Sweets / Photo by Unsplash
By now you have probably read enough to understand that sugar and sweets should be crossed off your grocery list. But actually kicking sugar and eliminating cravings is a difficult feat, as its many fans know all too well.
Battle of the sweets
As monumental a feat as quitting tobacco is, giving up sugar can be even harder: The biggest problem is that most people are sugar-addicted, and there is no strong aroma that causes others to chase sugar eaters outdoors, as happens with smokers. This makes eating sweets easy, clean and socially feasible in the home and in public places. Further, the social isolation of smokers has forced them to acknowledge their addiction and the difficulties that tobacco creates in a smoker’s life. This acknowledgment is a crucial threshold to cross in their healing journey.
But the showering of sugar on our children and almost universal addiction to sugar allows a comfortable blanket of denial to settle over our minds and lifestyles. This denial blinds us to the growing problems accumulating in our arteries, heart, nervous system, kidneys and other internal organs. Sugar is not seen as a public health problem, although it is the most entrenched, wide-spread and relentless one.
What makes giving up sugar even harder is the many different methods proposed by the various experts.
Diets that attempt to break the sugar addiction
Most famously, Dr. Robert Atkins advised to simply give up sugar and other high-carbohydrate foods altogether, while consoling oneself with unlimited high-fat and high-protein foods. This diet has worked miraculously for many people, in both weight loss and improved well-being. Yet for many others, large quantities of proteins and fats are not at all digestible or appropriate for their metabolic type.
To win the eating game is to choose the healthiest foods possible in the wildest variety available.Dr. Barry Sears’ “The Zone” offers some simple sugars in the diet along with mostly healthier foods, but this just keeps the addiction going and does not heal the main problem of sugar cravings.
Dr. Arthur Agatston’s “South Beach Diet” urges minimizing sweets, but also includes such items as ice cream and bread, which contribute to the long term torture of a frequently teased addiction.
A similar problem occurs with “The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet” by Drs. Rachael and Richard Heller, in which a “reward meal” is available in the evening to those who have denied their sugar cravings during the day. This also keeps a sugar addiction regularly fueled and stoked, ultimately resulting in frustration for the trusting dieter.
These diets are as defeating in the long run for the sugar consumer as one cigarette a day – for years – is for the smoker.
Writers such as William Duffy, author of Sugar Blues, and Nancy Appleton in Lick the Sugar Habit have dealt with the problem of sugar addiction by warning of the medical horrors of long term sugar consumption and by advocating complete avoidance. The diets exclude sugars, and Appleton advocates chromium and glutamine supplements to replenish the sugar-ravaged body and to stabilize sugar cravings.
Another workable diet, which is less well-known than most of the preceding works, is The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program, by Kathleen DesMaisons, Ph.D., in which the dieter works in stages, going “slow carb” first before “low carb.” Slow carbs are those that are accompanied by a lot of fiber and protein, which slow down the entry of sugar to the blood stream.
Quitting sugar in three steps
Substituting whole grain bread for white bread, steel-cut oats for other cereals, sweets with protein for sweets alone and similar substitutions makes the important first step of taking the sugar addict from the volatile glucose-insulin roller coaster of extreme highs and lows to a more moderate fluctuation of biochemicals and hence moods, cravings and sensations.
After these transitional foods, and once in the more moderate rhythm of blood analytes, the dieter is in the much stronger position to handle a reduction, then elimination of simple sugars. In DesMaisons’ book, the last cold-turkey withdrawal is still a bit of a cliff jump, but she certainly strengthens the dieter toward that end more effectively than most other writers in this area.
The final step of giving up sugar with the help of chromium supplementation has been established as beneficial. It is also useful for the dieter to understand which other nutrients are affected by high sugar states and low sugar states (both of which are visited by the sugar addict on a daily basis), and to know how to substitute healthier foods that contain those same needed nutrients.
For example, sugar cravings and sugar rebound involve deficiencies of the following nutrients:
- Chromium, which can be found in broccoli, cheese, dried beans, calf liver and chicken.
- Carbon, which can be found in fresh fruits.
- Phosphorus, which can be found in chicken, beef, liver, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, nuts and legumes.
- Sulphur, which can be found in onions, cranberries, horseradish and cruciferous vegetables.
- And tryptophan, which can be found in cheese, liver, lamb and spinach.
In the case of chocolate cravings, magnesium is also deficient, and can be found in raw nuts, seeds, legumes and fruits.
The final answer
Ultimately, the way to win the eating game is to choose the healthiest foods possible in the wildest variety available, with respect to your metabolic type. However, for the sugarholic, some extra care with the above substitutions will be a necessary component of breaking the chains of sugar addiction.
Colleen Huber, Ph.D. is a naturopathic physician. Learn more about her through her website.
