7 tips for avoiding sugars and carbs to lose weight

Modern research has shown avoiding simple starches and sugars is a great step in losing weight. Here are seven ways to do so.

• Pancakes, muffins, bagels, doughnuts — they're all big blasts of simple carbohydrates.
• Here's your perfect breakfast: one serving of fruit, one serving of dairy and one serving of a complex carb.
• For the dairy: low-fat milk or yogurt.
• For the carbohydrate: a slice of whole-wheat toast or a multigrain breakfast bar.
• Fruit is your choice.

• The old line is that you only get dessert if you clean your plate. Hmmm… sounds like a formula for obesity! Desserts are often filled with white flour, sugar, butter and other empty calories. Instead, clean your plate so you won't want dessert.
• Make dessert one of your two or three 100-calorie snacks for the day.
• Or skip an immediate dessert: wait an hour or two after supper, and if you are hungry, opt for a fistful of fresh strawberries or an orange.

• When grocery shopping, check labels for terms such as fructose, sucrose and dextrose — all of which indicate there's sugar in the food.
• And don't be fooled by terms like "no added sugar," which can be used to disguise high amounts of natural sugar.

• Watch out for corn syrup, a sweetener that's loaded into soft drinks and many processed foods. It's not just the empty calories to be worried about. Studies suggest corn syrup fails to trigger hormones that regulate body weight and appetite.

• Replace fruit drinks, sports drinks and pop with plain or sparkling water and add a wedge of lemon for flavour: drinking just one less sweet drink a day will lower your calorie tally enough to keep off an extra 10 pounds in a year.

• Eat whole-grain foods, such as whole-wheat bread — they contain more complex carbohydrates than foods made with refined flour, like white bread.
• Complex carbs are absorbed slowly by the body and are thought to pose less of a weight gain risk than foods made from refined-flour.

• Some Asian restaurants now give you the option of brown rice or white rice. Choose brown rice: It is the whole-grain version that is much healthier and more filling than white.