I just mean a good drink to help go low(er) sugar?

kombucha (low sugar)

coconut milk (no added sugar/low sugar)

  • forty2@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    9 months ago

    Honestly, the best way to lower your intake of sugar isn’t to replace it with a different sweetener. In most cases, you’ll find its not an adequate ‘replacement’ because psychologically, looking for a direct analog (or super close in taste at the minimum).

    It’s the habit that needs to change, not the way you scratch the itch. I’m not a fan of absolutes, so I don’t think an intention of “no more refined sugar. Period.” is practical or reasonable. But cutting down how much you intake by reducing the frequency, that’ll do wonders for you.

    This method is what kick started my journey down this same path. You can still have sugar (yay!), but you most likely won’t want to very often after not too long (wtf?).

    It is so mind bottlingly crazy how much sugar is in literally everything from breads to sauces. Once I cut down how much sugar I was taking in (by cutting down how often I had a sweet drink of any kind, one drink at a time), I could taste the sweetness in food at restaurants, savory stuff from the bakery…I couldn’t escape it.

    Now, I’ll have a couple of sweet drinks in a day. I control how much sugar I put in by not buying sweet drinks and instead making stuff at home. Coffee, flavored water, etc.

    Long story short…

    There is NO great methadone for refined sugar. If you want to reduce how much you’re ingesting, reduce the frequency. Be kind to yourself by setting reasonable, bite-sized goals so that the achievement encourages you to continue on and make more progress.

    Anything in moderation; nothing in excess

    • JadenSmith@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      9 months ago

      I can definitely resonate with this.

      I’m ‘old school British’ with my drinks, in the sense that I have far too much tea in a day. I’ve gradually reduced the amount of sugar, and now I’m down to one sometimes less than one teaspoon per mug (larger than a traditional cup though more common I suppose). I have most certainly noticed the same effect, as it has reduced my sugar dependency overall; I can taste sweetness in things much better now, and this only took a little while. Barely noticeable of an effort.

  • Calanthesrose@lemmy.world
    11·
    9 months ago

    If you want something to replace soda and don’t want artificial sweeteners, flavored carbonated water can scratch that itch. There’s some that are low sugar and some that are no sugar. They have some really interesting flavors, too. La Croix is not a great brand, in my opinion.

  • pezmaker @sh.itjust.works
    6·
    9 months ago

    I’m a big fan of unsweetened soda water. Ila Croix, klarbrunn, bubly.

    I make my own though with a soda stream. I have a shit ton of hops as a home brewer so I make flavoring that’s steeped hops (filtered out after steeping), combined 50/50 with juice blend I make 50/50 from lemon and lime. Not the fake from concentrate shit, but I don’t fresh squeeze it either. You can get the real stuff in most grocery stores these days.

    So 1/2 hops tea, 1/4 unsweetened lemon juice and 1/4 unsweetened lime juice.

    Then I put about an inch of that in a pint glass and fill it the rest of the way with soda water.

    Very low calorie and hits the spot. It has helped me entirely stop drinking beer at home.

  • weariedfae@lemmy.world
    5·
    9 months ago

    People may really give me shit for this but I switched to artificial sweeteners for my drinks. When I really feel like something with flavor I drink diet soda or crystal light. Back when I made the switch I lost 13 pounds immediately.

    Let the down votes and hate take me.

      • weariedfae@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 months ago

        Well, it depends on the drink really.

        I personally prefer aspartame, I just like the taste more and even liked it when I still drank sugared drinks. Sucralose is also perfectly fine but I hated it back when I drank sugared drinks. It took my tastebuds changing to adapt to it. Stevia is okay, not my favorite, but I won’t shy away from it.

        It’s just personal preference. I’m sure people here will rant and rave about how this is all poison, I’m killing myself, and that everyone should only ever drink water.

        I missed the boat on forming a water habit. I grew up on really bad well water that wasn’t potable sometimes and even when it was safe (maybe?) it smelled strongly of sulfur. So my mom just made Koolaid with it to hide the smell and taste and that’s what we drank. It’s hard to imagine sitting down for a meal and not having a drink with flavor, you know?

        Should I have formed better habits as an adult? Yes. Am I killing myself by drinking diet drinks? Possibly.

        But I’m not too bothered by it. It’s not like I don’t drink water now.

          • weariedfae@lemmy.world
            1·
            9 months ago

            Short Answer: Sometimes, not as my primary drink and it really depends on the water. I’m very sensitive to tastes in it.

            Long unnecessary additional information: I am very particular about water and I could not drink anything when I visited Florida because everything tasted like nasty swamp water. Even locally sourced bottled water. We had to hunt for out of state or purified water to hydrate us for our vacation.

            In fact, most spring water is blech. Including “premium” bottled spring water like Fiji and Evian and such.

            But I do enjoy water from high quality aquifers. The best well water I’ve had was from a deep bedrock aquifer.

            At home I have a pretty advanced water purifier system to get that high quality H2O.

            • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldOP
              1·
              9 months ago

              What about San Pellegrino? Its rich in minerals (I tend to equate mineral content with taste/nourishment) and goes well with lime or lemon

  • fireweed@lemmy.world
    3·
    9 months ago

    Stevia, either as an ingredient (stevia-sweetened drinks) or a mix-in (dried powder or tincture dropper, eg to add to tea or coffee)

  • ringwraithfish@startrek.website
    3·
    9 months ago

    Water. I like plain water when I’m absolutely thirsty, like after working outside, but always gravitated towards sodas all other times I should have been drinking water throughout the day. I had to try a few dozen different flavorings, but once I found one I liked I was able to kick the sugar habit with water.

  • maccentric@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    I like to mix soda water with good Apple cider 50/50 then add lemon and ginger to taste (about a teaspoon of each per pint works for me).

  • Wogi@lemmy.world
    2·
    9 months ago

    I go through a lot of no sugar propel. Probably more than I should? But it’s good.

  • Krudler@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    User Forty2 made a great comment and I agree with so much of that.

    Do not focus on stopping a behavior. Focus on slowly moving into a new behavior until the old one slowly disappears.

    You can use transitional steps. What I did, was to change from regular soda to diet, and I did it by slowly mixing diet into the sugar until the proportions had reversed. And eventually you got to the point where it was mostly diet. There, I successfully changed to diet soda, I didn’t do it overnight, I took a month to do it and it was easy that way.

    This applies in all areas of your sugar consumption.

    For example, if you’re taking two measured tablespoons of sugar in each coffee… Start by reducing that amount by 7%. Yes, literally that small amount… But you layer one change on top of the next, on top of the next, once you have some success. It will take you literally 3 days to get used to the smaller amount of sugar, and you’ll barely notice it… And once that feels good, you reduce my another 7%