Want to learn how to break a sweet tooth addiction? That is easy. Well it is easy to say (but actually very hard to do). If you have ever tried to stop eating sugar then you know just how hard it is and new research is showing us exactly why it is so hard to kick the white death out of our diets. While you might have wrestled with your sweet tooth in the past, let me show you how you can knock it down and finally triumph over this pesky troublemaker.

Why is it so Hard to Break a Sweet Tooth Addiction?

Do you want to know why it is hard to break your sweet tooth action? The answer is simple: Because it is a real addiction. Research has shown that sugar addiction is every bit as powerful and hard to kick as addiction to alcohol, smoking, and even hard drugs.

So while you might be kicking yourself for not being strong enough to fight your sweet tooth, you should cut yourself some slack because sugar addiction ranks high on the hard-things-to-kick list.

How You Can Break Your Sweet Tooth Addiction

If you want to break your sweet tooth addiction, the first thing you have to do is stop thinking it is going to be easy. No one tells an alcoholic (or a drug addict) that they can get rid of their addiction easily. Fighting against your sweet tooth will take time and effort and you will be constantly tested in ways that other addictions are not. For example: how many cigarette ads do you see on the television? And how many of your friends think you are crazy to stop eating sugar? We are bombarded with sugar advertisements daily and most people who stop eating sugar feel alone in a world of sugar junkies. So, take your addiction seriously and understand it is going to be hard.

The second way to succeed in kicking your sugar addiction is find some support. There are many ways to find the support that you need. The best support comes from friends or family members who want to go on a sugar-free holiday with you, but there are also groups on Facebook or other web-based sites that can help you as well.

I have a 30 Day Program called the 30 Sugar Free Days that helps people get off of sugar. Check it out here: 30 Sugar Free Days. You can break your sweet tooth addiction, but it will take time. Breaking your sugar addiction is well worth the effort as you will likely lose weight and feel much better.

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Does eating sugar give you a headache? The sugar headache, otherwise known as the Holliday Headache (because we eat so much sugar on Easter, Halloween, Christmas and other holidays) has a lot in common with a hangover headache but it strikes any time year when we overdo sugar.

While most have experienced a sugar headache at some time in their lives it is not well known in medical circles. It might even surprise you to learn that the exact causes of all headaches are a bit of a mystery. Migraines and cluster headaches are thought to be vascular (having to do with blood flow) but how blood changes create a headache is unknown; the same is true of the sugar headache.

I view the sugar headache as a toxicity or dehydration event and while it might be an annoyance it could also be the sign of something more dangerous. Let’s look at dehydration ad toxicity and see how they might cause a headache.

Sugar Dehydration

Dehydration is a common way to get a headache and sugar can lead to dehydration. Eating too much sugar dehydrates your body in two ways.

• Dilution: When you eat too much sugar, your body has to dilute that sugar to keep it from harming your body. This means that water is being pulled from all parts of your body to balance the large amount of sugar in your blood stream. While this water-pulling effect happens all over the body, it is your head that suffers the most.

• Urination: One of the ways that your body has of getting rid of excess sugar is to dump it in your urine. This is especially true of diabetics, who have to go to the bathroom a lot.

Toxicity

The other way to think about sugar is to consider it a toxic event. While your body runs on glucose (a simple sugar) it was never meant to have a ton of simple sugars running around in the blood. If you look to nature, you would find that there are almost no foods that contain the high amount of sugar you would find in a soda or piece of cake. If natural foods do contain a high amount of sugar it is often bound up and hard to get to (like in a sugar cane). The only way to get a large amount of sugar into your body is to have that sugar processed before you put it in your mouth. Processed sugar or processed grains both act like sugar in your body and this is toxic to the very blood cells that carry the sugar throughout the body. (I explain this at length in my book Sugarettes).

Something Worse?

Sugar headaches can also be a warning. If you get sugar headaches often, you might just be diabetic or pre-diabetic. The best way to find out if you are diabetic is to go and see your doctor and have them run some blood tests, but here are the typical symptoms of diabetes:

• Excessive urination: As I mentioned above, sugar acts like a diuretic and will spill sugar and water into the urine. Having to urinate a lot is often one of the first signs of diabetes.
• Excessive thirst: Since diabetics are losing a lot of water (see above), they are often thirsty all the time.
• Excessive hunger: Everyone has periods of time when they are hungry, but diabetics are hungry all the time (with strong cravings for carbohydrates, sweets and sugar). This is one of the strange things about diabetics: They have a lot of sugar in their bodies, but it is not being used by the cells so they are hungry all the time.

