Sugar Addiction

[laur_454]

Hi everyone... Does anyone have any tips on how to quit eating sugar? Obviously I want to continue eating it in fruits and vegetables, but I'm a HUGE sugar addict.... I crave ice cream and cookies when I'm hungry. I eat a dessert food at least once every single day. I'm also vegetarian and want to go vegan, but my biggest obstacle is desserts. In addition to not wanting to consume animal products, I also don't want the negative effects and excess calories of sugar. This isn't a weight issue, its more about my lower energy after sugar consumption. I give new meaning to "food coma." Plus, once I start I can't stop. Has anyone successfully cut sugar out of their diet completely? I've taken a few stabs at this over the years with zero success for more than 24 hours. I'd love to hear the tactics of others. Thanks everyone.

[andrew112]

I have been completely sugar-free for almost 9 days now. I plan on keeping it that way for atleast 2 more weeks or for the rest of my life.

[elijjah]

Hi, I have twice gone for a year and a half or so with no sugar. The key for me was to not do it in moderation. I stocked up the house with low-sugar snacks -- several kinds of cheese (I did string cheese mostly), beef jerky (although that won't work for you as a vegetarian). We had a salad bar at work where I would eat lunch, and I made sure to get hardboiled eggs and a yummy dressing to go with the veggies in the salad.
I also cut out all breads and rice, so that if I had to I would often eat a hamburger, hold the bun.
I imagine that it would be much harder to give up carbs completely if you're vegetarian, but it is supposedly possible. You should check out Dr. Atkins' book at Amazon if you haven't already.
I lost 30 lbs the first time and 40 lbs the second time while following the diet, but over time I tried to do it in moderation, and that was a slippery slope.

Elijjah
How to make a million dollars --- one house at a time

[elijjah]

I have twice used the atkins diet to completely remove all carbs (not sugars) from my diet. The key I found was that I went cold turkey on carbs, rather than moderated. Both times I was able to sustain it for about 18 months. Unfortunately, when I tried to moderate (ie add in some carbs to my diet), I fell off the wagon and started to eat ice cream and pizza way too much.
Also, I would think it is near impossible to use the atkins diet if you're a vegatarian. Much of my food consisted of steak, cheese and salads.

[sgregory]

Sugar addiction is a very real thing, and going off it completely will most likely not work very well as your body will still be craving the stuff. I'd drop the amount I use gradually so my body gets used to the lowered amounts. Your brain will still have that habit and it is proven that it's easier to change one vice for something else than to extinguish that habit without anything else to replace it with. For this, I recommend Stevia (found only at health food stores) and use that instead. No calories, sweet, and actually has healthy benefits. Look it up. Then, eventually, you can just use Stevia by itself. After a while, I'd recommend not over doing the Stevia either because I've been told by members of another health forum (but not an official source) that the pancreas still secretes insulin at just the taste of something sweet, even if it isn't sugar.
But, the good thing is, sugar is highly addictive. One health website said it is more addictive than crack. Once you get off of it, the cravings get less and less. I currently use no sugar at all (except 1/2 A teaspoon I only started 3 months ago because raw eggs taste nasty without something and I am too broke to buy Stevia right now) and sugary things don't appeal to me at all. I see what other people eat, everything with tons of sugar, and I just don't want it. This will happen to you once you stop using it too.

When I do want something like cookies or something, it's usually only once every 2-3 months and I'll have maybe 5-10 Sweedish cookies. That all adds up to only about 8grams of sugar and I'm satisfied. Of course, I could make me something with Stevia, but since I do this so rarely, I don't even bother because of the time and money thing.

[sbdiane]

I once was walking down the cookie aisle in the market when it suddenly occurred to me that I already know what each and every one of those cookies is going to taste like so why bother. After that I quit sugar. That lasted maybe a year or more. I can't remember. I eat sugar now but not often.

Recently I did a long hike. I think the intense exercise made me crave healthy food. I got to where I couldn't stand any kind of junk food. If it came in a wrapper the thought of eating it just did not appeal. I had to force myself to eat candy bars I hated them so much. So maybe lots of exercise would help, too.

