I gave up sweets for a while... and I'm dying!
SuperheroSadie
Posts: 167 Member
Hey all,
So I'm back on 1200 cal/day trying to jumpstart my weightloss after I fell off the bandwagon for 4 weeks. (Only gained 1 pound, though! Yay!) But now I'm finding that I can't stop eating sweets! So I declared to my boyfriend that I was done with sweets and sodas for a few weeks until I could be reasonable about them...
It's 4pm of my first day and I just want chocolate or candy or soda so badly. I feel like there needs to be a support group for people who can't stop eating sweets. SEA? Sugar Eaters Anonymous?
I know that this is how the sugar works on the brain and etc etc, and that hopefully this will pass, but can someone tell me it will? Someone with experience in this kind of thing? Because right now I'm looking at one of my coworkers eating dry lucky charms and I'm so sad about my choices.
So I'm back on 1200 cal/day trying to jumpstart my weightloss after I fell off the bandwagon for 4 weeks. (Only gained 1 pound, though! Yay!) But now I'm finding that I can't stop eating sweets! So I declared to my boyfriend that I was done with sweets and sodas for a few weeks until I could be reasonable about them...
It's 4pm of my first day and I just want chocolate or candy or soda so badly. I feel like there needs to be a support group for people who can't stop eating sweets. SEA? Sugar Eaters Anonymous?
I know that this is how the sugar works on the brain and etc etc, and that hopefully this will pass, but can someone tell me it will? Someone with experience in this kind of thing? Because right now I'm looking at one of my coworkers eating dry lucky charms and I'm so sad about my choices.
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Replies
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My suggestion is that you are eating too few calories so your body is sending panic signals trying to get you to upload lots of calories quickly. Losing weight is a long term learning process of replacing bad habits with good ones so your weight loss is permanent. Maybe you should check out which sweet treats are best e.g. a Splice ice cream has many fewer calories than a Magnum. However you probably won't be able to choose wisely while your body is starving.0
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It will eventually get better as you know. It will take a bit but for now stay away from refined sugar as much as possible. A whole fresh fruit like an apple of orange may help and the fiber will keep your blood sugar from spiking. Hang in there.
I just lowered my carbs and understand the addiction factor of refined sugar. With diabetes running in my family, I can't let the addiction take over.0 -
Sugar is addicting for sure. Good thing about giving up sodas! Replace your sugar cravings with a nice crisp Apple until the sugar quits calling your name0
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Sugar is addicting for sure. Good thing about giving up sodas! Replace your sugar cravings with a nice crisp Apple until the sugar quits calling your name
Usually I would, but I'm allergic to all non-citrus fruits! I'm probably going to pick up something to bring to work tomorrow, like grapefruit or sommot. But unfortunately the campus I work on doesn't have anything like that in their dining hall...
Looks like I'm suffering for the next 3 hours! But on the plus side I just had dinner (If you could call a Banquet "turkey" meal a dinner...) so I'm not hungry for anything for at least a little bit of that time.
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You'll hate me. Check my food diary. I've already had my 1 Hershey Kiss and my chewy frosted granola bar, and it's a 1200 calorie diet.0
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It took me over 2 years before I finally quit craving sweets. And even now, though I don't crave them, I am still drawn, as though magnetically, to them.0
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »You'll hate me. Check my food diary. I've already had my 1 Hershey Kiss and my chewy frosted granola bar, and it's a 1200 calorie diet.
Sarcasm, eh?
The issue is that I can't do it in moderation like you can right now. Yah... I can have my 12 conversation hearts. And then another handful. And then just a few more... and then another few. Because if you eat a few at a time it doesn't count, right?
And then I had candy in the car. And soda at work. And Monster after my workout. And I would eat all these things and either not get to eat that day because I ate all my calories before 1, or I would have to give up my diet for that day and start again (with the same pattern) the next.0 -
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You have to decide what's more important to you, eating sweets in excess or losing weight. Sweets have been my downfall my whole life. I started back on here in January and pretty much cut out sweets. I've never drank much soda, so that's not an issue. I'll have a little honey in my tea and keep a box of Andes mints in the drawer and if I have extra calories in the evening I eat two, yes, just two. My cravings are gone. We had a birthday to celebrate last week and the cake was German chocolate, my all time favorite cake. I ate a small slice, logged it, and moved on. It actually tasted too sweet.0
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Have you tried pre-logging your day? I log everything I am planning to eat in the morning and leave myself a couple of hundred cals for snacks. Then when I get a craving, I know if I eat (and then log) more than a serving, I will screw up my beautifully planned day
Just a thought! I am awful at cold turkey, and have gotten to a point when i can "usually" indulge in moderation, but I know that doesn't work for everyone.
