I Was a Sugar Addict – Now Happy to say I am a Recovered Addict

I was a sugar and a chocolate addict! I am now happy to say I am a recovered addict.

Cravings
sugar addict

How Did I Become a Sugar Addict?

Becoming an addict began in my mother’s womb. Sugar and chocolate were already my mother’s addictions.  At a date with my father, she invited him for hot chocolate filled with sugar. He was not impressed!  My father was an alcoholic!  It truly was good luck that I did not become an alcoholic. (but that is another story).

There is no blame towards my mother at all. She was innocent in her love of sugar and chocolate and gave it to me every chance she could.  There wasn’t the same level of nutritional awareness at that time as there is now.

Sugar As A Cure For Dietary Deficiencies!?

Mom used sugar and chocolate to get me to consume foods she was told were good for me.  One of those foods was milk. As a little girl, I did not like it, so she bought me chocolate milk filled with sugar. This reinforced my growing sugar addiction.

Another ‘good’  food I didn’t like was eggs. To solve this problem she made me a sweet egg nog. This had both milk and eggs AND sugar.

Yuk! I remember not liking it at all.  Now I feel nauseous just thinking of it.

Mom did not know that milk and eggs do not agree with everyone.  They certainly did not agree with me!   Right after that first and only egg nog I got very sick with a cold and was in bed for a week coughing up mucous.  No one realized the link and only much later in my life did I realize that my body did not do well with dairy and eggs.

sugar addict

Sugar and Junk Food for Fun

My mom was a fun lover.  Once a month she would organize a fun supper.

Here is what my sister April says:

“My mother would sometimes give us money to go to the nearby store to buy supper. We were of course overjoyed as this meant that we would be able to choose anything we wanted to eat.  These suppers usually consisted of a pop, a chocolate bar, and either a bag of chips or a Fudgesicle.  We loved those junk food dinners then, however, in retrospect, they certainly were not the healthiest of dinners.”

Lots of sugar to feed the growing addict in me!  The bonus for me was that as the eldest, there were no dishes to do.

Sick As a Child

My childhood was full of flues and colds – caused by three factors.

1. Sugar weakened my immune system.
2. Dairy products clogged my respiratory system.
3.  My tonsils being removed.  Doctors did that for children with recurrent sore throats back in the 50’s.  Now health experts know that is detrimental to the immune system.  It is not surprising that a few years after having my tonsils out, I was in the hospital

How I Became a Sugar Addict 

I did not realize I was a sugar addict and how much this habit was ruining my health.  All through my teens and beyond, I was sick with colds and flues and eventually Fibromyalgia and Severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Diana was at one of her lowest points with fibromyalgia in 1996.

I was a ‘health nut’ eating lots of whole grains, nuts,  herbs, fresh vegetables, and fruit,  but I continued to eat chocolate bars, cookies, and cakes. That kept me being a sugar addict.

I justified it by eating sweets made with ‘healthy’ ingredients like whole grains, sucanat, honey, maple syrup, etc.  I still had my addictions to Coffee Crisp chocolate bars or maple cookies from the supermarket. It was easy to eat a whole package in the afternoon while sitting at my desk.

When walking by a bakery I would stop and passionately look at all those sweets, wondering which one would be the tastiest.  I knew that eating sugar was not good for me; on good days I would just look and get filled by them visually.  I tried ever so hard not to give in to eating anything with sugar but it would only last a short time then I would binge.

How I Gained Control Over Being a Sugar Addict

sugar label
Reading labels is essential.

There was no quick fix in an addiction center for this one.  It took years for my addictions to end.
It was all about becoming aware and taking steps towards my addictions.

1. First I had to take practical steps to limit my exposure to sugar and chocolate.  You can read these 7 steps here: 7 Tips

2.  I become fully aware!

Even though I knew intellectually that sugar was not good for me, it was not till the last three years that I could watch it play out in my body.   I would feel tired for five days after eating a single health food store brownie made with brown sugar.

That in itself was motivation to totally stop eating anything ever with sugar in it!  Once I did that, after a few months I noticed that I was no longer addicted to sugar or chocolate made with sugar.

This is such good news for me! Now when I see bakeries there is simply no interest at all in what they are offering; in fact, it has no yummy factor for me at all.  Even the health food store bakery has no pull in me to buy their treats because I know that they use brown sugar.

If I can do it so can you. Join me and be a success and no longer be controlled by a sugar addiction. I was a sugar addict, note the word WAS.

sugar addict

 

Learn All About Cravings and Addictions:
Click here: Free Webinar: How to Deal With Cravings and Addictions: learn how to tackle the most prevalent cravings and addictions.

My Best Training to Help Others with Addictions and create new healthy habits right now is with my 2-5-30 Healthy Diets
The 2-5-30 Healthy Diets give support and specific meal planning for a full 30 days.
This is a great advance in one’s eating and meal planning.

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7 thoughts on “I Was a Sugar Addict – Now Happy to say I am a Recovered Addict”

  1. Hi, I am struggling with acne for a long time & my doctor insisted that I completely stop sugar. Like you, I am a big time sugar addict just like my mom.(although it has no effect on her skin, I have a major hormone imbalance. I recently purchased stevia but the taste is not that great. However if you could please let me know of any sweet recipes you have using stevia as I need to make it sugar free, egg free & butter free. Will be a great help.

  2. I had a sugar/carb addiction, and cured it by taking tryptophan an hour before bedtime and adding more protein to my diet. Those two adjustments corrected a serotonin imbalance that made me high-strung and sugar-crazed. I’m pretty relaxed and happy now, and the only time I crave sweets is when I forget to eat and my blood sugar drops. A piece of fruit fixes me right up, and my brain has learned to associate “I need sugar” with “I need an apple,” instead of bread, cookies or rich desserts. My solution might not work for everyone, but I think we do ourselves a disservice when we ignore the possibility that a brain chemistry imbalance could be driving our cravings.

  3. Hi Diana:

    As I struggle with my own addiction to sugars and carbs, I have begun to replace sugar with Stevia, as you have. One word of caution: I stumbled upon research done on the production process of Stevia and found that not all are created equal. Usually, the Stevia leaf is chemicall/mechanically broken down into a powder. This is then rehydrated to make Stevia liquid, or sold as the powder. However, many different – and toxic – kinds of chemicals can be used in the process. Why? Because it is cheaper and makes Stevia addictive, just like sugar. This is particularly true of product with names that are derived from the word “Stevia” like, for example, Truvia which is a product of Coca-Cola and Cargill(enough said!). There are Stevia products that are made directly from the Stevia leaf without the use of chemicals. They are hard to find. One of them is sold by Dr. Tracy Darling, MD. According to her, she used to dispense a lot of drugs, like most Western-based MDs, but grew disillusioned with the side effects of drugs and the fact that they weren’t treating the cause but rather putting a Band-Aid on it, and an addictive Band-Aid at that. So now she practices alternative medicine and has adopted Hippocrates’ motto: “Let thy food be thy medicine.” (Perhaps a motto the AMA should remember!).
    Good luck to all, JP

  4. My sugar addiction has always been what many people consider a healthy addiction anyway – it’s fresh fruit. Believe me, eating and enjoying fresh fruit all the time can give you just as many problems as spending the day gorging yourself with cookies, candy and junk food. I ended up a severe type 2 diabetic, all on “healthy foods”. I’m learning how to control it better, which means my list of diagnosis’s are shorter and the medications are disappearing but it’s still a daily struggle. Probably always will be because no matter how much better I’ve got, I still want more fruit.

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