I can of course read how much sugar there is in foods but it doesn’t mean anything to me. How much is too much? What is the maximum total in a day that I should stay under? Many thanks

Our bodies don’t need any sugar at all – ideally have all your carbs fron non sugar sources.

I agree with Squidge that our bodies don’t need any sugar at all. Also – as all starchy carbs turn to glucose it would be better to look at carbs rather than just looking at the sugar content of food.

A lot of members on this forum set a limit of 50g net carbs and this works fine for them. I find that is much too high for me and I get horrendous blood sugar spikes if I go over 20 grams of carbs so as I don’t want to go back on insulin I keep to 20g carbs.

If you are in the UK the fibre is already deducted from the total carbs but in the US it isn’t so you have to deduct the fibre to get the net carbs.

Good solid advice there from Krysia. When you are reading nutritional panels on foods, look at the total carbs and think about what would constitute a portion of the food in question – indeed some panels will have the suggested portion size and the nutritional values in that. This will allow you to get an idea of what carbs would be in the portion, so you can gauge whether the food would fit into the carb allowance you have decided on. A good place to start is around the 50g a day mark for net carbs as Krysia says, then you can see if you might need to push them any lower.

It’s confusing at the start and the BSD does present a bit of a learning curve, but you’ll find it soon becomes second nature to check and reject, just from reading nutrition panels.

Keep shouting out if you need advice and do join other threads too, as there is a wealth of knowledge to be tapped into and plenty of support and encouragement to be had. Best wishes to you for every success.