Sugar 'addiction'

Monokne

Just wondered if anyone here had experience with addiction around sugar and how they'd dealt with it.

I have had issues with alcohol & drug addiction when I was younger but have been clear of that for 5/6 years. However, in the past 2 - 3 years I've found myself becoming increasingly addictive around sugar. Without going into too much detail, I snack on sweets & lollies all day & then binge on sweets & ice cream or chocolate at night. It's an escalating thing, which has gotten worse rather than better.

I'm very educated around addiction and so generally speaking I don't need help when it comes to managing my addictive tendencies. But sugar being such a big part of everyday life, I have found it hard to re-introduce moderation, to cut back. I've tried to just cut it out at times but my mood hits the floor after a couple of days without sugar and inevitably I've caved.

Anyway, I figure that there are a lot of healthy folk in this particular forum given the topic, and often times people who've the most passion about healthy eating have learned the hard way.

If anyone has any hints or tips about how to ween ones self off sugar, & re-establish a healthier relationship with it, please share.

newacc2015

We are hard-wired to like sugar, salt and fat. There is an excellent book on it by Michael Moss called "Sugar, Salt and Fat" How food giants got us hooked. Basically all processed food, has perfect ratios of salt, sugar and fat to make us eat more of it and often.

Honestly the best thing to do is just not eat processed food and sugary items for several weeks. Your body will stop craving it slowly. You will get head aches and feel like **** for a few days. But it will get better

Ruby31

I've struggled with this too. I can go for months eating healthily and actually enjoying it and not obsessing over food, but if I have one or two days of eating rubbish, I have to try to stay away from
Sugar in any form (including fruit) for a few days to get rid of the cravings. The first couple of days are the absolute pits because your body is crying out for sugar! I find that a few days eating low-carb, high fat & protein gets me back on track.

El_Dangeroso

Could you replaced the junky sugar with healthy sugar?

Grapes and pineapple chunks hit any sweet cravings for me. Or failing that some natural yoghurt with honey mixed in. I like dates and figs too, they're handy for on the go.

These will contain vitamins and minerals that allow you to properly utilise the sugar and also cause less of a crash after the sugar wears off.

doireannod

chromium supplements are good for stabilising blood sugar levels and helping with cravings

thattequilagirl

Monokne wrote: »

Just wondered if anyone here had experience with addiction around sugar and how they'd dealt with it.

I have had issues with alcohol & drug addiction when I was younger but have been clear of that for 5/6 years. However, in the past 2 - 3 years I've found myself becoming increasingly addictive around sugar. Without going into too much detail, I snack on sweets & lollies all day & then binge on sweets & ice cream or chocolate at night. It's an escalating thing, which has gotten worse rather than better.

I'm very educated around addiction and so generally speaking I don't need help when it comes to managing my addictive tendencies. But sugar being such a big part of everyday life, I have found it hard to re-introduce moderation, to cut back. I've tried to just cut it out at times but my mood hits the floor after a couple of days without sugar and inevitably I've caved.

Anyway, I figure that there are a lot of healthy folk in this particular forum given the topic, and often times people who've the most passion about healthy eating have learned the hard way.

If anyone has any hints or tips about how to ween ones self off sugar, & re-establish a healthier relationship with it, please share.

A friend of mine with 20+ years in the rooms had the same problem. He cut out all sugar (including fruits with high sugar) for six months, and then reintroduced it slowly back into his diet. He says it totally reset his body's response to it. You could also consider going to OA, if you feel powerless over it and it's making your life unmanageable.

Latatian

Each to his own and it can work for many but I wouldn't cut it out- I would go with moderation. If you cut it out you train yourself to think of it as 'forbidden' and any small amount as 'failure'. And as you've seen triggers are everywhere that will make you think of, and want, the 'forbidden thing'. Don't think of it as 'quitting sugar', think of it as 'making a few healthier choices'. So pick your favourite thing, and decide that if you go four days without sweets, lollies, chocolate, you'll have saved enough money to get the 'really good' thing. Instead of eating chocolate all day, promise yourself one bar of very delicious chocolate per week, or two per week, or one bar and a small pot of haagen daz ice cream. Start from where you are. Baby steps. Anything that is a reduction is not a failure, even if it's a small improvement.

Keep food around you that you want yourself to eat and make it appetizing and delicious. Make a tasty lunch and bring it out with you, or keep apples in your bag. Don't let yourself get hungry and then be tempted.

Don't keep that stuff in the house- this isn't the same as forbidding it. Just make it a little harder for yourself to eat it mindlessly. After all, if you're eating it mindlessly you're not really enjoying it either. Make it so that if you want a bar of chocolate, you have to get up and go and walk to the shop (not drive- even if it's raining.) And then get one, eat it, enjoy it, walk home. Don't get more than one, and don't get any other food or amount other than the one you have decided in advance. Just have it decided that you'll eat that one bar. If the ice cream isn't there at night you can't binge on it.

Before you go shopping for groceries eat something very filling and sugary. You could have one really sweet, rich, sickening thing per week and have it before you go shopping. Eat a good big dinner, then your sweet thing, and then go shopping while you're stuffed and slightly ill and eyeing the brown rice, rather than starving and dying for sweets.

If you find you're having a craving, just wait fifteen minutes. Do something that'll make you think about something else- do some work, read a really good book, watch your favourite tv show, have a chat with a good friend, whatever. Just wait. You're not 'trying to kill thoughts of it' because that's like trying not to think of a pink elephant. You're just setting it aside for a minute to deal with something else first. Often you'll find that the craving has gone away. Sometimes that hunger is just boredom, or a pattern of thinking that you need to break.

Work out things that trigger your habit of eating sugar and change those triggers. 'Mindless Eating' is a good book for this, by Brian Wansink.

Find up something else you can think about when you're stressed or bored, something to disrupt the thoughts that keep focusing on sugar. I suggest trashy novels, or Pratchett, or video games.

I cut down on chocolate for lent- not cutting it out entirely, just not buying it. Right now I have the most delicious chocolate truffles sitting out in the kitchen. I ate half of one and then went and had an apple. I have absolutely no willpower, it's not that by any means. But because I know I'm not 'banned' them and I have it in my head that I want to enjoy them as much as possible, I don't need to eat them all in one go. You have already dealt with things like this, you are waaay stronger than I am. You can absolutely do this, whatever method you choose to take.

Arkady

I've more or less cut it out apart from what I get in whole fruit.
I feel 100 time better for it, and 10 years younger.
I use to get horrendous cravings for the first few weeks, like it was a drug, but now I couldn't stomach the thought of eating anything sugary with added processed sugar in it. Bluuuuh.