How do you deal with your out of control sweet tooth?

I wanted to call this thread how do you deal with your sugar addiction but i didn't want to start a debate about sugar addiction. It's a waste of everyone's time! So if anyone's interested in that conversation, perhaps they can start another topic. :-) I just mention it because many of us have the feeling we are addicted to sugar and to such people this thread is addressed.

So back to the original question - What is your strategy? How well does it work for you? If you have cravings, i suggest it's possibly not working that well or could use some tweaking.

In my experience, the best way and first aspect to eliminate cravings is to abstain from all sweet foods using refined or artificial sweeteners in your regular diet including honey and any syrups be they natural or manufactured BECAUSE THESE FOODS ARE TOO SWEET. (But eat plenty of fruit both stewed and fresh and only minimal dried fruit when you get settled in). It is sweetness that is the key here, not the fundamental nutritional elements of glucose, lactose, sucrose, galactose and fructose. If you can cure yourself of your desire for intense sweetness experiences, then you can eradicate sugar cravings from your life and you will find it easier to lose weight and maintain it.

The second element is emotional for many of us crucial to grasp as well. We are at our weakest with regards to sugar and any form of temptation problem we may have, when our mood is down or stress is high. Low seratonin levels cause a desire for sweet foods. The longer the low mood lasts or the stress continues, the weaker we will become, the stronger our appetite grows. And the risk of reverting to bad old habits with sugary foods rises.

I recently had a low mood that lasted for a few weeks. It started gradually and from past experience, i could see where this was going. I was definitely eating more and finding it difficult to maintain my low calorie days (around 1200 on average) and note i was almost at goal. So i took action. From the beginning of the year, when i started my abstention from sugar, I had a second strategy which was to find a councillor when emotional problems or stress showed up. I had a few stress issues earlier in the year and each time as soon as i trotted off to the councillor, my stress would quickly resolve and my appetite settle. (It may take a little longer for people who have less therapy or counselling in their past). Just recently i had this low mood and because my food consumption was now really low, the increase in appetite was pushing me to the brink. I started to binge and doing some other risky eating things. That said, i wasn't binging on my traditional binge foods. I was not tempted to go shopping for ice-cream, chocolate, cake and sweets but had i not gone to my councillor, who knows i might have thrown in the towel on my sugar free life and if so i would be fat again in no time.

But as it was and i was not yet returning to sugar for support, my binges on savoury foods were shorter and i was not eating quite so much. Also I could bounce back from a binge to eating normal healthy foods straight away and did not stuff myself so much. Whereas in the past eating sweet foods led me away from healthy foods altogether and quickly. This time, although i was concerned about the amount of food i was eating, i was not so concerned about what i was eating. I was binging on nuts, and other rich (high fat) but savoury foods but continuing to eat fruit and vegetables as well.

The day i phoned to make an appointment with my psychologist, i went out and bought 2 deep fried vegetable samosas, followed straight away at another eatery with 3 plates of sushi, and then not long after, a serve of hot chips or fries. When that was all over, i felt satiated and was good. Compare that with my past of a binge on 2 litres of ice-cream, a family sized block of chocolate and whatever else i could fit in before bed that night. But all of it would have been sugary. After my savoury binge, i still ate dinner in the evening if i recall but it wasn't much. Next day i was able to see my psychologist and from that point i started to recover quite quickly. I continued to eat a bit more than i needed and did continue putting on weight. But now, less than 2 weeks later, i'm losing it again without a struggle. Its been easier for me to choose the right foods and reduce or abstain from higher calorie foods.

I had stopped counting calories around the time of my low mood because i was sick of it and so on. Now a few weeks later, my mood has fully recovered, my eating has fully recovered and my weight is starting to drop again without unpleasant calorie restriction and no calorie counting. As it was, i gained about 6 pounds from my lowest low but i still feel slim and now I'm only 4 pounds higher than my lowest low. Setbacks like this are probably unavoidable over the long term but we have to have strategies which can help is keep them short and keep us from falling off the wagon completely.

I do eat highly sweet food on certain low risk occasions but these foods are not a regular or planned part of my life. Each time i eat them, i have to give myself a pep talk. and recommit to my over all strategy of living a sugar free life. Over the nearly 10 months i've been doing this, my commitment to this style of eating has only grown. Each time i pull threw a bad period without having succumbed to my bad old sugar binging habits, i feel stronger and better about what i'm doing. I don't miss sugar. In the same as i don't miss cigarettes which i gave up 18 years ago. I've used my quit cigarettes mindset in my personal campaign to quit sugar. Replace unhealthy things with healthy ones and abstain.