How to curb sugar cravings?

Try to incorporate at least two servings of fruit into your diet each day. For me, eating fruit definitely helps me crave sugary cookies, cakes, brownies, etc. much less often. Treat yourself to one baked good each week. Don't buy it from the store. Bake it yourself. Websites like chocolatecoveredkatie.com have tons of healthy treats that you can indulge in without feeling too guilty. Don't cut sugar out completely. That will just have you craving it even more, and it'll eventually result in a binge.

honey crisp apples are really sweet, juicy and crunchy

You could also allow yourself one or two pieces of dark chocolate per day if you're craving chocolate. Dark chocolate is high in antioxidants and is much healthier than milk chocolate/white chocolate. Hershey's makes dark chocolate nuggets which are about fifty calories each.

People scoff at this but I truly think sugar is an addictive substance. Not in the same sense as nocotine or heroin maybe, but the more you eat the more you want. And it takes some real guts and determination to "give it up". As others have said, if you can just stay away from sugar and sweeteners (yes, sweeteners too) for a few weeks you'll be surprised how much better you'll feel and how much easier it will be to refuse it.

Best wishes! :flowerforyou:

wish i could help but i am about to head out to cvs to buy bags of candy to aide in my addiction.


btw nobody is perfect you are not going to be able to give up everything nor should you have to... i watched a youtube video with this dude who is ripped and he was talking about what he ate and how often he ate blah blah blah and he said he has 2 golden oreos with his meals.

of course i cant find the video right now

so just try to take everything in moderation and you should be ok.

Try eating fruit to cruve ur sugar craving... Use your will power and just say no. Once you see the changes in your body you will thank yourself. I have this problem and I have children to that can have sweets... I buy healthy snacks 100 cal fruit snacks and cakes. I'm to the point where I don't need them. I may have a resse peanut egg which is 90 calories... not to deprive myself

This is me too, i crave sweets badly.

Thanks all for the good advice.

I cut all sugars out of my diet four weeks ago. The only way I could see it working was to go completely cold turkey. That meant no table sugar, no natural or artifical sweeteners, no honey.

I check all things I buy at the supermarket for sugar and if they contain sugar I dont buy. Its amazing what it is included in i.e. sauces, peanut butter, rice/corn cakes, cereals etc.

At the start it was really hard, I am at university so a study day was always accompanied by a bag of lollies or something else sweet. I found that eating carrots of all things has been my saviour. Some days I will have four. And the longer you go without sugar the sweeter they taste!

I have lost weight, my skin is amazingly clearer and I have so much energy. Plus I dont ever experience the post-sugar high slump

STEVIA! You must discover the wonderfulness of stevia. It is a natural sweetner from the Stevia plant that does not add a glucose load to your blood sugar levels, nor does it put additional burden on your liver like artificial sweetners. (Do look it up on Wikipedia if you want to know more about how it works. It's like, metabolic brilliance.)

You can use it as you use regular table sugar (sucrose) in drinks, baking and more.

Ditch any pre-processed foods, like storebought anything, and make your own. You can control how much is in the house, and you can control the nutrition content. Make a batch of about four oatmeal cookies with Stevia. Use these for when you get the munchies.

We all get cravings from time to time. I get horrible cravings around That Time of the Month. The secret to defeating them is having a game plan to deal (not ignore, not fight) with the cravings. Have the proper foods on hand that will ease your cravings without blowing out your blood sugar.

My nutritionist taught me this trick: Whenever the craving for something sweet hits me, I make a hot chocolate out of a tablespoon of cocoa powder, a spoonful or two of stevia and light milk (well, 100ml of milk, and one and a half cups of water). It's big, it's filling for the next half hour or so, and it's a perfect treat to help fight the cravings. By the time I start craving again, it's a regular mealtime (I eat every 2-3 hours or so, small, light meals), and I can indulge in normal food.
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Sugar is addictive, due to the high fructose content. Fructose is not processed like the beneficial glucose our bodies and brains need, but is processed through the liver like alcohol. The body does trigger cravings for it.

This is a biological remnant from the days when fructose marked nutritious foods (like fruits and vegetables, etc), and the body came to recognise what was good for it. But then along came manufacturing and refining and the removal of all things nutritious, and the addition of sugar (including fructose, which is present in sucrose or table sugar), which made the body want to crave it more and more.

