70-Year-Old Grandma Reveals Which Food Product She Cut Out of Her Diet

Health | Did You Know

70-Year-Old Grandma Reveals Which Food Product She Cut Out of Her Diet

We are all searching for the recipe for a perfect body, and 70-year-old Carolyn Hartz thinks she has found it!

Turning 70 in July, this mother of 3 and grandmother of 4, looks so good that it's hard to believe her age.

Carolyn's formula is simple.

"You have to watch what you put it in your mouth "” that's number one "” and two, you have to move your legs," she says.

She also was forced to cut out one major ingredient in her diet and that has helped keep her lean.

To Carolyn, age is just a number. She doesn't use it as an excuse. Recently she has taken up lawn tennis, and enjoys playing basketball, as well as other sports.

Find out what her secret is on the next page.

At the age of 41, Carolyn was diagnosed as pre-diabetic after years of eating sugar and sweets.

"I was addicted to sugar but I didn't know it - I just knew I loved it," Carolyn told Daily Mail Australia. "It was nothing for me to have half a cheesecake for breakfast or a packet of chocolate biscuits in the afternoon - even a block of chocolate."

She was diagnosed as pre-diabetic after seeing doctors about dizzy spells she was experiencing. That's when she decided to make a change.

"This news frightened me and I was scared," Carolyn said, "I didn't want to be sick, I'm not a sick person I've played state netball and I've swam at state level and I took up basketball at 45 - I have always been able to do everything and I didn't want that to stop."

That's when Carolyn had to completely cut out everything that contained white refined sugar.

After a year of cutting out sugar completely, she started to feel better and her blood sugar began to normalize.

While she enjoyed her new lifestyle, she didn't want to refuse herself all the foods she loved so much.

"I did that and I looked amazing - I have to say - but I really missed it and having a sweet or a glass of wine here and there," she said.

After consulting with a gastroenterologist, she was taught the importance of moderation.

"He was the first person who ever said to me "moderation" and that was the beginning of my journey," she said.

That's when she opened an artificial sweetener company.

Continue to the next page to see how her story can help you.

Carolyn who is also gluten intolerant, created a range of recipes that were both sugar and wheat-free after discovering Xylitol- a natural sugar-free alternative that occurs in the fibers of birch trees, corn cobs, in fruits and vegetables.

"Many of the gluten free things that are available are loaded with sugar - if you take the flour out of a product you have to replace it with something like rice flours, tapioca starch and other starches which are tasteless," Carolyn said. "So to get the taste in most of the time they add a tonne of sugar."

Her book Sugar Free Baking contains a range of recipes that are 100% sugar-free, including no honey, agave or maple syrup.

"They taste delicious and I promise I could make anyone a cake and they would never know the difference - Xylitol tastes like sugar and doesn't have an after taste," she said.

The recipes range from vanilla layer cakes to chocolate mousse and lemon curd.

"The thing with my recipes is that you don't get the highs and lows associated with sugar and flour but you also enjoy them - you savor and taste them rather than quickly devour them," she said.

While she doesn't rely solely on her eating regime to keep her healthy, Carolyn also sleeps 8 hours a day, does a lot of walking, meditating and plays sports. She also confessed that she has had a few minor plastic surgeries.

She will be appearing on US breakfast television this week and has had requests for interviews come in from Brazil, Belgium, Ireland and Korea.

Her son in New York even told her she was trending on social media.

"I didn't even know what that meant," she laughed. "This has all happened in about eight days. It feels like a whirlwind."