I love sweet things so now, since it's summer, I'm in heaven with all the fruit at the farmer's market. It's so easy to forget how great fruit tastes, how much more flavor it has than any kind of candy or cookie, and how energized you feel just from the taste of it. It's gotta be good fruit, though, not stuff that's picked green and ripened with gas in a storage facility. So if you have a farmer's market, definitely try substituting fruit for whatever sweet things you crave.

[laur_454]

Originally Posted by andrew112

I have been completely sugar-free for almost 9 days now. I plan on keeping it that way for atleast 2 more weeks or for the rest of my life.

So were the first couple of days tough? I'm planning on starting tomorrow, but I'll still be eating fruit.

[elijjah]

Try staying away from fruit as well! Fruit is among the worst carbs for glycemic index. At least for the first couple weeks, you should stay completely away from carbs. You will see a significant change. But it means eating cheese and/or salad every few hours.

I've done the Atkins plan twice for up to 18 months, by keeping a strict no carb diet. I lost 30 lbs the first time, and 40 lbs (while training for a marathon at the same time) the second time. But I bet it would be pretty tough to do that if you're a vegetarian, as the majority of low carb food is meat and cheese.

You should take a look at Dr. Atkins book if you haven't already. I think that there is a chapter on Atkins for Vegatarians.

[ilovetoday]

I stopped eating sugar and drinking milk for about two months- my acne cleared and my energy levels lifted, not to mention my moods balanced.

I started just by simply refusing to eat anything srtaight sugar. If I had a craving I would curb it by half an apple or orange. I lost more wieght though- too much and now I am going sugarless again but eating more wholegrain carbs to keep some weight on still.

I still eat sugar on my porridge but not much. You will find that your cravings go away and your taste changes also. And I do use milk but only as a part of breakfast not drinking at all.

Good luck!

[mw11729]

Laur, I am also a hugh fan of sweets but for most of the week but like one or two days I cheat and sometimes very badly. I tried the Atkins diet to quit the addiction to sugar but it did the total opposite >> I started out good but then cheated went back on and off but then....I completly went out of control and ate cake<<lots of cake, cookies and donuts but i would buy frosting to go with it LOL seriously and THAT was not nor has ever been me to be that ridiculous>> i went from a size zero to a four in no time>>i just gotten back to my size 2 but even then I was still hitting the gym but binging on junk>>it was crazy. OH and also I now have blood sugar problems>>reactive hypoglycemia so now when i cheat a little here and there i feel like im going to have a heart attack as my heart speeds up tremendously and fatigue hits me horribly. The Atkins does work for alot of people but i am just warning that it may do the opposite as it did to me.

[mw11729]

Fruit as well as protien is my main consumption throuout the day to get my sugar fix now I use several methods that work and does not and will not add pounds, here are a few:

fat free carmel dip singles from any grocery store>>it taste like candy apple when dipped with an apple i also use the dip with a bannana as well if i am craving sugar.

Sugar free double chocolate snack pack with chocolate chip rice cakes and i dip the rice cake in there >>you can also put some fat free redi whip with it and it is soo low in calories and tastes delicious.

or i take and have mixed fruit in a huge covered bowl for the week and use the fat free fruit dip with it as well as the carmel.

these are just a few examples and they work really well for me go walk around the grocery store as i did and find different low calorie sweet fixes you would like. Oh.. another one is the Apple pie allamode yougart with the carmel<<tast like apple pie when used with the carmel

I hope this helps as i totally understand what you are going through. I know this stuff has helped me and hope you consider giving it a try.

[andrew112]

Originally Posted by laur_454

So were the first couple of days tough? I'm planning on starting tomorrow, but I'll still be eating fruit.

For me the first 7 days were easy, but on the 7th night I felt like I could not get to sleep unless I had something that had added sugar in it. I ended up only sleeping 3-4 hours that night.

[Lauxa]

I'm going without sugar this month, but not low-carb. I am still having fruit and fruit juice. When I have a craving for something sweet, I take a nip of fruit juice. It has just as much sugar as a soda, but at least there are vitamins. It would be better healthwise if I had a juicer and made my own fresh juices, but I am very grateful for mass-production and the opportunity to save time by using prepackaged items.

