My topic on my regular guest spot on WJON a couple weeks back was on sugar addiction. I have a lot of new clients that have started up this month and one thing that can be tough is eliminating sugar in their daily lives. Eliminating sugar can be a challenge, especially with the addictive properties to the food.
Believe me, I have a sweet tooth. I will share some tips that has helped me find healthy ways to satisfy those sweet cravings. However, before I talk about the tips I want to talk about the Sugar Addiction Cycle. When you eat something with sugar, you crave it, and then the addictive properties will make you want more. Once you eat it, your blood sugar spikes – that would be your high and the dopamine is released in the brain which will signal to want more. Then your blood sugar drops drastically, which is when you get tired, feel low in energy, and that causes immediate fat storage and your body then craves the sugar high. Then the hunger and craving become even more intense and the cycle begins again.
Think about this as I go through the list of health concerns from too much sugar:
Weight issues
Obesity
Diabetes
Fatigue
Depression
Kidney and liver stress
Skin problems
Mood swings and digestive problems
Mental fatigue
Poor brain development in children
Lack of concentration
Allergies
Asthma
ADHD
Hypoglycemia
Immune and nutritional deficiencies
Sugar is known to cause over 70 different illnesses and diseases including many forms of cancer. It has been found that just 8 tablespoons of sugar, equivalent to a can of soft drink, is enough to deplete the immune system by 40% for up to 5 hours.
But, before you reach for the ‘sugar free’ products, think again. These products are even more toxic to your body and linked to cancer, multiple sclerosis, and many other serious health conditions.
Here are some tips if you feel that you are on the Sugar Addiction Cycle
Step One: Replace ALL Refined Sugar with Natural Sweeteners
This step means exactly what it says. You must get rid of all the white sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in your home wherever it may lurk and replace it with natural, whole forms of sugar like honey (make sure it is organic local honey), Grade A maple syrup, coconut sugar and Stevia.
Do not use agave as it is highly processed.
Don’t forget condiments. They are a big source of HFCS. Ketchup is a HUGE one! Check your labels. Our family gets the Annie’s brand ketchup for my daughter. Most condiments will have some form of refined sugar in the first ingredients.
Replace those protein bars with health food store versions that use whole cane sugar instead of refined white sugar as the sweetener, or make your own protein bars.
Whatever you do, DON”T replace the refined sugars with artificial sweeteners. Studies have shown that folks who consume artificial sweeteners have more sweet cravings than folks who just eat the sugar in its natural form!
Step Two: Increase the Amount of Whole, Unprocessed Fats in Your Diet
The sugar cravings many of us experience are due to the lack of enough healthy, whole fats in our diet. Dietary fat stabilizes blood sugar. Sweet cravings become overwhelming on dips in blood sugar. I used to think that it was lack of willpower that was preventing me from succeeding in getting my sugar cravings under control. As it turned out, it wasn’t a lack of willpower at all. It was because when I was at my worst with my eating disorder a decade ago, I was SO scared to eat any fat in my diet. All I wanted were carbs – they were all I craved. Once I started incorporating healthy fats such as nuts and oils in my diet, the intense craving of sugar went away.
It was my nonfat diet that was the primary problem (of the carb cravings anyway!).
So as part of this step, be sure to clear out of your pantry any item that features a “reduced fat” or “fat free” marketing line on the package. That packaging most of the time means there is a lot of processing done to make that food. More sugar, more chemicals, and less nutrition.
Make sure to stay away from: trans fats, partially hydrogenated fats, such as cheap vegetable oils that are used in processed foods.
Good fat examples are egg yolks, unrefined coconut oil, nut butters, nuts, sun butter, hemp oil, glee (a clarified butter), raw organic butter, and avocado.
Step Three: Remove All Forms of Processed, Whole Sugars from Your Home
One of the first thing I tell my clients is to clear out the pantry or cupboards if they are having trouble with the sugar and only stock up on natural sugars. Just cut out the temptations.
Step Four: Reduce Consumption of Natural Sugars from All Sources to No More than 3 TBL (36 grams) per Day
Congratulations are in order if you have made it this far to the fourth and final step. You are now 90% of the way to slaying the sugar monster in your life!
The final step involves a gradual reduction in the amount of natural sugars you consume to a manageable level of no more than 36 grams per day. Significant immune system suppression begins to occur above 36 grams (for adults, less in children) so this is the cutoff point you want to shoot for.
How long should this step take? As long as is necessary! For some, it will take one week. Others may find it takes several months. The point is to keep moving forward and don’t give up if you fall off the wagon on occasion. Just get up, dust yourself off, and keep going!
Ideally speaking, some of your days should not include any sweets at all after a while. Having a goal of no sweets ever is not realistic, however, so don’t even go there mentally.
Step Five: Get on a high quality Pro-biotic
If you have a buildup of sugars and ‘yeast’ in your digestive system, the bacteria can cause sugar cravings. By taking a quality pro-biotic such as Metagenics that you can get at some of the chiropractors offices in town, it will assist in bringing back a healthy balance of good bacteria to your digestive system, which will in turn decrease the sugar cravings.
Step six: Cut out one thing of sugar weekly, if you are having a hard time with this.
It may work out best if you do baby steps, baby steps seem to help most people because cutting everything out of your diet all at once can be very drastic and may lead to failure. So you want to be doing something that will be encouraging you to keep going. Celebrate with every milestone!
Interesting Tips:
Sugar fuels every cell in the brain. When you overload on sugary foods, it may alter the parts of the brain that control how much you eat.
Think you don’t have a sweet tooth, but crave bagels, chips, or French fries? These starchy foods are complex carbs that the body breaks down into simple sugars. Eaten without better foods, starches can make blood sugar surge and crash like sugar.
Simply put–carbohydrates, if eating too many will indeed be converted to sugar and stored as fat. Some examples of higher refined starches are rice, flour, and potatoes, bread, pretzels, crackers, and pasta. I’m not saying you can’t have carbs, but watching portion sizes is a must.
You can beat your sugar habit by quitting cold turkey. Some sugar detox plans urge you to avoid all sweets. That means all fruit, dairy, and refined grains. The idea is to clean out your system of sugar. But diet changes like this are too drastic to keep up. Changes that you can do only for the short term mean you’ll fall back to your old habits. I like to start by just eating all fresh produce, eating lean meats and staying away from package foods and drink a lot of water. I feel my best on that. Everyone is different so I can’t say what would be best for you. I do think there are some crazy cleanses out there that are very drastic, so make the best choice for yourself that you can fulfill the cleanse to get them best out of it.
The American Heart Association says that we should only be getting 9.5 teaspoons of sugar a day, but as an adult (this is on average) we are getting 22 teaspoons daily of sugar and children (on average) are getting 32 teaspoons of sugar a day.
Yikes. There are many GOOD reasons to cut out the sugar–are you with me?!
Tune in for more fitness and health tips on AM 1240 WJON at 11:40am every Wednesday. You can also listen here if you can’t listen on the radio: http://wjon.com/listen-live/
2 comments. Leave new
Should we be getting 9.5 teaspoons a day on top of the sugars from things like fruits and veggies or does the 9.5 include them?
Yes, total for a day is 9.5 teaspoons. So roughly, for 1 teaspoon it is 4.2 grams of sugar–in total 40-45 grams of sugar. It is hard to keep it that low with the fruits and veggies but keeping it close is ideal as far as the American Heart Association suggest.