Cut Back on Sugar with a Kaizen Plan!
Whether your goal is losing weight or simply making healthier choices, if you’re interested in reducing the sugar in your diet, the Kaizen approach can help you. In Japanese, Kaizen simply means “change for better” or “improvement.” Using the same small steps used in countless professions as a way to achieve a goal or desired outcome in their field, you can change your diet for the better and reduce your sugar intake!
Step One: Identify Your Goal
What is your goal? Here are just a few reasons people reduce their sugar intake:
- Weight loss
- Diabetes control
- Overall health
- Lower risk of heart disease
There are many reasons to reduce your sugar intake, and all of them are great goals to have for the health and vitality of your body. Keeping your goal in mind will help you to get back up when you stumble and stay on course when you’re tempted to falter.
Step Two: Track Your Goal
If you want to reduce your sugar intake, wouldn’t it make sense to know what your sugar intake is normally? After you have identified your goal, continue to eat what you usually would, but write it all down! Keep a food journal to meticulously track everything you eat for a period of time. This is an important step, as it not only gives you a baseline for your sugar intake, but it also makes you hyper-aware of what goes into your body. According to experts, tracking your food will immediately help you start to make better choices.
Step Three: Compare Current Habits to Goal
Once you have an overall picture of your diet through your food journal, look at the goal you’ve written out for yourself. Compare it to the foods listed in your food journal. How much work do you need to do to make it to your goal? A little or a lot? Do you have more work to do at breakfast or lunch? Are your dinners already healthy?
You should also know how much sugar is recommended for you a day. The American Heart Association recommends that women eat no more than 25 grams of sugar per day, and men should consume less than 37.5 grams of sugar each day.
Step Four: Evaluate Your Goal
What can you change specifically about your diet that will further you on your road to less sugar intake? Can you change out a food for another one that is similar but contains less sugar? If you don’t want to give up your nightly dessert, find a way to make a healthy one that will take care of your sweet tooth, but not increase your sugar intake. For example, did you know that by blending a frozen banana and cocoa powder, you get a creamy ice cream dessert?
Step Five: Start Small
Take your first small step. For example, make your breakfast healthier. Or, if your breakfast already consists of healthy food, start with lunch. Regardless, just start with one meal. Reduce the sugar intake in one meal and make that into a habit. Once that habit is formed, move on to another meal. Or move on to dessert. Wherever you start, the important thing is that you start! The entire philosophy of the Kaizen Plan is to take small steps incrementally that build to big changes over time.
Reducing your sugar intake is an incredibly healthy step to take. If you feed your body the right kind of fuel, you will feel and live better. Come see us at South Orange Chiropractic Center to see what other healthy goals we can help you achieve!
