It all started the first weekend of this month (Feb) when my dd had her birthday party. I ate some cake.......and we had leftover cake and it was so good that I had some more......

I usually avoid sugar.

Well now....3 weeks later, I realize I have put on 5 pounds (all on my stomach) and my asthma is acting up really bad and I feel like I have no energy and am depressed.

Last night, it finally dawned on me that I have been eating a lot (compared to what I usually eat) of sugar and this is the culprit behind how horrible I feel.

So, today I am back to cutting the sugar strictly but I know I'm in a addiction phase right now since I have consumed so much of it since my dd's birthday and I'm not looking forward to withdrawl.

At least I now know that sugar is my one thing that sets off horrible eating patterns and bad feelings, weight gain, no energy etc....

Why it took me three weeks to realize this? Kind of disgusted at myself right now.

Anyway, any tips for surviving (for the second time) sugar withdrawl?

Anyone else here have the same problems with sugar????? If so, how about advice for me since it has only been a year since I cut it out and this is my first setback and I'm just so angry and upset about it.

The next few days are going to be really difficult.

Michelle

HTH

http://www.radiantrecovery.com/

http://www.radiantrecovery.com/7steps.html
This is one of things that makes it work so well.

http://www.radiantrecovery.com/cgi-bin/bbs-new/webbbs_config.pl

Thanks!

The second link had information I needed.....it said that it takes about five days (sugar withdrawl) and the fourth day is usually the worst. That will help me get through the next five days.

The site also talks (in step 7) about how one cookie will not make me spiral into sugar again, but it primes my body to crave more. That is EXACTLY what happened to me when I let my guard down and had that first piece of cake at my dd birthday after I had been off sugar for nearly a year.

This site is fascinating and while I don't feel the program is what I need, the tips I have read there in the past few minutes are so helpful and I am going to have this site as my homepage for the next few weeks until I get back on my normal eating again.

Michelle

Banish it from your house. When I'm in a sugar-addiction cycle as you describe (and it always happens after a birthday here) :rolleyes: I will scour the cupboards looking for sugar.

I find that filling my sweets "need" with things like fruit smoothies or baby carrots or apples early in the day helps me not crave it later. My favorite "sweet" smoothies are strawberry or cherry with vanilla added to either. I make mine with frozen bananas, frozen berries, soymilk, fresh apple or pear, and flax oil.

I also limit my grocery shopping to once a week and make a strict list so I don't pick up a "treat" - or if I do, at least it's only once a week. I am serious when I say, get the sugar out of the house! If you have to box it up and truck it to a friend's, do that, or just throw it out. I can't even keep baking sugar in the house or I will whip something sweet up for myself.

Drink a ton of water, eat plenty of protein and other healthy foods, and hang in there. It takes me a few weeks to come down off a sugar run, usually. FWIW I figured this out about five years ago and have been struggling with it ever since then. I can go months without trouble but then a birthday will set it off. Argh.

Good luck.

Originally posted by amyamanda
Banish it from your house. When I'm in a sugar-addiction cycle as you describe (and it always happens after a birthday here) :rolleyes: I will scour the cupboards looking for sugar.

I find that filling my sweets "need" with things like fruit smoothies or baby carrots or apples early in the day helps me not crave it later. My favorite "sweet" smoothies are strawberry or cherry with vanilla added to either. I make mine with frozen bananas, frozen berries, soymilk, fresh apple or pear, and flax oil.

I also limit my grocery shopping to once a week and make a strict list so I don't pick up a "treat" - or if I do, at least it's only once a week. I am serious when I say, get the sugar out of the house! If you have to box it up and truck it to a friend's, do that, or just throw it out. I can't even keep baking sugar in the house or I will whip something sweet up for myself.

Drink a ton of water, eat plenty of protein and other healthy foods, and hang in there. It takes me a few weeks to come down off a sugar run, usually. FWIW I figured this out about five years ago and have been struggling with it ever since then. I can go months without trouble but then a birthday will set it off. Argh.

Good luck.

Thank you thank you for your response!!!

I may come back here over the next week or two to this thread/board and ask for support.....I know I've done it once (cut the sugar) and went nearly a year w/out a setback so I need tell myself that I can do this again.

I really hate how I am feeling lately.....and now know it is the sugar.

Michelle

:big hug:


I am using this program to help my son, sugar affects him and changes his personality entirely.

I can't tolerate much sugar at all, I have never been able to eat very much of it without feeling sick. So obviously I am sensitive to it as well.

I am glad you were able to get some info to help.