Sugar Headache

The reasons why sugar gives you a headache are many and not readily understood. But you don’t have to wait for a reason to stop the pain in your head.

You can stop your sugar headaches and give sugar the boot by trying my 30 Sugar Free Days Program. During the program, you will learn about foods that act like sugar and what you can do about your cravings. Make sure you understand that sugar is doing more harm to your body than just giving you a sugar headache, take this opportunity to learn from your headache that you shouldn’t be putting large amounts of sugar in your mouth and you need to make a change.

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Insulin resistance is a modern day problem that is the result of eating modern day foods. What insulin resistance means is that the cells in your body are resistant to insulin. While this may not sound like a big deal, it is. The more insulin resistant your cells become, the high your blood sugar rises (and your body hates high blood sugar). Let’s take a look at just how insulin resistance happens in your body.

How Insulin Resistance Forms

If your blood sugar shoots up high occasionally, there is really no problem. The problem comes when your blood sugar is high over a long period of time or high blood sugar happens every day. To understand this, you have to understand what is happening in the cells of your body.

The cells in your body only want so much sugar; they just want enough sugar to do their jobs. When there is constantly too much insulin and too much sugar in the blood stream (like when you eat sugar at every meal) the only response that the cells have is to remove the doorways (receptors) from the outside of the cell. This process is called down-regulation of receptors. When insulin receptors disappear throughout the body, it creates a whole-body effect called “insulin resistance,” meaning the cells of the body become “resistant” to insulin.

Let’s take a look at what happens to the cell when the body removes receptors, in the following diagram the yellow represents the cell and the blue thingies are the receptors.

A cell goes from having this many receptors (normal):

To having, say, this many:

Now, this is a bit tricky to understand, but imagine if all the cells in your body began to respond to too much sugar by removing their insulin receptors. If every cell in the body removed its receptors, the doorways to sugar, what would happen? The end result would be that you’d have more sugar in your blood.

Why?

Remember that insulin used to be able to push sugar out of the blood stream and put it into the cells. The cells, though, are now getting rid of receptors because there is too much sugar around most of the time. The cells are becoming resistant to insulin. So, even though there is sugar in the blood stream and a lot of insulin, the sugar has no where to go because the cells won’t allow it in. So, now, where does the sugar go? It stays in the blood stream.

But you also have to remember, more sugar in the blood stream creates what? The answer is more sugar in the blood stream leads to more insulin. When your body becomes insulin resistant, the next time you eat a meal, you have a higher amount of sugar in your blood because the cells are refusing to take on that sugar. So, more sugar in the blood stream means that the body will now release more insulin. Do you see the vicious cycle that is starting to develop? More insulin circulating in the body will eventually lead to fewer receptors on cells, which will lead to more sugar in the blood, and more insulin, and fewer receptors and…you get the idea.

Cells will eventually look like this as they get rid of even more receptors:

Now you understand how insulin resistance can develop from eating a high amount of sugar every day. The association between eating sugars and the creation of insulin resistance is, however, far from being a proven phenomenon in human beings. Animal studies demonstrate a relationship between eating sugars and foods that act like sugar and the development of insulin resistance,[i]^,[ii] but the medical community is far from convinced. Like much of the scientific study on sugar and health, much more research is needed.

Over Time

Okay. Let’s see if we can pull this all together. Watch what happens over time, not to the individual cell, but in the whole body. The following chart shows how blood sugar and insulin react to each other and how insulin resistance builds over time when you are consuming sugar foods. (click on the image below to see full size).

What happens over time with insulin resistance is that the body can no longer produce enough insulin and, eventually, insulin production fails. When the body can no longer produce enough insulin or the cells have become resistant to insulin, your body is no longer able to keep blood sugar within a narrow range. This is called diabetes, a situation where the blood sugar is very high.

What Can You Do?

There is a lot that you can do to avoid insulin resistance, the chief among these is to stop eating sugar and foods that act like sugar. I have program called the 30 Sugar Free Days Program where you can join with other people who are giving sugar the boot.

