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

A few drops of Lemon or lime juice in Carbonated water.

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.

It’s a bit of pop science to say that nutrisweet and other artificial sweeteners produce the same insulin response as sugar, but that’s not what the data indicates.

The response is consistently lower.

So my recommendation is to switch to diet soda, assuming the sugary drinks you’re drinking are sodas.

If they’re fruit juices, I would recommend relaxing them with smoothies. The fiber in a smoothie slows the absorption of the sugar, resulting in less of a blood glucose spike.

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.

Black decaffeinated coffee for me. Sometimes real coffee.

Can someone explain the question to me? I don’t understand.

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.

Water

Soda is just addictive diabetes water.

Water is the ultimate sugar free drink. If you want different mouth feel you can do carbonated water. If you want caffeine you can do black coffee or tea.

If your ultimate goal is lower blood sugar levels the best solution is to stop consuming sugar and carbs. It will be difficult at first, but after the first week the cravings go away.

A helpful guide, if you only eat the green food, your blood sugar won’t rise. The drink list here is: water, coffee, tea, bouillon, bone broth, kombucha. Fat lot of good food guide

If you get a continuous glucose monitor (GCM), you can see in real time how different foods impact your blood sugar. It can be a great tool and feedback loop to help you achieve your goals.

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.

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

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

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%

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).