preview

Healthy Behavior Analysis

Decent Essays

A healthy behavior change I plan to make is reduce my intake of added sugars to 25 grams per day. I will do this for 5 days out of the week for 2 months. According to the American Heart Association, the maximum amount of added sugars you should eat in a day are 100 calories per day. This is 25 grams or 6 teaspoons. The reason this number is so low is because added sugars are extremely toxic to the human body. Natural foods that contain sugar, like fruit will not count toward my sugar intake goal. These sugars are essential for the body and do not have negative effects like added sugars. 25 grams of added sugars can add up rapidly. Added sugars are hidden in many varieties of foods, including cereals, smoothies, yogurt, sodas, pasta sauce, …show more content…

Every day, I am surrounded by sugary foods. Whether it be at the dining hall in my dorm, a vending machine, my house, a restaurant, or a bakery, there is always temptation. To ensure I reach this goal I will need to figure out a plan. First, I can set some challenge goals. If I meet my goal of not eating as much added sugar each week, I should reward myself. Setting these checkpoints will motivate me to resist temptation knowing there is some reward at the end. A barrier I may face is just giving into temptation of desserts and other sugary foods. One way I can avoid this is by not buying foods that I know contain high amounts of added sugars. I can also overcome this by just thinking about my goal. I have to decide if eating something sugary for 30 seconds is worth risking all of the diseases and problems that come along with sugar. Making sure my plan is specific can make a huge impact in how successful I will be at reaching my goal. I could make my plan extremely specific by meal prepping. If I take one day out of the week to prepare foods and healthy snacks, it gives me less room to fail. If my meals and snacks are already prepared and handy, I will eat those. If I do not do this, I am more obligated to get something quick which will most likely have a higher chance of containing added sugars. Overall, educating myself on which foods are low in added sugar will be extremely beneficial. Along with making sure I always have low sugar food on hand so I won’t give in to any temptation. Hopefully in two months my goals will have been achieved and I will be healthier and feeling the positive effects of a low sugar

Get Access