If it's an energy issue, maybe coffee or unsweetened tea?
Oh, and have you tried dark chocolate? I find when I need something sweet I can have one or two, like Dove Promises, and they are so rich that if I let it melt in my mouth it does the trick.
Good luck!0 -
I have some sugar in my morning tea and it hasnt affected me too much. if i have something like cake or pie then the rest of the day i crave more. I have reduced my carbs which helps. if it's that time of the month i crave it anyhow no matter what i do lol0
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I went cold-turkey off sugar due to illness - nothing over 5% sugar (even natural sugars for the first month). It was horrible, and I was grumpy and mean and angry. My brain also started trying to trick me. I was good at avoiding obviously sweet things - e.g. sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks - but I started craving things like tomato ketchup which are amazingly high in sugar.
I had severe candida overgrowth in my gut. Candida feeds on sugar and when it starts to die off, in a last ditch attempt to survive, it causes mad sugar cravings.
I can tell you that it does get better. I'm back off the no-sugar bandwagon (and did eat cake today), but ever so often have to get strict with myself if I start to get ill again, though thankfully not as strict as the first time. I drink lots of water, eat 85% dark chocolate and swap sweets/cakes with berries, which still give me the sugar but in an easier to digest format. I also try to be kind to myself when I get grumpy and moody. When it's tough I like to think of it as a battle that I'm winning, and that every time I resist sugar I'm kicking butt and every time I give in I've lost and wasted all the previous hard hard work.
3pm(ish) is the worst time for cravings though, the body has 2 12 hour cycles and 3am and 3pm is when it's at it's lowest so is the time when cravings are likely to strike (coffee/sweets/energy drinks). I find knowing that it's a bad time can help. Then it feels like something you're prepared for rather than sneaking up on you.
Good luck.0 -
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ClosetBayesian wrote: »
"It's 4pm of my first day and I just want chocolate or candy or soda so badly. I feel like there needs to be a support group for people who can't stop eating sweets. SEA? Sugar Eaters Anonymous?"
OP is having problems limiting baked goods, soda and candies which pack many more calories and have minimal nutritional benefit as opposed to eating an apple. "Even though both foods contain fructose, fruit is obviously a healthier choice because it's not solely made up of simple carbohydrates -- it also contains fiber, vitamins and antioxidants. The fiber in fruit helps slow the digestion of carbs, which is why your blood sugar doesn't spike as much after eating fiber-filled fruit like it does when you gulp down a soda or candy bar." http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/carbs/simple-vs-complex-carbohydrates.html0 -
I'm a true sugar addict.
Not so much for sodas and such, but I could eat cookies and chocolate all day.
I'm limiting carbs right now for the sake of breaking the addiction, actually.
Sipping on lightly sweetened hot tea helps me quite a bit. There's a lot of great dessert teas out there. I have a creme brulee, apple pie, etc.
Everyone here is saying eat an apple...but there's so many better, sweeter fruits out there!
Dried figs (no added sugar) are like candy...one of my favorites.
Persimmons, if you can find em.
Pineapple, clementines or oranges [amazing dusted in cinnamon], grapes,
I used to have a rule where I wouldn't let myself have a dessert until the end of the day, so I wouldn't be triggered earlier in the day to binge on sugar.0 -
Carbonated fruit waters. Zero calories, they have artificial sweeteners in them. It can help break the soda craving, because its sweet and carbonated.0
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I suggest two mindful meditation exercises.
The first one, when you are next overcome with a desire for the sweets, observe all your feelings and reactions without judgement. Allow the feelings to sweep over you.
http://www.wildmind.org/blogs/on-practice/stepping-out-of-obsessive-thinking
Afterwards, give this particular feeling a name, like, "The sugar rush." The next time you are overcome, observe it briefly and tell yourself "Oh, it's just the sugar rush." Giving it a name in a way gives you power to set it aside for a time.