I'm so glad I read this thread. I am eating way too much sugar and need to stop. The links posted were very helpful. Thank you!

arrggg! I am SO with you!
When I was put on the TPN and taken off all food it was the forst time in my life I didn't crave sugar.. So what do I do when I start eating again???? :rolleyes: Yeah I start right back up! I was FORCED to do it but thrilled because I was having such a hard time with it! I have only been eating for a couple weeks now and I am back where I started *sigh*
I am so glad you started this thread (even if I was of no help lol) because I need to face it and stop it now... I am off to check that link out!
GOOD LUCK MAMA!! :thumbsup:

Thanks mamas.....

Boy, yesterday was rough, especially when dh and I went out to a movie.

Today is day two.

It amazes me how this all seemed to "sneak" up on me, KWIM? I think the medical traveling we had to do this past month did not help since we were eating out a lot.

We are off to state science fair (our dd is in it) and I am going to pack a cooler with foods for me to eat for most of the two days we'll be gone. This thrills dh and the children becuase this means they can get dollar menue items from Wendy's for their food.:rolleyes:

I still can't believe how much sugar really wreaked total havoc on me and how it took me three weeks to realize what was happening.

Michelle

Michelle,

IKWYM. It makes me so mad that it's so hard to get off and so easy to get hooked on again.

I am a true sugar addict. I was for my entire childhood. I did not experince the ups and downs of sugar like my friends, but I NEEDED it. No kidding, I was like Claudia in The Babysitters Club, I would hollow out books and hide candy all over my room. I would spend all my extra money and allowence on candy and sugar. My mom started having me take vit's when I started my period. And right around that time I stopped being a slave to sugar.

I was fasinated by the reaction my body was having and I studied it in high school and then I minored in Nutrition in college.

I find that only time I have a lot of trouble getting sugar out of my diet if I am low in B vitamins. Taking a multi B supplement may take the edge off of your cravings. I know it does for me... also, if it is chocolate you are craving you need iron. The reason that this works is that in natural foods that are the sweetest are often the things that have the most B vitamins. So your body craves the sugar... apricots for example. Tons of B vitamins and some iron to boot. But the quick trip to the Brachs candy section of the grocer can seem like it is filling that place that is asking for apricots to your taste buds... but the glory of science has taken all of the actual food out of your candy food treat.

I spent years studying nutritional intuitiveness. These were just two of the amazing things I found out. But both I have seen many times in my life since. If you crave Chocolate have a steak. If you crave strait sugar (like jellies, hard candies, or sweet sodas) have a spinach salad, and then have the sugar. In my experience, if you cut out sugar all together you are not getting to the root of the trouble (the deficiency in the other things your body needs) you are just covering it up.

HTH

Love Val

PS a hand full of dried fruit sometimes gives that sugar craving a kick too... I use dried organic apricots a LOT when I crave sugar.

Wow. I learned a lot by reading this thread. Did you know that my dh's anxiety attacks went away completely when he started taking a B supplement?

My dd is a total sugar addict. It waxes and wanes. I am somewhat too. I am going to look into the B vitamins...wow. I was just reading about how for Jake I really need to give him B's, Mg and omega-3 fats every day...so maybe B vitamins for the whole family.

{{{{{Hugs}}}}} Hello,my name is Elizabeth and I am a sugar addict. :wah: I am currently off sugar because I am on the anti-candida diet. Sugar is EVIL!!! It is calling me at this very moment! HELP! I fell off the diet for almost a month. Luckily I was SKINNY because I put on 15 lbs! :eek: Now I am normal,lol. But man,once I started,I could not stop! :( Now I am back on and MISERABLE. I ate so many baby carrots today that my belly hurts. I will say that it is definatley true that the cravings go away. I have done this before and I know it is true. That is the only thing that keeps me going right now! {{{{Hugs}}}}

Another thing I remembered...Chromium Piccolinate is supposed to help curb sugar cravings. It's a supplement you can get at the HFS. I have taken it before and it seems to work. Good luck.

This is all facinating.

I have been thinking a lot about sugar adddiction recently so this post is well timed. When you all give up sugar, are you talking about refined sugar or all forms? Honey, maple syrup, rice syrup for example?

I have a sugar intolerance for refined sugars. I am so tired lately and I realize it is because I have slipped back to eating more sugar.
I seriously need to cut back again. I went several weeks with almost no sugar and I felt like a new woman.

Originally posted by grian
This is all facinating.

I have been thinking a lot about sugar adddiction recently so this post is well timed. When you all give up sugar, are you talking about refined sugar or all forms? Honey, maple syrup, rice syrup for example?

IMHO and only mine you should never give up whole sugars. That is why the carb-free thing scares me. Giving up all carbs sends you into a state of Ketosis... which is when you body starts flushing some of the things used to keep the cells together through your urine, and when you find that in your urine you are "doing it right"... Freaky freaky I say!

