Cutting refined sugar feels like death

Sugar withdraw?

So if you and I were sitting in a room with a table.
You on one side, I on the other.
And I dumped a 5lb bag of sugar in the center.
You're telling me that you're so addicted to sugar that you'd bury your face in it and start eating it up by the handfulls?

Or, you like sweet snacks that are a mixture of protein, fats and carbs, that are designed to feel good in the mouth and taste so good that you cannot just have 1?

It's a big difference right?

Send a friend request and I'll help you break the cycle.

Dan_Rollins_ACE_PN wrote: »

Send a friend request and I'll help you break the cycle.

Nice sales pitch.

Replace the word "sugar" with any other food you love and eat daily, and you would feel anxious too if you had to give it up. You are used to eating certain foods. Not eating them breaks your usual routine and habits. You may have even formed an emotional attachment to some of these foods. Of course giving them up would be hard and may cause you anxiety.

Here is how you could handle this: stop thinking of it like an addiction and think of it like a habit. How do you change a habit? You have two options:
1. Replace the habit with another, but endure an initial period of discomfort. Whenever you crave something you wish to cut out of your diet, think why and where you crave it. For example, if you are used to having chocolate every day when you come back from work, try to associate coming from work with something else, like taking a hot bath. With time, the connection between work and chocolate will be replaced with taking a hot bath. It does take some time to accept your new routine.
2. Tweak the habit so it fits with your current diet. Using the chocolate example above you could either designate 3 days where you can have chocolate after work, and 3 days where you take a bath. Alternatively, you could always have chocolate but reduce the amount to something that is acceptable for your current calorie budget.
3. Substitute with something similar. Diet soda is sweet without the calories. Using a sweetener for your coffee and an alternative lower calorie creamer may save you a few calories. Some substitutions work great, others don't. For example, a sweetener in my chai tea does not change the taste a lot so I use sweetener. Having fruits instead of candy does not work, though. When I want candy it has to be candy, not an apple. This substitution just doesn't give the same kind of satisfaction (for some people it does! but not for me)

Basically just try things and tweak them to find the easiest route for you. Always expect some initial discomfort until you get used to something new, but don't force changes on yourself that would always be hard, not just initially. For example, I know I will always have access to bread, so cutting it out would not work for me. It would make things harder every single day because I'm faced with bread every single day and I love it. Cutting out donuts, on the other hand, was pretty easy because I don't like them much and don't feel tempted by them when I see them. To me they aren't worth the calories, so that's one change I can sustain.

ditter80 wrote: »

Yuck.. some of yall are some bitter bitchy *kitten*

Please teach me how to derive emotion from text.

Rowan09 wrote: »

Why are some of you being so condescending? If it's a major diet change, yeah, there will be side effects...

1. Who has been condescending?
2. There really is no need to cut out refined sugar to the point of pain