Do you find yourself constantly craving sugar? Maybe chocolate or ice cream?
Tried to cut it out completely before but always find yourself falling back into your old habits? Feel like you may never overcome sugar addiction ?
Let me start by saying, this is normal! There are soo many out there struggling with these constant cravings for highly processed sugary foods. There are a few main reasons why this is common and these will be discussed in this blog post. I will also be sharing 5 tips to overcome sugar addiction.
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In “3 steps to overcoming restrictive dieting and emotional eating” you will learn the 3 most important steps in healing your relationship with food.
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Why You Are Addicted to Sugar and 5 Tips to Overcome Sugar Addiction
1) Your Body is After Easy Energy
Sugar cravings are not abnormal at all. When our blood sugar levels are low, this is when our body starts signalling to us that we are hungry. Our body wants ENERGY (this could be in the form of fruit, a nutrient dense meal OR a highly processed sugary food) regardless of where it comes from.
Highly processed sugary foods are easy energy sources for the body and physiologically this is what the body wants when blood sugar levels go down.
Cravings for these foods intensify as the body gets used to these quick energy fixes when blood sugar gets low. Your body gets used to this easy energy, so continues to crave it, because it works! (brings your blood sugar levels back up and provides your body energy).
To overcome sugar addiction:
Make sure you are eating enough throughout the day and have nutrient dense snacks ready if you are going hungry between meals to eliminate this physiological craving.
This will take persistency to overcome, but by understanding the bodies physiological cravings for easy energy I hope you can see the importance of eating enough!
2) You Are Stuck in the Habit of Eating Sugar
Habits are formed when we continue to do something in response to a particular trigger (or triggers).
So, for example, when you started reaching for a biscuit when you sat down with a hot drink after work and you kept doing this. In this scenario, the hot drink after a long day at work (and/ or the thoughts and emotions you feel after work - i.e stress) are the trigger.
Continuing to take this same action after the trigger/s reinforces these habits (making them harder to break and easier to keep doing). These habits start to feel like natural reactions, so natural that you may not even be able to notice the trigger when you first think about it.
OR quite simply (it is not often this simple) you could be stuck in the habit of reaching for this food when you are hungry and/or busy.
Overtime, sugar has become the way you cope with (or react to) certain triggers.
To Overcome Sugar Addiction
Break the habit.
So how do you break this habit? You start by figuring out what the trigger is – what is it that you are reacting to?
Once you figure this out, you can think about other ways you could react/ work through these triggers.
For more on this check out my post on how to stop letting feelings if stress/ overwhelm turn into emotional eating here.
3) Feelings You May be Trying to Avoid
I want to mention first that while you may have formed the habit through reaching for the “easy energy fix” when you are hungry, it is not often JUST this on its own. If you think it is, still dig deeper because there will be a reason – why are you reaching for the easy fix?
Often the reason we have become stuck in the habit of this sugar addiction is due to some sort of emotional trigger. Now, this trigger may not be clear to you if you have been addicted to sugar for some time – it probably has reached the point where the emotional trigger is not clear. This is where it is important for you to really think and try to understand what is going on for you.
More often than not, it is some sort of avoidance of emotions. Feelings of stress, anxiety, sadness etc bring us discomfort and we may have turned towards these high in sugar processed foods as a way to avoid these feelings.
To Overcome Sugar Addiction
If this is the case, we need to firstly become aware of the feelings we are trying to avoid and then stop avoiding them. Let them be, recognize that they are not harming us and the feelings pass.
Check out my blog post here on how to stop letting feelings of stress/ overwhelm turn into emotional eating if you have not already.
4) Trying to Just Cut Sugar Out Completely
To truly overcome sugar addiction it is important to stop trying to fully cut it out.
When we focus on cutting sugar out, we make ourselves want this food more. Sure, we may get passed the addictive nature of these foods, but psychologically we will find ourselves craving these foods very easily. If we do eat this sort of food we are very likely to overeat it because we have been restricting it.
To Overcome Sugar Addiction
Instead, focus on the nourishing foods you are bringing into your diet. If you find yourself reaching for these foods, stop yourself in your tracks and ask why. Check out my blog post here which discusses this in further detail.
5) Don't Get Down on Yourself if You Have Sugar
It is important to unlearn this all or nothing mindset towards sugar.
If you eat sugar and start getting down on yourself – you are just feeding back into old habits and beliefs around sugar being “bad”. It is important to realize that high sugar foods are not “bad” they just have less nutrition compared to other foods.
If you find yourself having these foods again then be gentle on yourself and reflect on why it happened. What triggered it? What could you do differently next time?
These habits are going to take time to unlearn and by recognizing where they are coming from and by having kindness towards yourself, you will be a lot more equipped in overcoming them. If you would like to learn more about how to do this; check out the course that has just been released by clicking the button below.
In Closing:
To overcome sugar addiction it is important to understand where it is coming from and more often than not it is a response to some sort of emotional trigger.
I hope that you try out some of the suggestions in this blog post and let me know in the comments what you found most helpful.
Remember to claim your free guide “3 steps to overcoming restrictive dieting and emotional eating” to get you started on your healing journey.
Click here to download it:
Resources You Might Find Helpful
Understand and Overcome Emotional Eating Course –
Blog post: How to stop letting feelings of stress/ overwhelm turn into emotional eating in 5 steps:
https://makaylacarpenter.com/stress-overwhelm-turn-into-emotional-eating/
Blog post: 3 steps to include more healthy foods without feeling like you are on a diet
https://makaylacarpenter.com/include-more-healthy-foods-without-feeling-like-you-are-on-a-diet/
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