Get rid of processed foods from your life. Avoid refined sugars, even honey, and source the majority of your nutrition from whole foods, such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains. If you must use something to sweeten, use stevia.

yea go with fruits..like melons (all), banana, etc... they are sweet but it's Fructose so it's good sugar...STILL you need to reduce your sugar like many said before me...So use fruits to help you take less and less....
It worked for me...Was huge fan of M&M's etc.... and I don't even go near it anymore...

I'm a sugar hound.. in the worst fashion .. gotta have my 5 lbs of sugar (the real stuff .. nothing artificial .. can't stand the fake crap) in my coffee/tea .. and man I love my Mt. Dew!. I've tried Stevia and Truvia .. can't stand the horrible bitter after taste.. it's as gross and disgusting as diet sodas are to me (and I never drink those) It does taste sweet at first .. and it's mostly natural - except for that preservative thing they put in there .. I dunno why it has such a bad after taste .. Folks addicted to real sugar like me .. have the worst time going for alternative sweeteners and substitutes. It's like finger nail scratch across the blackboard. I had a friend who baked with Splenda .. I didn't know it .. but when I had one of her cakes .. I thought .. there's something weird about this .. it tasted funny to me.. I was polite of course and didn't say anything and told her it was good anyway. Then she told me it was Splenda .. I thought I was gonna gag after that. Oh well ...

However... cutting back a little at a time .. and don't buy that junk (cookies, cakes, etc.) what are you doing to your kids with that? That's one thing I never did .. I never bought candy or sugary sweets and snacks for my son, not for school lunch or whenever -- he was never allowed to have soda either.. at least not until he was about 14 .. he's 18 now and begs me to run out and buy more carrots, apples, peaches, bananas.. berries of all sorts.. because that is what I gave him instead of sweets.

Honey is still sugar .. but it's about as natural and otherwise "unprocessed" as it gets .. (meaning the minerals and nutrients haven't been sucked out of it like refined table sugar)

I'm still working on cutting out sugar .. I have managed reducing my sugar from 1/4 cup to 1/8 cup (6 tsp) in my morning coffee or tea (16 oz.) It's almost not sweet enough but I'm slowly getting used to it .. and I've practically stopped drinking Mt. Dew... boo hoo

It takes time .. and you will get past the sugar cravings. I mainly have sugar in my drinks .. so it's been hard drinking water or something else instead .. I won't deny it .. I'm a real sugar addict .. REAL SUGAR!!

I have a whole wheat bagel drizzled with honey and the cravings stop. Or a fiber one bar. They're really good.

People scoff at this but I truly think sugar is an addictive substance. Not in the same sense as nocotine or heroin maybe, but the more you eat the more you want. And it takes some real guts and determination to "give it up". As others have said, if you can just stay away from sugar and sweeteners (yes, sweeteners too) for a few weeks you'll be surprised how much better you'll feel and how much easier it will be to refuse it.

Best wishes! :flowerforyou:

I completely agree with this post! It is addictive. I have also found reducing my use of artificial sweeteners has helped curb my sugar cravings. I used to drink a lot of Diet Cola. For the past two weeks I have only had one or two over the whole two weeks. And it was bizarre...on the days that I had them, I just craved sugar and bad carbs. Keep at it! You have to detox from it.

fruit will be your savior. Get rid of the other stuff and put out a bowl of mixed fruit. apples, oranges, bananas. Have several different types of grapes in the fridge. if you have sweetened creamer in your coffee in the morning, stop that for awhile. That's what helped me in addition to the fruit. found that not having that sugared up creamer in the morning enabled me to deflect the craving for the that donut or candy bar or that cake that get's brought into work. You can do it!! Feel that craving crunch into that sweet red apple, or that sweet tart green apple, or take the time to peel that orange, or grab a bowl and have some grapes. Just don't forget to measure it out and log it...if you're counting. You can do this. Though-don't look at my diary today! Lol- had some donuts! Gasp! but it was a treat-something that doesn't happen all the time. and like others said. If you have a hickup hear and there-don't stress too much about it. Just get back on the horse and keep riding forward!

I am in the same boat. Since joining MFP this month I've learned my sugar intake is horrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So to curb it, I stopped eating things with sugar. I look at the back of labels before buying stuff. This is the best way to do it, for me at least. I don't even put sugar in my coffee anymore, something i thought I could NEVER do, and already, it's normal now. Damn, MFP is good!!!!!!!!