How to Stop Craving Sugar and Get Your Life Back

“How to stop craving sugar?” is a question that is often asked these days because so many of us suffer from Craving Sugar, an addiction to sugar or sweets.   If you are asking this question, the answer will be based on which of the known approaches will be easier for you to handle.  It is going to take will-power, but you might as well select an approach that is more compatible with your personality.  Sugar craving is an addiction like any other.   Sugar – and it’s hold on American culture has been with us for a long time.  Of course if you’d like professional help, that is available. Get Expert Help Every Step of the Way - See this Review of Diane Sanfilippo's 21-Day Sugar Detox Program.

 

How to Stop Craving Sugar
Consuming sugar in all its forms is not the sort of thing that you can expect to casually stop when you want to.  On the contrary, how to stop sugar cravings is to review the approaches discussed here, pick the one best diet or life change that is most compatible with your own strengths and weaknesses, and commit to making it happen.

To learn How to Stop Craving Sugar, Consider the Alternatives

Develop an approach that fits your personality and needs, and that fits into one of 3 categories:

  • Cold Turkey Reduction of Sugar Consumption
  • Gradual  Reduction of Sugar Consumption
  • A Planned Low Carb Diet

For the first two approaches you would just continue with your current eating habits while adjusting them in a number of ways to either reduce sugar consumption abruptly or gradually.  For the third one, you would follow a scientifically developed low calorie diet plan.   These approaches are explained in more detail below:

  • How to Stop Craving SugarCold Turkey Reduction of Sugar Consumption

The Cold Turkey approach is by far the most difficult at first, but people who like this approach will tell you that it’s a lot easier than the gradual approach because you get more powerful results much more quickly.  Bottom line, you just cut out sugar in all its forms.  This includes the typical culprits such as cookies, candy and cupcakes, as well as the high carbohydrate temptations like bread, chips, crackers, croutons, and all the other fast food items we find today based on refined flour.  This diet is not easy – especially for the first few days, as you will be actually physically affected by the withdrawal of highly addictive sugar from your diet.   After about a week or so, you will lose you cravings for sugar, though, and find it a downhill run from there on out.   Again, this isn’t for the faint-hearted, but it is still the fastest and many will say easiest answer for “how to stop sugar cravings”.  Another advantage to this diet is that people who successfully go without sugar for a long time tend to lose a great deal of their natural desire for it.  Sweets just don’t interest them anymore.  They also begin to discover wonderful foods to eat instead of sugar, like Kale, that broaden their tastes for food.  So it’s quite effective if you can keep with it long enough.

In this approach, you would eat as you please but adopt some approach to, over time, reduce the percentage of sugar you consume every day.  This would be accomplished by adding healthier foods such as low carb protein bars or dropping unhealthy food from your daily meals or by some combination of both techniques.  For instance, your first step might be to add vegetables or fruit to each meal or to stop drinking sweetened drinks – or both.   Common sense should be your best guide – changing your habits gradually while keeping an eye on the prize of an improved lifestyle.    The danger with this approach is that you will retain some of your desire for sugar and you will be tempted after some success with this, to slide back into your old habits.  The best approach to take with this is to make it a life style change.  In other words, don’t plan on it being a temporary thing, but something you will stick with forever.

  • How to Stop Craving SugarA Planned Low Carb Meal Plan

With a planned low calorie diet, you follow the advice of experts on specifically what you eat for each meal to ensure you have the best combination of nutrition and low calorie food to, in a healthy way, reduce you daily calorie consumption.   Some of course include the actual food or supplements you consume according to the diet plan.  One of the advantages of a diet plan is that you don’t have to research food types and calorie counts or make decisions.  You can just follow the plan.  There are many diets available and I’ve used one successfully, that you can get to from this link: Fat Loss 4 Idiots Diet.  It sounds silly but has worked well for me and 4 personal friends of mine.  What I liked about it was that you get a meal plan based on your own preferences for all types of food – so I really enjoyed the food.  I’m not saying it’s the best – just that it worked for me.  One characteristic of this kind of diet, is that people tend to use them as temporary fixes – for example, to get off that extra 10 pounds you picked up over winter, or to lose weight for an upcoming wedding.  They don’t work so well as a lifestyle change that will support you for the rest of your life, but they are a powerful tool to get some weight off every now and then.  One last thought on this approach.  Use it as a tool to get off weight, then adopt one of the other approaches to change your lifestyle and learn how to stop sugar cravings for good.

For all three approaches, the following concepts may be helpful:.

  • How often you eat is a critical factor.  Slender people, you’ll find, tend to eat at least 3 or more meals a day with healthy snacks in between, and that’s part of the reason they are slender.  If it has been a long time since your last meal or snack, two things may go wrong.  For one, you are famished, so you might not choose wisely what you eat or how much you eat.  A second, real problem is that your metabolism may be low, so you are burning calories at a lower than normal rate, meaning more of the food you are about to eat will be converted to fat.  So – eat often and wisely.
  • Eating refined sugar (i.e. candy or sweets) during one of these diets is like pouring gasoline on your backyard barbecue fire.  Your metabolism will flare up, giving you a short burst of energy, but then you’ll be tired, cranky, and very hungry in an hour or two.  Gasoline does the same thing on a barbecue fire – it flares up dangerously but then dies out too quickly to really get a charcoal fire going.  Not safe!  Not a good idea!

Some Final Thoughts on How to Stop Craving Sugar

Removing low fat products from your diet is suggested – in other words, increase the amount of fat you eat.  This is a common theme in a number of articles in this site.  Authorities have told us for years to avoid fat in our diet and now it is clear that we need that fat, both to maintain our weight and also for our health.

How to Stop Craving SugarIf you find this information beneficial, please use it to decide on an approach to use in how to stop craving sugar.  You may even decide to try a couple of the approaches, one after the other, to navigate your way through this process.  Then do your homework on the approach you choose, work up a plan of action, and commit to that plan of action to change your lifestyle permanently.  Set a date to begin and do it!

Now that you know how to stop craving sugar, either try some of these techniques on your own or go with an expert.

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I'm here to help, so let me know if I can help with getting off of sugar or weight loss in any way. Contact me at Joe AT CravingSugar DOT net. If you like what you see here - Share It at the top of the post!!

Joe Lindley

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How to Stop Craving Sugar

Filed under: Sugar Addiction

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