Besides stopping the sugar feast, you can exercise, lower the amount of saturated fat in your diet and eat as many vegetables as you can. Insulin resistance is not a death sentence, but a wake-up call. There is a lot you can do to stop and reverse insulin resistance, but you have to get moving today.

[ii] Daly M: Sugars, insulin sensitivity, and the postprandial state. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Oct;78(4):865S-872S.

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How do you feel these days? If you feel a bit sluggish, tired, bloated, fuzzy in the head, have headaches, belly aches, or just don’t feel right then it may be time for a sugar detox. Sugar is everywhere (even in foods you don’t suspect, see: Hidden Sugars) and it is hard work doing a sugar detox and avoiding the white stuff all together. But a sugar detox is well worth the effort if you want to lose a few pounds and get back to feeling like your old self again.

Why is Sugar a Problem?

Oh sugar, you cause so many problems, let me count the ways:

1. Addictive: As you might have guessed, sugar is addictive. But what you may not have guessed is just how addictive sugar can be. When scientists test rats addicted to sugar they find that the addiction to sugar is just as strong as other addictions (like cigarettes, alcohol and even hard drugs). If you doubt this, try staying away from all sugar for just one day and you will see what a powerful hold that white stuff has over you. When you do a sugar detox you have to battle your addictions.
2. Health Problems: While many people in the medical community think that eating even large amounts of sugar is no problem, research is now showing that sugar is at least partially responsible for diabetes, heart disease, obesity and maybe even some cancers.
3. Weight Gain: The more sugar you eat, the more you are going weigh. The reason for this is that your body doesn’t want to waste the energy that you eat. Your body only needs so much fuel and when you eat too much sugar it is going to store all that extra energy as fat. Most people who go on a sugar detox lose a lot of weight.
4. Hurts Your Brain: Sugar is responsible for that fuzzy thinking you get in the middle of the day and can lead to headaches, problems focusing and maybe even depression. (see: What Sugar Does to Your Brain)

How to do a Sugar Detox

Going on a sugar detox is easy, right? All you have to do is stop eating all sugar. Well… it is easy to say you should do a sugar detox but much harder to actually do.

There are two obstacles that you have to overcome when you do a sugar detox.

• The first is the addictive nature of sugar. The bad news about a sugar detox is that the cravings that come when you stop eating sugar are incredibly powerful. But here is the good news: it gets easier. It really gets easier if you have support from friends and family. Most people who go through a sugar detox find that the first few days are hard and then they feel better than they have in a while.

• The second is that kicking sugar alone is not enough, you also have to stop eating the foods that act like sugar. The reason for this is that many foods you eat raise your blood sugar more than eating table sugar; so to truly detox from sugar you have to avoid the foods that act like sugar to (see: Foods that act Like Sugar).

I have created a program called the 30 Sugar Free Days Program that will help you with your sugar detox. The program includes daily e-mails and has a group on Facebook for the support that you need. The program is designed to help you stay away from both sugar and the foods that act like sugar.

Yes, a sugar detox is not easy, but it is well worth the effort and you will feel better than you have in a while once you given sugar a kick out the door.

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I’m often asked what the best way to lose weight fast is and while you might think that there is some mystery about how to lose weight fast there actually isn’t. While I can give you all sorts of complicated formulas for what you need to do to lose the weight you want to lose, I can also make it very simple: Eat what humans are supposed to eat.

The million dollar question, though, is what are humans supposed to eat?

Stop the insanity!

Somehow, people who live in so-called advanced societies have gotten far away from the foods that they should be eating. Almost everything that you put in your mouth can add weight to your hips, thighs (and other places you don’t want to think about).

The reason why this has happened is because the people who make your food have created foods that cater to your taste buds and not to your body. We are all stuck in this sugary-salty-fatty-taste-land where everything we eat makes our taste buds go gaga but our waistlines go  large.

What you want to notice about what I just wrote is this: “the people who make your food.” Because (if you are like most people) you make less and less of your own food; other people are making what you eat. Even if you do cook at home, the meal usually starts with something that comes in a package. This wouldn’t really be a problem except that the people who make your foods want you to eat more and that means making the food taste good.

