I quit sugar back in early January. Here are my rules since quitting sugar hasn't meant never eating it again at all. You could consider coming up with your own rules but start out with a notion like quitting forever helps a lot. The essences of my rules are that I can only have sugar in what i consider low risk situations and those low risk situations are infrequent. I also try to make it low risk by adding extra limitations on top such as no more than one serve no matter the size of the serve. That would be one chocolates coated peanut, not five or a handful. That would be one piece of birthday cake - cut your own if you want a big piece!, at a buffet its only a serve of one item, not as much as you can fit in your bowl. Anyway that's how i do it for me. It helps me practice restraint and deepen my commitment to my rules.

So I never buy sweet foods made with sugar or honey or syrups. I don't use artificial flavours. Its intense sweetness we need to learn to live without not just sugar. So i eat plenty of fruit and i enjoy the sweetness of it regularly but its not as sweet as refined sugar foods and doesn't cause cravings or trigger binges. Instead it satisfies in every way. I often serve fruit with a quality whole milk yoghurt and mixed seeds. Its delicious.

I've been living without sugar in my tea and coffee since about 2010 when i first felt i needed to quit sugar. Leaving it out of tea and coffee is not difficult and makes the rest of the job much easier.

If i'm cooking a tomato sauce using fresh tomatoes or canned ones, i will add a little sugar to address the acidity. I use it in an asian savoury recipe where its called for but i never use sweetened salad dressings such as you'd find on a supermarket shelf. The degree of sweetness in asian foods does not trigger any negative reaction in me. Partly or largely i think this is because the bulk of the recipe is vegetables and other nutritious foods. I don't buy or use many shop bought sauces so the sugar in those foods isn't an issue for me.

So when do i get to eat cake and other things of that kind? When i'm out of my home and its offered to me or on offer. But i don't eat biscuits from the workplace biscuit tin or anything sweet out of the work fridge. And if i were at a restaurant with other people, i could also have dessert. Of these situations, the buffet is the hardest to cope with. Luckily i don't have too many such situations but i think in future i should skip dessert and stick with the savouries. That will be my strategy with regards to buffets from now on.

My idea for Christmas was to have just one serve of xmas pudding and to focus a lot of attention on making plenty of other really delicious and interesting savoury foods and indulging in that stuff instead for a day or two.

I'm going travelling next year. I will allow myself to eat one serve of dessert or sweet per day maximum. And none of the foods will be the sort of thing that are available at home. The idea being that i get to try to all the new and interesting foods on offer. When i get home, i will have to work hard to let that experience go.

Its been over 9 months since i've been doing this. A lot of mental commitment is required but as time goes on the commitment deepens. You have to learn how to be firm but its not good if you keep allowing yourself to cheat or take liberties.

After three months of dieting, i reintroduced dried fruit into my diet. These can be a danger food for bingers like myself. So i quickly realised that i would have to be cautious and stick with mainly the odd date or fig rather than a regular serving of sultanas to snack on. After 8 months, i thought i'd try making some sugar free desserts. I did ok at first but not long ago i made something that just sent me loopy. I ate the whole concoction of medjool dates and walnuts and butter and flour. After that i decided no more sweets like that for a very long while. But even so, with all my commitment in place and success for such a long period already, and possibly something to do with the food itself, i was able to let it go the next day and not carry on wanting more sweets. Had it been ice-cream or something like that, i don't know how well i would have recovered.

So with the ordinary sweet desserts, i guess in my life i get to eat them about once a month. Other lifestyles might get to experience them more often. The danger of more often is that you are tempted more often and its just harder to go say no all the time. What i like about this program is that i am not hanging out for an occasion as i would if i designated one day a month or week. Its out of my hands so i don't spend time thinking about it. And i don't have any of it around. Out of sight, out of mind, out of my mouth which is what i want. I don't think i will ever be able to be a moderate eater of sweets that's why i've come up with such strict rules and that's why i tell myself its forever.

I drink alcohol. And i don't have an issue with soft drinks or sodas so i could buy that if i wanted it but basically i never really do want to drink soft drink. It would have to be a stinking hot day and nothing but hot water to drink for me to want to buy one.

So anyway that's what i've done. I did not have all my rules in place when i started out. I worked it out as i went along. I just began with the notion of quitting sweets forever. I think it has to be forever because for some of us, we created a addiction pathway in our brains which is hard to over come and may not be completely cured of even after a long time of abstinence. I like living without sweets. I make sure the rest of my food is as good as i can make and eat a wide variety of foods to keep things interesting but most of all healthy.

I used to have such a sweet tooth until I went on South Beach Diet years ago. The first two weeks are really difficult but once you get through the first two weeks, you don't miss it at all. My husband is huge cake, cookie and donut eater and it isn't tempting to me in the least. The only advice I can really give you it to keep looking ahead knowing that in two weeks time you will have no more cravings. Good luck!

I started a couple of weeks ago to reduce the amount of sugar. What I have done is to have a large amount of fruit at breakfast as its naturally occurred sugars with helps me with the cravings and I will burn it during the day. In my tea/coffee I use coconut nectar instead of sugar.
And as I have a sweet tooth I have as snacks organic, unprocessed no sugar added oats bars like 'eat natural' or 'naked' which it is only nuts and a bit of dark chocolate (which it is good for you, I stick to this rule ). Lately I have substituted these bars for my own homemade oats balls and so which I can control what goes in them (a bit of honey or agave, oats, organic sugar free peanut butter, almonds and other nuts). I have 1 of these treats every day at work and it has helped me stop craving sugary stuff.