course, the first few days was like punishing myself, as I was not used to the black coffee with no sugar. This made me avoid coffee too sometimes, as it did not taste good to me anymore. But I had made the determination that if I have coffee ever, it would have to be sugar free. Boy! I have stood up to my resolution up to now.
I have reduced the intake of coffee – which I think has been good too. Too much of caffeine is not good for the body. May be caffeine is not good at all. But now, I have developed the taste for the sugar free coffee!
Now, my acid reflux is not that severe. I realized I do not take the acid reducing pills everyday. Eating less sugar and salt has given me confidence that we are doing something to keep us healthy by eating healthy!
Using Replacements
If you are giving up on sugar, do not try to replace sugar with artificial sweeteners. The artificial sweeteners are chemicals and not really good for health. If you replace with sweeteners, you are actually then not giving up on the habit of eating sugar. Similarly, if you are giving up on fats, do not try to replace butter with margarine or something else.
