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How I overcame my addiction to sugar

josem.co

91–100 of 210 posts

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#91
post #4

I'm 254 days into switching to a ketogenic diet (complete with at home instant ketone finger prick blood tests using the very affordable keto mojo), and can't believe I waited so long. I was roughly surfing sugar highs for 39 years. Would highly recommend looking into this if you are a sugar/carb addict like I was.

My problem with keto is that most people on it eat so much saturated fat that their cholesterol goes through the roof, and that’s really bad for cardiovascular health.

(Keto communities deal with this by preaching an anti-science, cholesterol-denialist dogma, but that dogma has always been driven by wishful thinking).

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#92
post #29

Quitting cold turkey after a change of environment (moving somewhere else) is a good tip not just for addiction, but for any change in habit. However, a more practical approach is to reduce the dosage slowly. That works especially well for sweet drinks. If you have a soda maker, you can slowly reduce the amount of syrup you use. After a while, your tolerance for sweetness goes down, so things that previously felt not…

i stopped drinking soft drinks out of spite for my siblings. now they taunt me but i dont feel any urge to drink regardless of how it takes. for me it tastes like sugar water

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#93
What I learned from my weight loss journey is that good sleep does wonders for my brain. It helps me remember my long-term goals and resist those pesky urges for sugary, fatty snacks.

Plus, when I'm well-rested, my brain seems to actually register when my stomach isn't empty, so it doesn't send out those annoying craving signals.

And after all that health talk, I'll probably still end up scrolling through Reddit for a couple of hours before bed.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#94

You can eat whatever you want if you just work out seriously an hour a day. If you do that properly, gaining weight will become the challenge.

Usually when you increase exercise, your body decreases its non-exercise calorie burn (NEAT), so your total calorie needs don’t change much. As a result, exercise is usually a wash for weight loss, unless you’re working hard to maintain your NEAT.

(Exercise is still extremely good for you though!! Highly recommend!!!)

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#95

> When I returned from my trip, my fridge was empty, so I resisted the temptation to buy those products. This has to be my reality. If I buy treats, no matter how good my intentions are to make them last, they just don't survive in the cupboard more than a couple of days. I have to leave my kitchen mostly empty apart from: diet soda, meat, cheese, yoghurt, peanut butter. Everything else is just too addictive and I ke…

I tried this and eventually started binging on higher and higher percent chocolate. Eventually I was sitting at work stuffing a handful of crushed toasted Cocoa nibs into my mouth ... I suppose I did end my craving for sweets though. I can't make hard cheeses last more than a couple days either. Leaving the kitchen empty works pretty well for me. But I'll binge on pretty much anything that is left if the hunger hits me.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#96

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…

[deleted]

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#97
post #91
post #4

I'm 254 days into switching to a ketogenic diet (complete with at home instant ketone finger prick blood tests using the very affordable keto mojo), and can't believe I waited so long. I was roughly surfing sugar highs for 39 years. Would highly recommend looking into this if you are a sugar/carb addict like I was.

My problem with keto is that most people on it eat so much saturated fat that their cholesterol goes through the roof, and that’s really bad for cardiovascular health. (Keto communities deal with this by preaching an anti-science, cholesterol-denialist dogma, but that dogma has always been driven by wishful thinking).

> My problem with keto is that most people on it eat so much saturated fat that their cholesterol goes through the roof

Dataset needed

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#98
When I'm working on the computer late, eating chocolate or other sweet things was a real crutch. Not doing it required a lot of willpower, so I could sometimes limit my consumption for some periods, but I gave up on quitting sugar in the long run.

For other health-related reasons (migraines) I went keto since a few months ago and had no problems at all quitting sugar altogether. Nuts, cured ham are great for occasional nibbling. My sweet thing is a 'keto cream' with a blend of cream and yogurt whipped to be fluffy and topped with peanut butter and crushed nuts.

I do have some very occasional cravings for fries or chocolate, but it is very very rare, almost nothing compared to a normal high-carb diet. (I break the ketosis for a carbful meal from time to time, so it's not like alcoholism where seeing carbs or sugar is a problem that would cause a relapse either.)

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#99
post #3

It's nefarious! Especially if you have a dopamin deficiency (ADHD, etc.) and you eat so you aren't bored. I can eat 500g of m&ms in one sitting, no problem, and I'm not even overweight or something.

Switch to nuts, but be sure to pair with citrus, to offset the oxalates, or you'll get kidney stones. Food cravings often reflect mineral cravings (1) 1. https://dailyhealthpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/21-fo...

That image looks like unscientific nonsense. Craving sugar means I need carbon? Carbon is the building block of every organic chemical, and elemental carbon has very little use in the body. It's near meaningless to say you need carbon.

The answer is fortunately simpler, craving sugar probably means your blood sugar is low, or that it crashed after a spike. Counterintuitively, people can avoid this by eating things with less sugar overall or with complex sugars. Requiring the body to break complex sugars down into simple sugars takes time, which keeps your blood sugar from spiking too high.

Re: How I overcame my addiction to sugar

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biochem is a little rusty but basically your body can create glucose (carbs) from amino acids (proteins) in a process called gluconeogenesis. Because your body will preferentially use glucose over fat and ketones for fuel, it will prioritize this pathway and turn down/off the one that produces ketones... hence dropping you out of ketosis.

Your body doesn't prefer glucose over fat. Too much glucose is toxic, so your body will focus on reducing it first. Too little is also dangerous so your body will make some from protein if necessary. But only as much as it needs. Fat adaptation is about shifting your hormonal balance and response to retrain your body to maintain a lower level of glucose, and to retrain your cravings and hunger.

I'm not talking at the higher organism level, I'm talking at the very low-level chemistry in mitochondria. Glucose is "easier" to produce energy out of and so that happens preferentially from a chemistry perspective. Your body also needs a minimum level of glucose to survive.

When there isn't enough glycogen, the chemical balances in the mitochondria change and the liver mitochondria will produce glucose from whatever they have. This isn't a "decision" just the relative amounts of the chemicals change leading to one chemical pathway becoming more likely compared to another. This is all mediated by the random collisions of molecules in your cells. If you have a lot less of one molecule compared to another, the frequency that molecules find each other to do one thing v/s the other will change leading to different chemical pathways becoming more or less active.

There are many routes for your body to produce glucose. It is "easier" for your body to produce it from gluconegenic amino acids (not all amino acids can be used to produce glucose) than it is from fatty acids. It's the process of converting fatty acids into glucose that generates ketones. So when you have excess amino acids that can be turned into glucose, the chemistry will prefer this pathway over breaking down fat into glucose and this will lead to lower ketone production overall and kick you out of ketosis.

(I think I've gotten the gist of this right but any biochem experts feel free to correct me)

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