It’s such a Catch 22.
It tastes sooo good.
But, by now, we all know that eating too much sugar isn’t good for us. The science is now getting to the point of overwhelming.
But we have this strange draw, physical and almost, dare I say, emotional craving for it.
The question you have to ask yourself, and be still enough and honest enough to receive the answer, is:
“Is the pain of eating sugar and all the downside, including additional weight, mood issues and even disease, finally outweighing the perceived positives?”
Another way to ask this question: Is eating sugar still serving me? Is it adding to my life of detracting from it?
When, and if, you get to the point where you can say that it is no longer serving you or is detracting from your life you may be ready to work on stopping sugar or seriously reducing your sugar intake.
First know that this is not your fault. The society we live in has evolved sugar into the food system, the culture and our diets and we are at a crossroads, similar to the one when we discovered for sure that tobacco was a health hazard.
Your parents and then you have used sugar in ways that have now become know to be harmful.
Sure all the scientists are focused on what sugar is doing to our brains and our body and that can’t be ignored. But the part almost everyone misses is that sugar has a very strong emotional component to it.
You may be eating sugar to care for your emotions, to numb pain, to manage stress, or to care for your emotional, psychological or relationship needs.
If you can open you mind and your heart for long enough to accept and understand this emotional component of healing from sugar addiction you will be way ahead of 99% of all dieters and diet programs out there.
It’s curing the emotional ties to sugar that help us control and/or abstain from sugar.
So where do you start?
You start by consciously following yourself around, observing what you’re doing and comparing it to how you feel.
What we need to do is to uncouple the sugar from the emotions.
You have to bring what is a know, unconscious process to the surface, examine it and either accept that it is still working or throw it out.
Most of us have learned to reach for sugar to manage so much of our emotional lives that we literally don’t know how to do that without it.
If you can discover the links between the two you can begin to bring back your normal, natural emotional management tools and uncouple the process from reaching for and eating sugar.
I can tell you a few things that will never work:
- Punishing yourself for not going to the gym
- Will power
- More nutritional knowledge
So many people we’ve worked with are so hard on themselves about this!
Their self esteem is in the toilet because this sugar thing has got them down. Just so you know there is a large part of the mood swings are actually physical. But mostly people are down because they can’t seem to keep the promises to quit that they make to themselves.
What we find is that just a little tweak in perception can bring huge rewards.
What does work is almost zen like.
Observe what is actually happening, note it, be kind to yourself about your discovery and then get help to change it.
The part that most people leave out is the “be kind to yourself” part.
Would you believe that of all the people that we’ve helped quit or reduce their sugar intake almost all cite the “be kind to yourself” part as the most important part of the process? As if they needed our permission to start doing this!
The second part people rave about is the support. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but almost no one does this alone. When people find other people who have struggled in the same way but are now moving forward with massive changes that are working the atmosphere is weirdly ecstatic. Lifetime friends are made and goals are met with ease.
Check out our complete guide to sugar addiction for all the information you need.
If you’re ready to see if you might be a candidate to look at this issue in a different light please take the simple 10 question Sugar Addiction Quiz and see where you fall on the sugar susceptibility scale HERE >>
