One Teaspoon of Success Part 9 – Tool used to measure sugar intake

As I wrestled with my new found old habits, I went grocery shopping to see if I could muster passing through the sweet aisle and not reach for anything that my mouth requested.   At the grocery store, I negotiated with myself, telling myself that if I selected a sugar treat, I needed to be involved in making the sweet myself.  With one exception:  I can have store bought ice cream.  After aiming to reach an agreement, I took a break from my attempt to break away from my old habits and decided to be cooled down by a bowl of Hadgeen Daaz Rocky Road.

A few days later, I took a teaspoon and measured the actual amount of sugar I was ingested within 24 hour time frame: a white chocolate mocha and lemon pound cake for breakfast, two big chewy semisweet chocolate cookies during lunch, and a bowl of ice cream right after dinner.  The SMALL Teaspoons of sugar equated to guess what amount?

Those teaspoons equated to nearly a cup of sugar.    Wow, would I drink a cup of sugar?  Yes, I would, that’s what I had been doing.  OK, now that I really see that I had been consuming 1 cup of sugar, would I still do it?  Well, I haven’t stopped. Why haven’t I stopped? Taste, lack of knowledge, over bombardment of accessible products within reach. And one more, processed foods tend to be cheaper than the wholesome ones.   What does this mean to me?  Does that mean health and wellness comes second?  If I must be honest, that’s the way I have been living with my sugar habits.

No, not true, I always believed in “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  Why am I having a hard time with this?  Is my taste that important that I just can’t even try to make even small modifications?  My small addictions to sugar are now forcing me to questioning all my life taste habits. These small addictions are leaving holes in my teeth.  How hard do I really have to work off that cookie?  A pound just shows up on me now days. How many calories are in sugar?   The base measure used to determine calories is this formula: for 1 teaspoon of sugar, there are 16 calories, but if it is 2 teaspoons or more, you may want to refer here:  http://www.foodpyramid.com/how-many-calories-in-a-teaspoon-of-sugar/  For a more precise estimate amount of your calories, as this website accounts for the type of teaspoon used and whether the amount used is a heaping teaspoon or not.

To keep the math simple, the calculations for my sugar intake will be based on the following: 1 teaspoon equals 4 grams of sugar and 1 teaspoon equals 16 calories.  Going back to my example, if I were to have a glass of juice, which contains 36 grams of sugar, I would have to work off 144 calories.  There are 9 teaspoons of sugar in 36 grams of sugar, 9 x 16 = 144).  This means, I would have to walk 2.5 miles per hour on a firm surface for 1 hour to burn 136 calories or walk 3.0 miles per hour at a moderate pace to burn 156 calories. This means I would have to swim leisurely for 34 minutes to burn 146 calories.   (I used exercise calorie converters to get me these numbers based on a few questions that they ask you: gender, what activity, and your weight).