Original email for context: Sometimes I’m confused on the “no sugar” rule for HCG 1st three weeks phase since there’s sugar snuck into everything including things like beef jerky which I’ve yet to find a brand without zero sugar. In normal life my rule is not to eat anything with more than 9 sugars per serving but I even try to eat less than that.
I totally understand the confusion. So in this case, which I discuss in further detail in my P3tolife program in one of our modules about shopping and choosing ingredients for P3, here’s the basic idea.
There are 4 grams of sugar in 1 tsp of sugar. To me 1 tsp of sugar, if I were to pour it into a teaspoon and swallow it, is a lot.
But if I have some bacon, that has 1g of sugar per serving, then I’m only consuming ¼ of a tsp of sugar. To me this is so small as to not be a big deal and I would be fine with this in P3.
Also what matters is the source of the sugar – is it the naturally occurring sugars in the fruit or vegetable you are eating? Or is added sugar in some form? You will be able to tell this by looking at the label of the food item
For instance, a can of tomatoes may say “6g sugar” – but if the ingredients just say, “tomatoes, calcium chloride, salt” – then in this case you know that the 6g of sugar are just the naturally occurring sugars in the tomatoes themselves, so this would be okay.
If it was 6g of ADDED sugars though- like a label that said, “almond flour, date syrup, etc” and the label said sugar: 6g. In this case, it’s more like you are consuming 1.5 tsp of actual sugar- and to me this likely unwise to do during P3.
So for me, rule of thumb is if the sugars are naturally occurring in the vegetables, you can have more grams of sugar in that case (maybe like 6-9g, but that’s just a guess) but if it’s added sugar, I would stick with 2g of sugar or less (½ tsp added sugar).
Here is a screenshot of the module in the P3tolife Program where we discuss this in more detail:
I hope this helps!
