Have you ever stayed up late at night, wondering whether you should satisfy the insatiable sugar cravings? Having a sweet tooth can really be exhausting and detrimental to your health. The sugar craving is equal to the insatiable desire a drug or smoke addict experiences. As a result, you sprawl out of your bed, regardless of the time of the day, make your way to the kitchen and get anything sweet that your hands can find their hold on. This article is about 4 Steps To Overcome Sugar Addiction.

Yielding to excessive sugar cravings can result in a spike in cholesterol levels, blood pressure, weight and make one more susceptible to diabetes, cancer and heart disease. Therefore, it’s extremely beneficial to reduce the amount of sugar one eats every time. This can be achieved in two ways: 1) Cutting the sugar consumption down altogether and 2) Reducing it in moderation. 

Choose whichever method works the best for you. Some people choose the second method as they think that cutting it all together can increase the chances of relapse. On the other hand, some people find cutting it moderately will certainly test their self-control and will, which might increase their chances of going overboard every time. 

Therefore, it’s important to choose whichever method suits you the best and helps you overcome sugar addiction effectively. 

Be that as it may, it’s important to take into consideration that your chances of relapse depend upon the intensity of your sugar addiction. It’s very normal to fall into relapse once you begin your journey of overcoming any addiction, but it’s important to begin the journey again. 

In addition, once one starts the journey of breaking sugar addiction, the withdrawal symptoms generally stop after two to three days under normal circumstances and are no longer experienced after six days. To help you in this journey of overcoming sugar addiction, we have enlisted some of the most effective ways to control your addiction to sugar. But, before we begin the litany, let’s understand the causes of sugar addiction. 

How does Sugar Consumption Become an Addiction?

As mentioned before, sugar addiction can trigger the parts of the brain that heroin or any other drugs do. Consequently, it becomes difficult to break sugar addiction especially if you have a sweet tooth. Trying to overcome the addiction can result in some withdrawal symptoms which are equally intense as the withdrawal symptoms of drugs. 

These symptoms include anxiety, extreme mood changes, fatigue and shakes. This detox situation is exacerbated especially when the production of feel-good chemical dopamine plummets in your body, which makes you a mess for a couple of days. 

Be that as it may, it’s important to take some of the major ill-effects of sugar addiction into consideration for battling it. One of the most prominent sugar addiction symptoms is its damage to your taste buds. When you consume excessive sugar in your diet, your tolerance for the sweetness in the food completely changes. Once you cease consuming sugar, you will find other foods and drinks that are moderately sweet to be sweeter. This can be considered as one of the major perks of overcoming sugar addiction. It facilitates the development of more tastes in your body, rather than just differentiating between ‘sweet’ and ‘sweeter’. 

With that said, let’s focus on some of the most effective ways to deal with sugar addiction and reach the other side of the tunnel.

How to Stop Sugar Addiction: 4 Steps To Overcome Sugar Addiction

Here are the tips to overcome sugar addiction:

• Get rid of all the ‘sugary’ stuff from your house:

If you’re genuinely willing to regulate the consumption of sugar in your body, it’s important to first get rid of all the sugary food products that you have in your house. Unnecessary temptation can push your limits and will let all your self-control go haywire. Therefore, focus on your willpower, the positive effects of modulating sugar consumption and bid adieu to them forever. Well, not forever-forever, but for a long while, certainly.

• Artificial sweeteners are a complete no-no:

Products like sucralose, saccharin and aspartame cannot only stimulate the desire of consuming sweet food in your body but also prove to be extremely detrimental to your health. They make certain amendments in your palate which makes your sugar consumption insatiable and you’ve left craving for more. 

• Replace sweet food products with fruits:

If you find your sugar cravings are uncontrollable, you can divert your attention towards fruits, which contain fructose. If not entirely they’ll help you to satisfy the cravings a bit and that’s enough for a person who is trying to overcome sugar addiction. 

Be that as it may, consuming excessive fruits can impact your weight and increase your belly fat. Resultantly, you become more susceptible to develop type 2 diabetes in the future. In addition, you might want to limit your consumption of grapes and cherries that are high in sugar.

• Pay attention to your magnesium levels:

If your sugar cravings are directly concerned with chocolate in particular, then perhaps it’s time to check your magnesium levels. Research affirms that chocolate cravings imply a deficiency in the mineral magnesium in the body. If this is your case, consumption of tofu, nuts, legumes and leafy veggies is highly recommended. 

• Distract yourself:

As mentioned earlier, the insatiable sugar cravings can be dealt with by distraction. Such distractions include consumption of fruits, listening to music, talking to a friend, going on a walk, doing an interesting physical activity, meditating, etc. 

These are some of the simplest, yet most effective ways to deal with sugar addiction. However, acknowledging the common human nature of yielding to one’s desires is of paramount significance. If one day, you relapse, it’s completely okay. You don’t have to denigrate yourself or equate your self-worth to it. Just acknowledge that it happened and try again. Denigrating and condemning yourself can make beginning the journey harder for you as your self-belief has significantly reduced. So, go ahead, relapse but always remember to begin again. 

 Recommended reading: 5 Ways To Control Sugar Craving