Replying to Some Healthy Eating/Living Questions

Hi NSG,
I just have a couple of healthy eating/food questions and I was just wondering if anyone on here can help or give me some ideas to answer my questions. I figure that, most of us are pretty active on this site and I'm sure a good amount of people on here live at least semi-healthy lifestyles, so I think someone should be able to help.

Now, I'm not looking to lose weight here or anything. I already did that. My whole life up until about last year, I thought "oh I like junk food too much, I'll never give it up" but last year I realized how much better I would feel if I lost weight. I also found out how simple the concept actually is too, just less calories in than what your body burns, and you'll burn fat and lose weight. So I'm 6'2" and I used to weigh about 230 lbs. Now I'm a little bit too skinny and weigh 150 lbs, but I'm working on building muscle so hopefully I'll bulk up a little bit and not be such a twig.

ANYWAYS

Now since I've dropped so much weight, I really want to just build a little muscle, but still stay pretty slim too. I've been tracking my foods (calories, sugars, sodiums, and vitamins and minerals) and such, and I've been doing it for a really long time now. (I've actually been using an iphone app to watch all my food intake, and it's pretty accurate and I really like it)

I know keeping my sugar intake low is really a big part in staying healthy. My recommended (not sure who or what, set this recommendation but,) my recommended sugar intake for a day is to consume at most, about 48 grams of sugar per day. At the end of the day I always seem to be at about DOUBLE that. Haha. Now I must say, it's mostly natural sugar found in fruits, because I do eat a lot of fruits. I know this is kind of a dumb question, but how the hell do I lower my sugar intake? I mean, as it is, I never eat candy, or drink soda. I don't think I've consumed candy or soda (other than the occasional dark chocolate) since about a year ago. I don't drink gatorade or regular vitamin water or any of those "sports drinks" that are loaded with sugar either. Mostly just natural foods. So does anyone else have any suggestions on how to lower my sugar intake? What do you guys do? 48 grams seems like a lot of sugar, and a decent guideline to follow, but how accurate is that? Should I not be so worried about it, or is it actually a decent guideline? Haha Thanks.


My other question is this:
For the past year or so, since I've been losing weight, I've only drank water, and the occasional cup of milk added to a protein shake whenever I work out. (Not recently though because of a back injury). Back when I didn't care about health, I used to really enjoy soda and sports drinks like vitamin water/ gatorade. I realize now though, that unless your really working out, you shouldn't even drink those "sports drinks". So since I've been healthy, and wanted to lower my sugar intake, but I still crave that sweet taste of sugary drinks, occasionally I'll drink a Vitamin Water Zero, which seems to be decent. I mean, at least it's sweetened with Truvia, and has