[sgregory]

Fruit should be mostly avoided as it has lots of sugar. If you must, stick to low gyclemic fruits such as blueberries and other berries. Blueberries are the most healthy fruit out there, the highest concentration of antioxidants. 1/2 a cup to a cup is the most I'd recommend, slowly weaning yourself to 1/2 a cup.

Artificial sweeteners are bad too. I'd still recommend Stevia as it's all natural.

[beautyscientist]

There is so much contradictory information out there about diet it is almost impossible to work out what you should and shouldn't eat, even if you are a trained scientist like myself.

I like Steve's advice to try things out and see what your body tells you.

I started recently with a fairly simple objective to see if there was any difference between getting your sugar from processed food and carbohydrates or from raw fruit and vegetables. (Carbohydrates are a quickly turned to sugar in the body - try chewing a piece of bread in your mouth for a few minutes without swallowing it. It soon begins to taste sweet.)

What I have found is that eating a lot of raw vegetables, particularly cabbage, in the morning kills off my hunger for most of the day. It wasn't particularly my intention, but I have found that I have cut snacks right down and even struggle to finish my evening meal some days.

I have been quite surprised at how big an impact it has made. Most of the effects are positive. The biggest drawback is that I used to enjoy eating a nice hot meal to assuage my hunger.

Another thing my body has told me from this trial is that I generally eat too much at a single sitting. When you try and eat a lot of raw food at once you find your hunger subsides quickly and you don't want to eat any more. When I eat a big cooked meal I can usually find room for something afterwards, usually a dessert.

[stellabeam]

Hi Everyone,

I think a 30 day sugar free trial is a great way to get off sugar. See this link.

30 days sugar free


There is a lot of debate about is sugar in fruit as harmful as processed sugar. I am a big advocate of listening to my body. For me, they each have a very different effect on my body. My experience is that processed sugar is very harmful to me, whereas the sugar in fruit is not. I read the books and then experiment on myself and come to my own conclusions.

Whenever I have stopped eating processed sugar in my life, I eat quite a bit of fruit. I go through all the symptoms of a deep cleanse. Surely if they were the same, I would not experience the detox symptoms.

[BalancedExistence]

beautyscientist - it is interesting what you had to say. I think it is likely that because raw food has not had its enzimes and vitamins cooked out of it that your body needs to consume less mass. As far as I'm aware we don't get hungry because we need to eat bulk material we get hungry because the body needs more nutrition. Which is why after eating fast food we often get hungry quickly.

Normally in nature foods that are sweet are high in nutrition. So when we eat something sweet our bodies thinks something with a lot of nutrition is coming. Processed foods however have refined sugar which is sweet with no nutrition. So the body gets tricked, doesn't get what it needs and so craves more.

Also something like 90% of people have fungi and parasite infections. Fungi love sugar. They also are trying to put you back into the ground. Which is their natural job. And finally it was discovered way back in the 1930's (I think it was 1935 or '36) that cancer is caused by the fermentation of sugar within the body. They even gave the guy who discovered this a Nobel Prize. Amazing isn't it?


Stephen

[NightSpirit]

There is a test they give cancer patients called a PET scan. They put sugar that is radioactive in the body and then scan to see where the sugar goes. If there is any cancer, that part of the body will "light up" because, as the doctor told my mom, cancer loves sugar. He said cancer needs a lot of energy to grow and will draw the sugar there first if it's not being used as energy. The patient can't move during the test so the sugar won't be used up and will be free to be confiscated, so to speak, by the cancer.

But any area that is recovering from an infection also will draw more of the sugar because the more rapid cell activity of healing needs energy. And PET scans are frequently used on brain function tests because our brains use a lot of glucose as energy. I am still trying to understand more fully how our body converts food to glucose and I know we need some. But I can tell so far that high blood sugar is harmful and any food that raises it fast should be avoided.

I can't say from my research whether sugar causes cancer but it does seem that too much of it in the blood stream would certainly make the environment more favorable for it to grow faster. I just don't think the medical research community is too good at making the links between nutrition and health, probably because the profit is in drug therapy and there's no money in prevention.

Or maybe they have told us and common sense tells us but we don't listen because it tastes good so they focus their efforts on fixing the problems of the stubborn and addicted by developing drugs.

