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If you overdid it with the sugar during the holidays, you’re not alone. It’s time to put down the cookies, the booze, and the bad decisions and focus on flattening that Santa Claus belly. It’s not that your body looks ho-ho-horrible, but that you’re sluggish, grumpy, bloated and in need of a detox.
In fact, a study showed a direct link between consuming sugar-sweetened drinks and cardiovascular disease and diabetes that kill nearly 200,000 people globally. However, you can put an end to the symptoms of sugar addiction by altering your habits to make detoxing off the sweet stuff easier than you think.
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Do you have any tips and tricks for detoxing from all the things you did to your body during the holidays? Share them in the comments!
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Sugar Detox
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Drink More Water
Seriously. According to the Institute of Medicine, men need to drink about 101 ounces of water a day. If you haven't already ditched sugary drinks for water, you should start. Ingesting enough H2O during your detox will not only turn down the volume on the negative side effects of sugar but also assists the kidneys and colon to eliminate waste, resulting in raising your energy and speeding along the detox process.
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Go Green By Upping Your Fruit and Vegetable Consumption
At this point, you should know that a diet high in vegetables and fruits isn't just good for your body, but for the environment. However, when it comes to detoxing from sugar, upping your consumption of nutritious produce adds the antioxidants and phytonutrients to give your body the fuel it needs when you're feeling sluggish.
Just because you're kicking sugar doesn't mean you're kicking food. You want your body to bounce back quickly from what you did over the holidays, and this is one of the best ways to do it.
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Don't Go Cold Turkey
There's hidden sugar in almost every processed piece of food you eat. So, even though you might think you're eliminating everything, you're not. That said, don't fret. You want to focus on removing sugary filler foods like alcohol, candy, baked goods, sports drinks, ketchup, and juice.
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Don't Replace Sugar With Artificial Sweeteners
Avoid all sweeteners, sugar, and other natural and diet sweeteners. Even if the label says diet or no-calorie sweeteners, they still mess with your metabolism. This means ditching diet drinks as well as sugary sodas and nixing artificial sweeteners in your coffee, tea, and other beverages.
If your natural aversion to water has you rolling your eyes, chill. Kara Goldin, founder and CEO of Hint flavored water (with no sugar, no sweeteners, no calories, nothing artificial, only a hint of fruit) says, "If people can just change their beverage, it will actually help them get healthier faster. Water is the best way to provide hydration. Water doesn’t have sugar, sodium, or color. A lot of the 'healthy beverages' on the market still have some kind of sweetener in them.”
If Hint doesn't work for you, try naturally infusing your own water with fresh fruit to give your water the flavor you need without blowing your load on sugar or sweeteners of any kind.
Photos: Eric Anthony Johnson (Getty Images) and Hint