These foods are full of fat, sugar and salt and these can contribute to your weight gain, but let’s look closer at the three reasons for weight gain.

Reasons why you gain weight

Here is why you are gaining weight when you eat the foods that other people make:

• Fatty foods: many of the foods that you eat are high in fat. While you might recognize that foods such as oils and butter are fat, you might not realize that most of the fat you eat comes in the form of animal proteins and dairy foods.
• Sugar into fat: sugar is easily turned into fat in your body, the worst offender is high fructose corn syrup and soda.
• Lack of exercise: You know that you are probably not as active as you used to be and this can have a dramatic impact on your metabolism.

What you should eat to lose weight

Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but the best way to lose weight fast is to eat only fruits and vegetables. But let me warn you that anyone who is now eating the Standard American Diet (SAD diet) and tries to eat only fruits and vegetables is in for a world of hurt. The reason for this is that your digestive system is not ready for such a dramatic change and will need time to adjust to your new diet. While I don’t believe that you should only eat fruits and vegetables, they should surely be a large part of your diet (80-90 percent).

Here is how to make the transition:

• Take away sugar and foods that act like sugar. I have a program that will help you: 30 Sugar Free Days Program. Doing this program alone can help you lose a ton of weight.
• Start to increase the amount of fresh fruits and vegetables you eat every day. Make sure every meal has at least two vegetables or fruits. Focus on the green leafy vegetables such as kale, salad greens, arugula, Bok Choy, endive, collard greens, spinach, mustard greens, lettuce (all types) and whatever you like.
• Remove dairy from your diet. This step alone drops a huge percentage of fat out of your diet. Worried about getting enough calcium? Check out my post on Calcium Myths.
• Eat meat or eggs only on the weekends. This will substantially reduce the amount of protein and fat in your diet (therefore reducing calories).
• Snack on fruits and vegetables.

The best way to lose weight fast is to eat the way humans are meant to eat: a diet high in fruits and vegetables. The biggest bonus to this way of eating is that you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight.

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I’ve pondered this question a lot. My kids suggest that “they” should make broccoli taste good if they want people to eat it. And while I’m sure there is at least one scientist out there trying to make broccoli taste like cotton candy, I think that understanding how our taste buds work and what we can do to manipulate our tastes will go much farther to getting good foods on our plates than any genetically altered broccoli.

There are two reasons why foods that are good for you don’t also taste good. Let’s take a look.

Your Taste Buds Have Been Altered

The first reason why everything that is good for you tastes like cardboard is because your taste buds have been altered. The question you have to ask yourself is who changed your taste buds? The quick answer to that question is : The food you eat. If you are like most people, the food you eat is all high in fat, sugar, and salt and when you eat foods that are all high in sugar, fat and salt your taste buds change.

The easiest way to understand this is to imaging that everything you drink is either vodka or whisky. Imagine if you had been drinking vodka or whisky ever since you were a child. How do you think water would taste to you? When you are drinking a high-octane drink like hard alcohol for your whole life, your taste buds get used to it and everything else is going to taste bland and boring.

Your Addictions Run Your Life

The second reason why everything that is good for us doesn’t taste good is that many of the foods you eat you are addicted to. Foods like sugar, milk and milk products, coffee and even meat all have addictive qualities to them. When you eat a food that you are addicted to it changes your brain in some way; it usually makes you feel better. Broccoli will not do this.

We are attracted to sugary-salty-fatty foods in ways that we aren’t attracted to carrots, apples and Brussels sprouts.

Read more about sugar addiction here: Are you addicted to sugar?

Double Whammy

When all the foods you are eating are super strong tasting (like whisky) then of course you are going to think that real and fresh foods taste like junk. But just as if you were drinking alcohol every day, your body is ruined by these foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt. If you add the mood-altering aspect of your food addictions and you are guaranteed to never put something fresh in your mouth.

What Can You Do?

While you probably don’t believe me, your tastes can change. The only way they are going to change, though is to stop eating foods high in sugar, fat and salt. All you need is a few weeks away from the super strong tasting foods before your taste buds come back and you start enjoying the sweetness of foods like carrots or avocados (yes, these are sweet foods).

While it is difficult, you can do it (see my 30 Sugar Free Days Program for help) and once you make the transition from processed foods to real foods your taste buds will change back and you will find yourself enjoying foods like broccoli once again.