I mean, people still smoke, and drink heavily and then want a doctor to fix what those habits cause. We do know for sure that consumption of a high level of refined carbs does cause diabetes in a lot of people but people still do it. Like smokers, we all hope we are the one that dodges the bullets.

I recently saw a documentary about an Indian tribe in Arizona who, because they have no water rights or gardens, have to rely on government staples for their survival at the reservation. They have been sent mostly flour, sugar and grease for years and now, as a community, the rate of diabetes is near 50% from the lack of access to fresh food. They were forced to eat what they had on hand to live but we are choosing to eat too much of the same things because it's cheap, quick and easy....and possibly killing us.

My sugar free trial went off track because of my addiction to Pepsi and sweet tea. Pepsi has no nutritional value and does nothing but put sugar in my blood. If I can internalize the fact that more sugar in the blood than is needed for energy becomes available for either fat storage or additional fuel for cancer, then maybe the taste of something sweet will become repulsive just like a shot of whiskey or cigarette smoke is to me now.

It's becoming clearer to me that low Glycemic Index with smaller meals of more nutritious food is really what I want to do not just what I think I should do. A knowledge of the truth really does bring power and it's worked well with other things that can harm me. I lost any taste for alcohol when I heard how many brain cells die from drinking it and that the only thing standing between me and alcohol as a poison is my liver. And breathing smoke never did seem like a good idea but when I saw several people die from drowning in their own body fluids because they had destroyed their lungs then my choice not to smoke was confirmed. I also quit all other soft drinks, including some fruit drinks, when I read the research on the sodium benzoate that's in them as a perservative. They think it alters our myochondrial DNA. And did you know that in aspartame they also have to put an antidote to the formaldehyde-like substance in it?

It takes zero willpower and self control not to consume any of those things so this knowledge of what high sugar and carb foods is doing to my body I think has just made me more free.

[veranadine]

Hi.

I had this same problem with sugary sweets and baked goods, etc. About a year ago, I went vegetarian.

In doing lots of research during my transition to vegetarianism I became convinced that my imbalanced "desire" reaction to baked goods and sugary sweets was a big indicator that I had a candida overgrowth. (Given my fomer SAD diet, I would not be surprised about a candida overgrowth at all.)

So I began minimizing or removing all of the offending foodstuffs, the things that candida really LOVES. I have gradually fazed out dairy, cane sugar and wheat. These are all things that feed and foster yeasts and candidas.

I replaced dairy with soy, wheat with spelt and sugar with agave and now I feel a million years better.

If ever I have even a single bite of regular sweets at all I feel so much MORE hungry after eating it. I know now that this is a mental trick and not a reality. But it sure does reinforce my belief that removing those things from my diet was most certainly the right thing to do.

Blessings,

[BalancedExistence]

From NightSpirit - "I just don't think the medical research community is too good at making the links between nutrition and health, probably because the profit is in drug therapy and there's no money in prevention."

Amen to that!


Stephen

[escapee]

Nightspirit, since you mentioned about sugar and cancer . I would refer you to two great men - Otto warburg and Brian peskin.

Warburg hypothesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Warburg articulated his hypothesis in a paper entitled The Prime Cause and Prevention of Cancer which he presented in lecture at the meeting of the Nobel-Laureates on June 30, 1966 at Lindau, Lake Constance, Germany. In this speech, Warburg presented evidence in support of the claim that anaerobiosis was a primary cause of cancerous cells. Put in his own words, "the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar."[4]

In recent years, Warburg's hypothesis has re-gained attention due to several discoveries linking impaired mitochondrial function as well as impaired respiration to the growth, division and expansion of tumor cells. In a study by Michael Ristow and co-workers, colon cancer lines were modified to overexpress frataxin. The results of their work suggest that an increase in oxidative metabolism induced by mitochondrial frataxin may inhibit cancer growth in mammals.[5]

Chronic Cellular hypoxia means (sugar loving) cancer as according to Warburg hypothesis.

[Monique7nuns]

In addition to stevia, try vitamin C Ascorbic acid crystals (powder) for sweet cravings.. just be sure to rinse or brush your teeth really well after taking it.. if you decide to try it.