For many of us, the day simply does not begin without a hot cup of chai – sweetened with a teaspoon or two of sugar. But if you are trying to lose weight, you have probably been told to cut sugar out of your diet entirely. While that advice may be popular, it is not completely accurate. According to Dr Sidhant Bhargava, nutritionist known to have worked with celebrities like Alia Bhatt, Sara Ali Khan, and Ananya Panday, you can still lose weight without giving up sugar altogether. The key lies in understanding how weight loss truly works.
Dr Bhargava points out that 1 gram of sugar contains 4 calories, so 1 teaspoon (5 grams) adds only about 20 calories to your drink. If you are adding one or two teaspoons to your tea, that is merely 20-40 calories, nowhere near enough to derail your weight loss progress. “20-30-40 calories do not really matter. Overall calorie deficit matters,” he says in one of his YouTube shorts.
A report by the Cleveland Clinic suggests that the average adult needs 1,800 to 2,500 calories per day, depending on age, sex, and activity level. So yes, your spoon of sugar is barely a drop in that bucket. What really matters is your total energy balance how many calories you consume versus how many you burn, not a single ingredient in isolation.
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