Although I am not "addicted" to sugar, I do stay away from candy, ice cream, donuts, etc. I drink sugar free almond milk, reduced sugar granola, the list goes on. When it comes to unhealthy foods in general, when I am tempted to consume it, I think "Is this really worth it? Imagine all the hard work you've done that this will undo." 99% of the time, I won't eat whatever it is. I am so committed to succeeding and I have enough self control, I realize that sugar, sweets, alcohol, etc is hurting my performance and preventing me from being where I want to be. You have to look at food as fuel, not look at it for satisfaction/stress relief, whatever it is. Food is fuel, period.

When I've been eating like shit. I find doing a 3 day water fast allows me to completely reset my eating habits with renewed intention.
Then, I return to logging every calorie and macro before I eat anything, which keeps me honest and mindful of my choices.

Personally, I practice carb timing and treat sugar and carbohydrates as rocket fuel, reserved for training or performances. The rest of the time, I stay away from them as they trigger intense cravings and make me extremely hungry the rest of the day. When running purely on fat and protein, I'm rarely hungry and don't crave garbage. I just stick with one ingredient, whole foods, ie. meat/veg.

After re-establishing the good habits, when I do add the sugar and carbs. back in, I am able to treat them as fuel. Rather than some sort of emotional eating, food addiction version of self-care.

Do you find you reach for sugary foods to “cheat you up”, or if you are upset? If so, see if you can replace food with something better for you than food.

Instead of going cold turkey, can you limit yourself? Like 1 or 2 sodas a day and candy bar only after an intense workout?

Eventually, I bet you will crave better foods. There was a year I was really good about eating junk. Once, I didn’t have time to eat and I had to eat fast food as I was in a hurry. I got Taco Bell. I puked it up 10 min later. My body just rejected it. Lol

Good luck. Fyi- Gatorade and gels are all sugar.

How's it going? You've received some good advice here, like the dark chocolate idea. Substituting a food that satisfies your craving with lower sugar should be easier and more sustainable than trying to remove the habit entirely. And this issue seems to give you some grief, so a more moderate change may help take the stress down a notch.

But I'm not going to say that's the only way to do it just because it's the best for most. If you want to try cold-turkey, some people (particularly athletes) work well with that. Just don't say, "starting today, I'm never going to eat sugar again" - 100% failure likelihood there. Try a short time frame that you are almost certain you can do (3 days?) and then reassess.

I'm one of those "excellent sports dietitians" :) and while I'm not currently taking on clients, feel free to PM. Happy to help with ideas.

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http://www.extramilenutrition.com

I do the grocery shopping in the house. I find that if I can make it out of the store without buying the "junk food" I am much better off during the week. I let my kids snack, so I buy things for them I know I won't eat. Fruit snacks, gold fish, etc.

Frozen fruit has become my favorite to replace the summer ice cream and Popsicle's that are in the house. Grapes, strawberries, blueberries, etc. Frozen grapes are my favorite. My 4yr old hates that I freeze all the grapes, since unfrozen grapes are her favorite.

Do Whole 30 for a month. Go cold turkey. Read labels (sugar is EVERYWHERE, it's even in the damn rotisserie chicken that Costco sells).

Once you get done with your 30 days you'll realize how sugar really impacts and controls you.

I've read the period to kick a lot of addictions is 3 weeks and that's what I experienced with my mild addiction to diet coke. I used to have 1 bottles a day, sometimes 2. I eventually cut it down to just Fridays and I would get excited on Thursday for my Friday hit! I eventually dropped the Friday and had bad cravings, I had to take a detour so I wouldn't go past the vending machine. Then literally 3 weeks passed and I walked past a coke vending machine and the urge had gone. A month later I had a bottle for shits and giggles and it didn't taste the same. I could quite happily treat myself to a coke every now and again, but I don't as it just doesn't as good as it used to. Weird.

Imma go with you don't have kids yet, synthetic. That's cool. Just know that even if you are a great cook who totally loves real food, grows vegetables, or you are also or perhaps an elite well-trained highly accomplished athlete who absolutely cares about and monitors your intake and what you eat (yo, respect, me too- the intake part, haha not the elite highly accomplished athlete part), that at some point you may find you have a kid who takes your curated plate of beautiful simple food and drops it on the floor. On purpose. Even if that kid is an AMAZING kid. Or your kid may be at a birthday party and be given a juice box. Or horror of horrors you may find that (gasp) a juice box might actually be a decent alternative to other choices at an airport/movie theater/someone else's house. Drop the judgment.

You may also be a perfect human who can raise their child in a bubble without exposure to the unbelievable marketing of crap food to children. Good luck with that. Maybe you can do it. But at some point, someone is going to hand your kid a snack you think is crappy. Godspeed.

THANK YOU FOR POSTING THAT ARTICLE

What a tremendous piece.

My wife suffered from sugar addiction for most of her teen and adult life.

She is about a year and a half on autoimmune protocol and does not look back. It took her many years of trying. If you would like to talk to her, PM me and I can share her FB messenger.

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"If it costs you 30 minutes at Maryland so what" -dwreal

Juice box at party may be unavoidable. In the end , you control supply and demand at home

You could have just said, "No, I don't have kids and don't understand" instead.

It doesn't matter. If you are on a deserted island with bountiful of ready to eat fruits, nuts, veggies, will you and children will perish because of the lack of processed packaged foods? ...first world problems...

Right. When has an actual understanding of an issue ever stopped you from posting on it like an authority before?