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How I overcame my addiction to sugar

josem.co

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Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#31

Post by oarfish »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #18
richrichie wrote: post #2

Sugar is everywhere, cheap, legal and culturally important (birthday parties, weddings, farewell parties, etc). Very difficult to create isolation environment, unless one goes full Ted Kaczynski. I don’t want to discourage the author, but i am old, so yeah been there, done that. But avoiding sugar like its evil is not healthy. Nor is it sustainable. It appears that the author is probably young and single. That may he…

Low carb has been around for a while, enough that people are aware it's a thing, and it's not that hard to pass up on the celebratory sugar, if you want just say it's for a medical condition and don't elaborate further and people will generally respect that. You aren't really telling us why this is unhealthy and unsustainable and stressful. In my experience avoiding sugar in the past, it's anything but.

To avoid sugar might not be impractical, but to avoid carbs altogether and go full keto? Very difficult for many, and would probably reduce my enjoyment of life quite a bit.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#32

Post by kzrdude »

Replacement works for me. Replaced all added sugars stuff (drinks, ice cream, cookies) with fruit and the difference was very noticeable. Fruit also has its own kind of sugar, but my body runs differently on that compared with food with added sugar.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#33

Post by stavros »

richrichie wrote: post #2

Sugar is everywhere, cheap, legal and culturally important (birthday parties, weddings, farewell parties, etc). Very difficult to create isolation environment, unless one goes full Ted Kaczynski. I don’t want to discourage the author, but i am old, so yeah been there, done that. But avoiding sugar like its evil is not healthy. Nor is it sustainable. It appears that the author is probably young and single. That may he…

I've decided that I won't eat anything sweet from a supermarket. It keeps all the low-hanging sugar away (chocolates, cakes, donuts, etc) while still leaving me able to enjoy a nice dessert at a restaurant, or similar rare occasions.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#34

Post by alanbernstein »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #12
richrichie wrote: post #2

Sugar is everywhere, cheap, legal and culturally important (birthday parties, weddings, farewell parties, etc). Very difficult to create isolation environment, unless one goes full Ted Kaczynski. I don’t want to discourage the author, but i am old, so yeah been there, done that. But avoiding sugar like its evil is not healthy. Nor is it sustainable. It appears that the author is probably young and single. That may he…

> Sugar is everywhere, cheap, legal and culturally important (birthday parties, weddings, farewell parties, etc). Those should all be rare occasions.

Not rare at all for an average family with kids.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#35

Post by swiftcoder »

Xenoamorphous wrote: post #12
richrichie wrote: post #2

Sugar is everywhere, cheap, legal and culturally important (birthday parties, weddings, farewell parties, etc). Very difficult to create isolation environment, unless one goes full Ted Kaczynski. I don’t want to discourage the author, but i am old, so yeah been there, done that. But avoiding sugar like its evil is not healthy. Nor is it sustainable. It appears that the author is probably young and single. That may he…

> Sugar is everywhere, cheap, legal and culturally important (birthday parties, weddings, farewell parties, etc). Those should all be rare occasions.

You don't work in a very big office before there is birthday cake in the break room on the regular. Or the Girl Scout cookies someone's parents are desperately trying to get rid of. Or the left-over pastries from that executive meeting. Or your manager brought in a box of donuts to "boost morale"...

Dieting in an office setting is often quite difficult

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#37

Post by simplicio »

richrichie wrote: post #2

Sugar is everywhere, cheap, legal and culturally important (birthday parties, weddings, farewell parties, etc). Very difficult to create isolation environment, unless one goes full Ted Kaczynski. I don’t want to discourage the author, but i am old, so yeah been there, done that. But avoiding sugar like its evil is not healthy. Nor is it sustainable. It appears that the author is probably young and single. That may he…

Yea, hadn't realized this till I had kids. People are basically constantly throwing sweets at them, and while Im not super-strict about regulating sugar, if I let them eat all the candy they were offered, it'd basically be all their calories in a given day.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#38

Post by savanaly »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #28

To compare it to heroin is a horrible trivialization of something that destroys a person and at time those around the person. I feel that to make this statement in any genuine way, the author should spend 6 months developing a serious addiction to heroin then attempt to get clean. I am blessed I have never done heroin and hopefully I never will. I have gone weeks without sugar and had a craving, some mild headaches a…

There are other axes of comparison than severity. I think it’s a comparison that well illustrates their point.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#39

Post by graypegg »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #28

To compare it to heroin is a horrible trivialization of something that destroys a person and at time those around the person. I feel that to make this statement in any genuine way, the author should spend 6 months developing a serious addiction to heroin then attempt to get clean. I am blessed I have never done heroin and hopefully I never will. I have gone weeks without sugar and had a craving, some mild headaches a…

I’m glad I’m not the only one that feels off about that. I feel like heroin as the standard measure of “really bad addiction” is at least an unhelpful choice.

I don’t think people walk away from an article like this thinking opiate addiction is any less horrible than they originally thought, but the usual refrain of “[porn|sugar|social media] is like heroin!” usually presented with a fMRI capture with circles on it, gives me pause. At best, it’s not communicating the actual effect of addiction on someone’s life, at worst it does trivialize it.

To be fair to the author, this article doesn’t follow that usual refrain.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#40

Post by wanderingstan »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #28

To compare it to heroin is a horrible trivialization of something that destroys a person and at time those around the person. I feel that to make this statement in any genuine way, the author should spend 6 months developing a serious addiction to heroin then attempt to get clean. I am blessed I have never done heroin and hopefully I never will. I have gone weeks without sugar and had a craving, some mild headaches a…

The author did not imply that sugar addiction is anywhere as bad as heroin addiction.

They observed a technique that was shown scientifically to be effective for the more serious addiction and decided to try it for their milder addiction. That’s just good reasoning, and it worked for them.

> The main conclusion from the study is that a change of environment as radical as Vietnam’s during a war period compared to the US was critical for their recovery.

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