BUT back then, simple pen + paper. I wrote it down.
AND when I did my daily menu shocked me.
Ready..? Breakfast- Breakfast cereal
- Toast, 2x rounds covered in sugary marmalade
- Glass of sugary orange juice and a cup of tea, ‘half’ a sugar.
All bran sprinkled on the sugary cereal is
‘a good source of fibre’ right? Brown bread for toast is
‘better than white’ I thought.
‘Orange juice is the healthy choice’ and
‘Only half a sugar in my cup of tea: that’s alright, isn’t it?’ Hmm, not really. I estimated that:
- My big bowl of cereal contained 30g of sugar
- There were 8g of sugar in the toast and marmalade and
- 20g of sugar in that big glass of orange juice.
Breakfast total =
58 g of sugar. Oh, and don’t forget the 2g of sugar in that cup of tea.
There’s 4 g of sugar in that teaspoon. Estimated sugar total = 60g That can be difficult to picture, so let's use that..
That is
15 teaspoons of sugar for breakfast.
Wow 😦
Mid-morning SnackBy mid-morning I was generally starving, so…
- Cereal bar, 10g of sugar
- Apple, 19g or Banana, 14 g
- 3 cups of tea, half a sugar each, 6 g.
Estimated sugar total = 30g 7 teaspoons LunchHam +cheese sandwich,
‘brown bread, of course’, 10g
Diet coke 0g
‘hmm, the healthy choice’Double decker chocolate bar, 29g
Cup of tea 2g
Estimated sugar total = 41g10 teaspoons Well, at least, from a sugar point of view I was drinking diet coke. Hmm..
Regular coke
~35 g of sugar or 8 teaspoons in every 330ml can.
Or 12 teaspoons of sugar in a 500 ml bottle.
DinnerA variable feast, but not light on
carbohydrate.
Carbohydrate breaks down to
glucose or sugar.
That's absorbed from the gut into the
bloodstream.
And all adds quickly to that total.
But I wasn’t finished...
Evening SnackFrom as far back as I can remember..
I'd eaten a big bowl of cereal (or two) before bed.
I was, and still am, a creature of habit.
So that big bowl of cereal was
every night. Crumbs 😯
Another 30 g of sugarAn
8-teaspoon sugar hit
Right before bedtime, WHAT was I thinking..Well, in truth, I just wasn't thinking.
Estimated daily sugar total = 160 gWithout even thinking about dinner.
40+ teaspoons of sugar every day.
(Not counting dinner)
I thought that I was eating a diet low in fat and high in..
- Fibre,
- Wholegrains,
- Vitamins & Minerals.
Looking back, I might well have been.
BUT..My daily diet was far from healthy.
My daily diet was terrible. BUT also, quite interesting at the same time..!
Writing it down alarmed me.
And, importantly, began an honest conversation with myself.
What did I need to do to change?
