Inside My Pantry: Ingredients

Now that we've covered the fact that you will have to change your eating if you want to see results in your weight loss, we can move on to how you can change your pantry.  It may sound scary and overwhelming, but I promise you.  It doesn't have to be!

I think the one thing that we can all agree on is the fact that sugar doesn't have a place in our diet.  Or at least, we don't feel good when we consume tons of sugar.  I hear so many people say they need to eat "low carb," usually meaning no sweets, cakes, cookies, etc.  While I may not fully agree with the statement that they need to eat "low carb," I do agree that we need to limit the amount of processed sugar we consume.  We have to have carbohydrates to survive.  But we need to familiarize ourselves with healthy carbs.

So how do we figure out what has sugar in it and what doesn't?  How do we decide what to keep in the pantry and what to throw out?

We have to learn to read labels.  We have to know what we're looking for!  We have to be informed so that we can make the best decisions for our family.  So what are we looking for?  Since sugar is a huge problem these days, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with the names of sugar. Unfortunately, sugar has over 50 names.

While that probably seems like a daunting task--learning all of those names--I promise that it will get easier!  You also will learn what products and brands that you can trust along the way.  When I first started, it took forever to go through all the products that I was buying at the store, but with practice and knowledge, I feel confident at what I'm buying and feeding to my family.  Don't get discouraged. 

Here are a couple of items that I have in my pantry currently.  Normally, we are taught to look at the little graph that has the Nutrition Facts on it.  If you are counting your macros, I'm sure that it would be helpful.  But for me personally, I think it's more important to count the ingredients in the food.

If we are looking for only sugar in these hamburger buns, you will want to look for the added sugar in the ingredients list.  High Fructose Corn Syrup is listed here in the list.  So these hamburger buns have added sugar in them. There's a whole host of other things listed here that I can't even pronounce.

There are many foods you think may not have sugar in them but really do.  You have to be careful if you are wanting to eliminate added sugar.  Make sure you start recognizing the names of sugar and deciding if those things are really worth feeding your family.  You can always find a better alternative.