Whole sugars are treated differently than refined sugars in the body. When you are talking strait glucose, galactose, or fructose (chemically enhanced, chemically made, or chemically refined) that is when you run into issues. Becuase your body does not know how to process those... simply becuase they do not exsist in nature alone... they are found in foods along with other chemicals and protiens that make it easier to process..... They have only been eaten for about 100 years by humans, and our bodies just have not gotten the time they need to catch up to how much refined sugar has been put in our diets.

I would not eat rice syrup... but honey... molasses (which is sugar in it's rawest form), maple syrup? Aw heck no... I use these things all the time. :D

Love Val

Originally posted by grian
This is all facinating.

I have been thinking a lot about sugar adddiction recently so this post is well timed. When you all give up sugar, are you talking about refined sugar or all forms? Honey, maple syrup, rice syrup for example?

Not me....only cutting candy and white/brown sugar and things along those lines. (things that are big sugar culprits) Now that I am learning more here, I see that these are called refined sugars. *lol* I love this thread.

I use honey, rice syrup, and maple instead.

Michelle

Thank you for the B vitamin tip Val!!!

That is great info for me.

Chocolate is my weakness.....that is for sure!! I'd LOVE to try some fair trade dark chocolate sometime. But I can't find it around here. (big shocker, huh? *lol*)

Michelle

For chocolate cravings- a really intense amount of protein seems to stop cravings cold, for me.

Chocolate has magnesium, which is the core mineral in- okay- pregnancy brain here- chlorophyll- the green chemical that absorbs the sunlight and turns it into food. Even if you ate a fully balanced diet, you would not get your daily RDA of magnesium- I read that in a nutrition textbook- big shocker. So you can take a mineral supplement of just magnesium, and be in a better state. It "balances" with calcium, which you may or may not have enough of in your diet. I tend to just take Mg and skip the calcium pill.

Since you've figured this out once, aand you've done something about it, and you were eating a cake- maybe you can forgive yourself, and treat yourself kindly? It is pretty middle of winter- cravings are more fierce in winter, from what I've read. It's sort of a natual Advent/Lent rhythm, yk?

Also, for your daughter's cake, maybe, possibly, next year make a relatively low-sugar cake, and then let the guests build parfaits with different fruits, cream, nuts, an alcohol sauce for the grwonups, maybe. That way you don't have to feel deprived, and neither does she?????/ Would that work?

ari

so glad I don't have to give up my honey and maple syrup.

:heart:

What about dehydrated cane juice? Is it just as offensive as refined white sugar???

I just requested Potatoes Not Prozac and Little Sugar Addicts from my library. My neighbor tells me she is going to follow me to the library when I return them so she can check them out. We have both been sick and found ourselves eating sugar-filled snacks with noses so stuffy that we can't even taste them!!! It occurred to me at that point that I have a problem....

Also, I have been taking Kyo-green and it is causing me to detox. I asked my friend (my raw foods/hygenics guru) if I keep eating junk while taking the Kyo-green if I will just continue to feel awful forever....Her answer was yes, so obviously, I need to make some changes. Or stop taking the Kyo-green, LOL.

Originally posted by Ariadne Umbrell
For chocolate cravings- a really intense amount of protein seems to stop cravings cold, for me.

Chocolate has magnesium, which is the core mineral in- okay- pregnancy brain here- chlorophyll- the green chemical that absorbs the sunlight and turns it into food. Even if you ate a fully balanced diet, you would not get your daily RDA of magnesium- I read that in a nutrition textbook- big shocker. So you can take a mineral supplement of just magnesium, and be in a better state. It "balances" with calcium, which you may or may not have enough of in your diet. I tend to just take Mg and skip the calcium pill.

Since you've figured this out once, aand you've done something about it, and you were eating a cake- maybe you can forgive yourself, and treat yourself kindly? It is pretty middle of winter- cravings are more fierce in winter, from what I've read. It's sort of a natual Advent/Lent rhythm, yk?

Also, for your daughter's cake, maybe, possibly, next year make a relatively low-sugar cake, and then let the guests build parfaits with different fruits, cream, nuts, an alcohol sauce for the grwonups, maybe. That way you don't have to feel deprived, and neither does she?????/ Would that work?

ari

ari,

Thanks :) I will look in my books for a low sugar cake recipe. good idea.

Also, thanks for the words about not being so hard on myself. That felt really good to read and I needed the reminder. On top of all this sugar stuff, I stopped taking my BC pill and I wonder if that is playing into the emotional side of all this.

I've been having hot cocoa for my choc craving.

Would a multi-vitamin cover the vit B (wasn't that what Val suggested) and the Mag???

I do have a womens nature made multi but I just am not good at remembering to take it.

Michelle

Just wanted to let you all know that it really does get better! In my first post I was totally craving it(3 days off sugar ect. on my diet). The next day it lessened alot and now I don't crave it at all anymore! I am only craving healthy foods! :thumbsup: