How to Get off Sugar

By Diana Herrington

It takes about 7 days to get the addiction out of your system. This does not mean the cravings will disappear but the intense addiction needs that amount of time.  Wean yourself off sugar or go cold-turkey.  The choice is yours — you pick the way that works for you as we are all different.

Tips on How Wean Yourself Slowly:

1. Eat fresh and dried fruit instead of sugary sweets – Although they are filled with natural sugar, they are a healthier choice as fruit is filled with vitamins, minerals and fiber.  It is okay at first to eat a bigger quantity of them while weaning.

2. Dessert Rules – Week 1: Maximum once a day. Week 2: twice a week. Week 3: once a week.  Make it your rule to have raw fruit at least half the time.

3. Try Stevia – A natural sugar alternative that actually nourishes the pancreas and has no calories. Stevia is an herbal extract from the Stevia Rebaudiana leaf that has been shown to regulate blood sugar and blood pressure.

4. Don’t skip meals – When you miss regular meals; you create a starving situation in your body and you will eat anything to bring your blood sugar level back to normal and you know what that means.

5. Instead of soda pop, lemonade & iced tea – Make lemonade with stevia and herb tea with stevia.  If you need that carbonated zing, add sparkling mineral water. When at a party or at the bar, drink soda water with lime or lemon.

6. No sweets in your cupboards or fridge – It is too tempting to have them available.

7. When craving strikes, go for a walk – Athletes’ cravings for sweet foods declines after exercise; they prefer salty foods.

How to Get Off Sugar Quickly

I am so passionate about getting off sugar that I offer Healthy Web BootCamps where for two days you get focused support in eating perfectly balanced healthy meals.  Sometimes just knowing what to do is not enough.  A person has to feel  confident enough to do it easily.

The next live BootCamp in a Healthy Weight Loss BootCamp in which you can balance out your body for the new year. This will be focused on alkalizing your body permanently and also applying food combining principles.  There will not a a single bit of sugar in any of the healthy recipes.

Tip: Read labels for hidden sugars & sugar aliases

Hidden sugars: tomato sauce, baked beans, packaged foods, chewing gum, mints, and lunch meats.
Sugar aliases: corn syrup, dextrin, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, high-fructose corn syrup, galactose, glucose, honey, hydrogenated starch, invert sugar maltose, lactose, mannitol, maple syrup, molasses, polyols, sorghum, sucrose, sorbitol, and xylitol.

Natural Alternatives to Sugar:

This article is a second in a three-part series about sugar. The third will deal with all the wonderful natural sweeteners, their different qualities, benefits, and when to use them.

Sugar-Free Recipes

To also assist you in this area, I offer recipes that I have worked with, sometimes for years. Most of them are 100 percent sugar-free, gluten-free and vegan.

Gingerbread Cake :  This is to DIE FOR and unlike many deserts is very balancing to your health.
Brown Rice Pudding :  A tasty familiar treat.
Apple Cake :  I tried FIVE TIMES to get this just right.

Enjoy.

Source : Care2

Step-by-Step Instructions for One-Ingredient Ice Cream

Creamy ice cream from just one ingredient.

Pick a couple of ripe bananas. They should be sweet and soft but not too mushy.

Peel the bananas.

Cut them into coins.

Freeze the banana pieces for at least an hour or two.

Frozen hard!

Put the pieces into a food processor or blender.

Blend on high. Initially they will look crumbly and piecemeal.

The mixture will probably get stuck a lot. Keep scraping down the bowl.

Suddenly, as you keep blending, you will see a change.

The bananas turn creamy!

Now is the time to add a scoop of peanut butter or anything else you care to mix in.

The ice cream will be the texture of soft-serve, but if you freeze again in an airtight container,
it will get harder and more like regular ice cream.

Remember this amazingly creamy ice cream with just one ingredient? Well, in our eagerness to tell you all about it, we didn't give you very detailed instructions. Here, for those of you asked, are step-by-step instructions for making super-creamy, super-easy ice cream from just one thing.

That mystery ingredient, of course, is banana! The smidgen of fat in bananas makes a magic trick when they are frozen and blended up. They turn creamy instead of crumbly, with a smooth texture any home ice cream chef would love to have in their frozen treats.

How to make 1-ingredient ice cream...
Here's a step-by-step slideshow of how to do it. The major tips can be summed up as:

• Peel your bananas first.
• Cut them into small pieces.
• Freeze for just 1-2 hours on a plate.
• Blend, blend, blend - scraping down the bowl when they stick.
• Enjoy the magic moment when they turn into ice cream!

Now try more flavors...

>> Magic One-Ingredient Ice Cream 5 Ways: Peanut Butter, Nutella, and More

How To Make Creamy Ice Cream with Just One Ingredient!

Yes, that's right; you heard us. Creamy, soft-serve style ice cream with just one ingredient — and no ice cream maker needed! What is this one magic ingredient that can be whipped into perfectly rich and silky ice cream, with no additional dairy, sweeteners, or ingredients needed whatsoever?

If you guessed BANANA, congratulations! You're right!

What? You didn't know that bananas can make some of the best ice cream? Well, I didn't either until last week, when my sister called me up and mentioned that she's been freezing bananas and then pureeing them into ice cream.

"That's the sort of thing you discover," she sighed, "when all your friends are vegan, gluten-free, dairy-allergic, and you're on a sugar-free diet." I'd deal with a list of dietary restrictions twice as long, though, if it meant discovering more treats like this one.

It turns out that frozen bananas are good for more than just dipping in chocolate. If you freeze a banana until solid, then whiz it up in a blender or food processor, it gets creamy and a little gooey, just like good custard ice cream. I was surprised at this bit of kitchen wizardry; I assumed that a blended banana would be flaky or icy. But no — it makes creamy, rich ice cream.

Some bananas, depending on their ripeness, have a bit of that green aftertaste. My sister has been experimenting with adding in another ingredient or two, like a tablespoon of peanut butter and another of honey. Delicious!

Have you ever tried frozen-banana ice cream? Try it! It's an easy way to stay cool and use up over-ripe bananas at the same time.

Want more detailed instructions and step-by-step photos?

 

Step-by-Step Instructions for One-Ingredient Ice Cream

4 Ways to Replace Eggs in Your Diet

1. Tofu

2. Bananas, Applesauce, Pumpkin

As Tania Asnes tells us, these fruity substitutes are best for use in denser baked goods like loaves to create egg-and-oil-free treats. "Make sure to use a light hand when choosing applesauce and banana, since in large amounts they can make a recipe mushy, says Asnes. "Pumpkin, on the other hand, can create a very dense loaf."

3. Flax Seeds

Here's the deal, as explained by Post Punk Kitchen:

How to use it: 1 Tablespoon flax seeds plus 3 Tablespoons water replaces one egg. Finely grind 1 tablespoon whole flaxseeds in a blender or coffee grinder, or use 2 1/2 tablespoons pre-ground flaxseeds. Transfer to a bowl and beat in 3 tablespoons of water using a whisk or fork. It will become very gooey and gelatinous, much like an egg white. In some recipes, you can leave the ground flax in the blender and add the other wet ingredients to it, thus saving you the extra step of the bowl.

When it works best: Flax seeds have a distinct earthy granola taste. It tastes best and works very well in things like pancakes, and whole grain items, such as bran muffins and corn muffins. It is perfect for oatmeal cookies, and the texture works for cookies in general, although the taste may be too pronounced for some. Chocolate cake-y recipes have mixed results, I would recommend only using one portion flax-egg in those, because the taste can be overpowering.

Tips: Always store ground flaxseeds in the freezer because they are highly perishable. This mixture is not only an excellent replacement for eggs, it also contributes vital omega-3 fatty acids.

4. Egg "Replacer"

The most commonly used brand is Ener-G, which "mimics what eggs do in recipes, Greatly simplifies baking for people who cannot use eggs. It replaces egg whites as well as egg yolks in baking."

Read More : 4 Reasons to Avoid Eating Eggs

Whole-Wheat Microwave Pancakes

Last year my university housed me in one of the on-campus apartments, which meant that I had a kitchen. I went through a phase where I craved pancakes and would eat them every day for breakfast, experimenting with various recipes until I found the perfect one. I was pretty devastated when I was housed in a regular dormitory, partly because lacking a kitchen would make vegan life difficult in general but also partly because I knew that my love of pancakes would have to wait for the few times when someone would be willing to make the three-hour drive to take me back home.

That is, until this morning.

I've been craving pancakes for a while, but this morning the craving was especially intense. The past few weeks have taught me how to ghetto-rig and cook just about everything with only a toaster, a microwave, and a crock pot, even burfi (a type of Indian fudge) and a chocolate-mocha pie. Pancakes, I reasoned, rose and cooked because of the heat of a skillet, not necessarily because of the skillet itself. Why should a microwave not be able to create that heat?

The following recipe is the product of many years of experimentation. These pancakes are so light and fluffy that they practically melt in your mouth, but they're still firm and they give a gentle spring when you touch their surface. I encourage you to experiment with various flavors of ingredients, as this is just a simple base recipe. I've been known to add cinnamon, cardamom, dry pudding mix, oatmeal packets, and even flavored coffee syrups into my pancake mixes. If you increase the amount of flour and create an especially thick batter, these pancakes actually come out quite like cookies. You can also substitute cake mix or Bisquick for the whole-wheat flour (I'll get in touch with you soon about making a cake in the microwave); I just happen to prefer the taste of whole-wheat. Don't be afraid to add savory ingredients and turn this into a dinner dish.

May all of my fellow college vegans enjoy!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup whole-wheat or white whole-wheat flour
• 1 TBSP raw sugar
• 1 TBSP baking powder
• 1/2 cup vanilla soy milk
• 1/2 TBSP olive oil
• coconut oil for greasing

Method

1. Combine the dry ingredients.
2. Mix the wet ingredients in with the dry until the batter is smooth. It should have a thick, whipped consistency.
3. Grease a plate with coconut oil (you know how much I love coconuts).
4. I put about four forkfuls of batter onto a dessert plate, but whatever plate you choose, cover it with an even layer about half a centimeter in thickness. These pancakes will rise, but they will not spread like a traditional pancake on a skillet. For this reason, I recommend a ceramic plate that has an indentation in the center; you will form perfectly circular pancakes.
5. Cook in the microwave until the pancakes have fully risen and become firm. In my microwave, this took about two minutes per pancake. You will see the batter rise first on the edges until it finally pops up in the middle. A few seconds later, your pancakes will be done. These pancakes will not brown like they would on a skillet; they are done when you can touch them in the center and the batter does not stick to your fingers. The pancakes are firm enough that you can peel them right out of the plate.
6. Serve hot drizzled with maple syrup, Silk coffee creamer, Torani coffee syrups, or chocolate sauce. Serves one.

Zindagi
The Albino Desi strikes again!