The second exercise, when you choose to have a sweet, take at least five minutes to eat it, rolling it around in your hand, observing all the textures, taste, scent, feeling in your mouth, feeling on your tongue, how it feels going down.
http://hfhc.ext.wvu.edu/r/download/114469
See? You didn't die.0 -
I cannot use artificial sweeteners - they all taste metallic to me. I also love soda. What works to keep my intake of empty calories down is to make iced tea with minimal sugar. I use Constant Comment, but any good tea will work. I put in 1/3 of a cup of sugar per gallon of tea. This translates into 35 calories per 16 ozs. I can drink several 16 portions in a day and get a break from the blandness of water without a massive load of empty calories.
Without my tea, I struggle like you are talking about. I want something to drink other than water. With the tea, it is not a problem for me.0 -
Don't restrict your self from any specific food.
Your huge sweets craving is completely mental, just because you know you can't have it.
Instead eat small portions of sweets and make sure to calculate them in your calories. Once you see that you can still eat them, but it's not really worth it packing so many calories all the time, your cravings will stop.
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SuperheroSadie wrote: »Hey all,
So I'm back on 1200 cal/day trying to jumpstart my weightloss after I fell off the bandwagon for 4 weeks. (Only gained 1 pound, though! Yay!) But now I'm finding that I can't stop eating sweets! So I declared to my boyfriend that I was done with sweets and sodas for a few weeks until I could be reasonable about them...
It's 4pm of my first day and I just want chocolate or candy or soda so badly. I feel like there needs to be a support group for people who can't stop eating sweets. SEA? Sugar Eaters Anonymous?
I know that this is how the sugar works on the brain and etc etc, and that hopefully this will pass, but can someone tell me it will? Someone with experience in this kind of thing? Because right now I'm looking at one of my coworkers eating dry lucky charms and I'm so sad about my choices.
Aaaahhhh... Im trying to lower my sweet intake too!!! Not been successful though. How are you doing it??0 -
Don't restrict your self from any specific food.
Your huge sweets craving is completely mental, just because you know you can't have it.
Instead eat small portions of sweets and make sure to calculate them in your calories. Once you see that you can still eat them, but it's not really worth it packing so many calories all the time, your cravings will stop.
Good advice!0 -
ClosetBayesian wrote: »
"It's 4pm of my first day and I just want chocolate or candy or soda so badly. I feel like there needs to be a support group for people who can't stop eating sweets. SEA? Sugar Eaters Anonymous?"
OP is having problems limiting baked goods, soda and candies which pack many more calories and have minimal nutritional benefit as opposed to eating an apple. "Even though both foods contain fructose, fruit is obviously a healthier choice because it's not solely made up of simple carbohydrates -- it also contains fiber, vitamins and antioxidants. The fiber in fruit helps slow the digestion of carbs, which is why your blood sugar doesn't spike as much after eating fiber-filled fruit like it does when you gulp down a soda or candy bar." http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/carbs/simple-vs-complex-carbohydrates.html
If OP is truly a sugar addict, wouldn't replacing the addictive substance with something completely different (like beef jerky) make more sense, to break the addiction? Substituting one variant of the addictive substance for another (apples instead of chocolate) makes zero sense if the OP is truly addicted to sugar.0 -
ClosetBayesian wrote: »ClosetBayesian wrote: »
"It's 4pm of my first day and I just want chocolate or candy or soda so badly. I feel like there needs to be a support group for people who can't stop eating sweets. SEA? Sugar Eaters Anonymous?"
OP is having problems limiting baked goods, soda and candies which pack many more calories and have minimal nutritional benefit as opposed to eating an apple. "Even though both foods contain fructose, fruit is obviously a healthier choice because it's not solely made up of simple carbohydrates -- it also contains fiber, vitamins and antioxidants. The fiber in fruit helps slow the digestion of carbs, which is why your blood sugar doesn't spike as much after eating fiber-filled fruit like it does when you gulp down a soda or candy bar." http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/carbs/simple-vs-complex-carbohydrates.html
If OP is truly a sugar addict, wouldn't replacing the addictive substance with something completely different (like beef jerky) make more sense, to break the addiction? Substituting one variant of the addictive substance for another (apples instead of chocolate) makes zero sense if the OP is truly addicted to sugar.
Good point, but perhaps it's not the sugar. I'm guessing it's psychological anyway. I agree with your jerky substitution...I prefer my husbands elk jerky. I'd much rather have that than sweets. Another addiction, I guess.0
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