Whether you want to lose weight, improve your levels of energy throughout the day or better manage your blood sugar levels with diabetes or reactive hypoglycemia, eliminating sugar and flour from your diet is a simple strategy to achieve your goal. Flour and sugar are found in many foods that are often highly refined and devoid of important nutrients, such as white bread, bagels, pizza dough, cookies, muffins, croissants, soft drinks, fruit punches, pancakes, jams, syrups and candies. In addition, their refined carbohydrates are quickly broken down into glucose, or sugar, and can induce large blood sugar fluctuations, which affect your energy levels, weight and health.
Breakfast
For breakfast, stay away from breakfast cereals, breads, bagels, muffins, croissants, pancakes and other traditional breakfast foods that are high in sugar or flour. Instead, prepare yourself a bowl of steel-cut oats with plain yogurt, unsweetened applesauce, diced apple, walnuts and cinnamon. You could also have a bowl of granola mixed with milk or plain yogurt, diced pears and raspberries or a smoothie made with milk, plain yogurt, half a banana, strawberries and peanut butter.
Lunch
A lentil and tomato soup served with 1 to 2 oz. of cheese makes a hearty lunch. Complete with a serving of plain yogurt mixed with ground flaxseeds and blueberries. Another sugar-free and flour-free lunch option could be a salad. Start with leafy greens, tomatoes and cucumber, top it with a chicken breast, sliced beef or canned tuna, and drizzle your salad with a vinaigrette made with equal parts of olive oil and vinegar. You can also have a lettuce wrap with either chicken or tuna with grated cheese, mayonnaise, guacamole or salsa for a convenient lunch to have on the go.
Dinner
Avoid sugar and flour by basing your dinner on non-starchy vegetables, a serving of protein and some healthy fats. For example, you could serve a fillet of salmon with green beans and a pat of butter or sliced pork loin stir-fried in olive oil with ginger, onions, red bell peppers and broccoli and drizzled with sesame oil, tamari sauce and sesame seeds.
Dessert
Many desserts are rich in either sugar, flour or both, but you can treat yourself with sugar-free and flour-free options. For example, you can have a couple of squares of 70 percent cocoa chocolate. Go for 85 percent cocoa if you can to keep your sugar intake even lower. You can also mix a rich Mediterranean-style or Greek-style plain yogurt with berries, some granola or nuts to make an elegant parfait.
Snacks
Forget about granola bars, pretzels, rice cakes, chocolate bars, candies, cakes or muffins and opt for a handful of nuts instead. You can also have apples or grapes with cheese, a banana with peanut butter, raw vegetables dipped in hummus or guacamole, or cottage cheese mixed with berries and almond butter.
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