I have decided to take out the sugar in my coffee and tea and replace it with raw honey. Im always trying to do new things with my new lifestyle change...I would like to exempt all sugar from my diet, and Ive also heard that eliminating refined sugar entirely is beneficial for the body as well as weight loss

This is true, but question is how do we eliminate ALL sugar! For example ketchup has a small amount of sugar in it, I know there are natural ketchups you can buy which is fine, but even quinoa has sugar in it!! I dont eat processed foods at ALL, I eat quinoa all the time..I also eat my almond butter which is suppose to be a healthy fat...so why should I eliminate this?

My point is, is that everything has sugar in it..even if we cut down significantly we are still getting some. I will cut down on ketchup etc.. but is this still beneficial? The question I am asking is..

Can we still achieve the same effects by SIGNIFICANTLY cutting most of the sugars out of our diet? And what I mean by most is that only including some of the hidden sugars like almond butter's and the grain quinoa?

We can make adjustments, like no processed foods(which are extremely unhealthy anyways), condiments, cereals and salad dressings..but will it be the same as cutting out sugar completely!

Which in my opinion seems like a very hard task to do considering almost every food has a small amount of sugar in it..including healthy foods.

What is your take on this?

I do the best I can without making myself miserable. I don't use refined sugar in any of my cooking, and I switched to honey when I want something sweet. I try not to eat many processed foods, but you're right - most processed food does have some sugar in it - and when I do eat processed foods, I just try to roll with it and not freak out when I do have a little bit of sugar or salt here or there.

I think the key here is refined sugar, as you said. I just checked the labels for my organic quinoa and almond butter (both Trader Joe's brand) and there is no sugar listed in the ingredients, but on the labels there is 3g of sugar for quinoa and 2g sugar for almond butter. I am not an expert but I am assuming that there are natural sugars derived from the carbs, and not refined or ADDED sugar.

I know it's really hard to eliminate ALL sugars which is why I try to make everything from scratch (just started baking my own bread, no sugar!) and I try to eat "clean" (my definition: 5-6 ingredients or less that I can pronounce) as much as possible. But, I see no problem with eating natural sugars (ie: from natural grains or fruits), and I personally don't worry too much about that.

Unfortunately the world we live in today sometimes we have to grab something quickly or we aren't in the mood to cook, and yes, the majority of the processed foods contain some type of added sugar - or worse - high fructose corn syrup!

Have you seen the video "Sugar:the bitter truth"? If not, look it up on youtube, it seriously changed the way I started eating! He also does a really good job explaining the difference of "good" sugars (ie: from fruits) and "bad" sugars (refined).

Yah the only sugar I eat is from fruits and ketchup etc... I only glaze my salads with salad dressing because I cant seem to make my own salad dressing and have it taste good! I will check the video out! I just bought some raw honey today for my tea and coffee...but I am currently trying to figure out how many points that is!!!! Ugh I thought it was free lol

I think you have a good start, then I think it's really hard & unrealistic to eliminate sugar 100% from your diet, as it comes from a lot of natural resources.

I also use raw honey on my toast in the morning and I count 2 PP for 1 tbsp.

I have also cut out as much refined sugar as possible. You will notice after about a month or so of doing that, when you actually do eat some refined sugars (like cookies, cakes, etc) that your body will react negatively. I got really light headed and nauseous and made several trips to the bathroom the next day. In the end, I've just learned that my body can't tolerate refined sugars!