How to overcome addiction to sweet sugar foods?
I have developed addiction to sugar sweet flavoured food intakes. I am worrying as I believe it can lead to severe consequences.
How should I overcome this addiction ?
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You may want to try the following suggestions:
Don't keep any sugary foods in your home. Instead, buy healthier options such as fruit.
If you do buy sugary junk foods, buy smaller quantities. Also, put some sugary junk food in a bowl, then close the package and put it away. This will reduce your temptation to eat too much.
Also, gradually change your habits. For example, instead of adding honey to breakfast cereal, add fresh or dried fruit. Raisins and dates are convenient and inexpensive.
If a sugar craving hits, distract yourself. For example, you could phone a friend, or read a book, or go bicycling.
Here are some ways to tame those sugar cravings.
Give in a little. Eat a bit of what you’re craving, maybe a small cookie or a fun-size candy bar, suggests Kerry Neville, MS, RD, a registered dietitian and ADA spokeswoman. Enjoying a little of what you love can help you steer clear of feeling denied. Try to stick to a 150-calorie threshold, Neville says.
Combine foods. If the idea of stopping at a cookie or a baby candy bar seems impossible, you can still fill yourself up and satisfy a sugar craving, too. "I like combining the craving food with a healthful one," Neville says. "I love chocolate, for example, so sometimes I’ll dip a banana in chocolate sauce and that gives me what I’m craving, or I mix some almonds with chocolate chips." As a beneficial bonus, you'll satisfy a craving and get healthy nutrients from those good-for-you foods.
Go cold turkey. Cutting out all simple sugars works for some people, although "the initial 48 to 72 hours are tough," Gerbstadt says. Some people find that going cold turkey helps their cravings diminish after a few days; others find they may still crave sugar but over time are able to train their taste buds to be satisfied with less.
Grab some gum. If you want to avoid giving in to a sugar craving completely, try chewing a stick of gum, says nutrition advisor Dave Grotto, RD, LDN. "Research has shown that chewing gum can reduce food cravings," Grotto says.
Reach for fruit. Keep fruit handy for when sugar cravings hit. You'll get fiber and nutrients along with some sweetness. And stock up on foods like nuts, seeds, and dried fruits, says certified addiction specialist Judy Chambers, LCSW, CAS. "Have them handy so you reach for them instead of reaching for the old [sugary] something."
Get up and go. When a sugar craving hits, walk away. "Take a walk around the block or [do] something to change the scenery," to take your mind off the food you’re craving, Neville suggests.
Choose quality over quantity. "If you need a sugar splurge, pick a wonderful, decadent sugary food," Moores says. But keep it small. For example, choose a perfect dark chocolate truffle instead of a king-sized candy bar, then "savor every bite -- slowly," Moores says. Grotto agrees. "Don’t swear off favorites -- you’ll only come back for greater portions. Learn to incorporate small amounts in the diet but concentrate on filling your stomach with less sugary and [healthier] options."
Eat regularly. Waiting too long between meals may set you up to choose sugary, fatty foods that cut your hunger, Moores says. Instead, eating every three to five hours can help keep blood sugar stable and help you "avoid irrational eating behavior," Grotto says. Your best bets? "Choose protein, fiber-rich foods like whole grains and produce," Moores says.
But won't eating more often mean overeating? Not if you follow Neville's advice to break up your meals. For instance, have part of your breakfast -- a slice of toast with peanut butter, perhaps -- and save some yogurt for a mid-morning snack. "Break up lunch the same way to help avoid a mid-afternoon slump," Neville says.
Reference : www.webmd.com/diet/features/13-ways-to-fight-sugar-cravings#1 dailyburn.com/life/health/sugar-addiction-detox/
There are two aspects to feeling "addicted" to sugar
Expecting a very sweet taste to the things you eat and drink, and not enjoying unsweetened or less sweetened versions. Maybe you like three sugars in your tea or coffee, or you sprinkle sugar on cereal, fruit, and the like
Getting a "rush" when you eat something sweeet, and feeling a drop later, which you fix by having more sugar.
Not everyone experiences the second, but many do. Your approaches to the situation depend on which thing you're trying to fix.
For being used to a sweet taste, try a little while of not eating the things you expect to be sweet. No tea or coffee, no cereal, no toast, whatever. Then when you reintroduce the food, use half the sugar that you used to. If that sounds too unpleasant, try gradually reducing the amount of sugar you add over a few weeks. Switching to alternate sweeteners (whether "healthier" like honey or maple syrup, which might provide a few micronutrients as well as sweetness, or lower-calorie like Splenda, Stevia etc) isn't going to help this pattern of needing sweetness, so it's a poor solution. When you can't get diet ginger ale you'll just drink regular ginger ale because you patterns haven't changed so you don't like water. If you want to eat and drink fewer sweet things, do that, don't change where the sweetness comes from to make your old pattern ok.
For the sugar rush/high followed by crash, things are different. Whenever you eat something sweet, be sure to eat some protein or fat at the same time or very shortly afterwards. This will mute the high a little and more importantly, prevent the crash. This was an issue for both my children and they learned how to get something other than pure sugar into their system quickly. So if you start your day with jam on toast, instead of two slices of that, have one of jam on toast and then one of peanut butter on toast. If you start your day with a bowl of fruit, how about putting some yogurt (ideally not zero fat yogurt) in there too? If you have a donut or cookies at 3pm, could you not also have a little cheese (brought from home, it won't spoil) or some almonds or peanuts (which will keep for weeks) as well?
Sugar is a kind of food. So, you might want to try some food-addiction support programs.
Overeaters Anonymous is a good option. Sugar addicts are always welcome to join their program.
They have:
meetings you can visit
a podcast
books and pamphlets that you can buy
and a sub-Reddit where you can post.
Thoughts?
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