Take the plunge and try the 30 sugar free days challenge:

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If you ask most medical doctors or even established associations such as the American Diabetes Association (see Diabetes Myths) you will find that they think that eating sugar has nothing to do with diabetes. To most people it seems mind bogglingly simple to connect a sugar control problem (diabetes) with eating too much sugar but the medical community just can’t seem to make that leap.

For the rest of us that live on planet reality it is obvious that eating sugar can cause diabetes. How do we know that? Because humans that don’t have access to purified white sugar or foods that act like sugar simply don’t have diabetes. If you look around the globe, you see that people who are unlucky enough to be able to go to the store and pick up a bag of sugar (or get a soda, or buy a bag of chips) are the same people who have diabetes.

A sugar free diet for your diabetes will not only help you, but can dramatically reduce or eliminate your need for medications.

White Sugar

The image you have to get into your head about white sugar is that it is the 100-proof vodka of foods. When you pick up a bag of sugar and the label says that it is almost 99 percent sucrose (and nothing else), that means that your sugar has been so refined that there is nothing else in that bag but pure sucrose. No food this pure exists on the earth until human hands purify it. White sugar is like a drug – only more pure than any you would find on the streets.

But here is the problem.

You can remove all the sugar you want from your diet but if you don’t also remove the foods that act just like sugar in your body then you are not doing yourself any good. What are the foods that act like sugar? They are foods such as bread, crackers, chips and certain fruits and vegetables and they all act just like eating sugar. Want to learn more? Check out my article on the foods that act like sugar.

How to Go Sugar Free

If you are going to do a sugar free diet for diabetics then you are going to need some help.

First let me caution you that changing the way that you eat (especially if you remove sugars and foods that act like sugar) can dramatically change your blood sugar. This is no problem if you are not on medications for your diabetes, but if you are taking medications for blood sugar control then you can put yourself in a dangerous position by simply eating better. Let me suggest that you work with your doctor or health care provider if you are taking diabetic medications and you are going to change your diet.

I find that the easiest way to change your diet is to follow a plan and I have a 30 Sugar Free Days Program that you are welcome to join (there is free version) and try going 30 days without sugar and foods that act like sugar.

Take the plunge and try the 30 sugar free days challenge:

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You know that sugar is bad for you and your kids, so you take another look at the label. But even that is a nightmare: You know that glucose is a sugar but what about maltodextrin, or dextrose?

All this is enough to make you go crazy! Even if you are successful at steaming the tide of sugar into your house, your kids are often out of your sight and exposed to sugar in their daycare, their schools, or, if they are older… everywhere they can travel.

Sugar Consumption Junction

We consume a lot of sugar. Most adults and children are eating 1/4 to 1/2 of a pound of sugar every day.

Kids are no better:

A recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that

• 10 to 15 percent of our children’s total calories are coming from fruit juice or soda (and juice, from a sugar point of view, is no better than soda).
• Children and teens aged six to eighteen, averaged 30 ounces of juice or soda every day (or 20 teaspoons of sugar).
• Younger children were drinking an average of 15.5 ounces of sugary drinks (or 10 teaspoons of sugar a day).

What is amazing about this study is that it only focused on sugars in drinks and not the cereal, cookies, jam, candies, crackers, ice cream and other foods our children are eating. Clearly, our children are eating a lot of sugar.

The Problem with Sugar

If you have ever wondered if sugar is harmful or not, let me put your mind at unrest: sugar is harmful. While there is not a single established medical association that has yet to speak up, there is mounting evidence that sugar is harming our health and the health of our children.

Sugar has two distinct characteristics that make it harmful.

First, sugar is addictive. Scientists have discovered is that sugar is every bit as addictive as cigarettes, alcohol, and even hard drugs. Rats that have become addicted to sugar act the same and have the same brain chemistry as rats addicted to those other “hard” drugs. So when you try to take sugar away from your children and they go crazy you know that you are experiencing addictive behavior. This is why we as adults also have a hard time staying away from the white stuff. Sugar has a powerful grip on us and seeing sugar as addiction explains a lot of the behavior we see around sugar, including binging, cravings and even yo-yo dieting. If you feel constantly pulled by sugar’s sweet song, you are not alone.

Second, sugar damages the body and it does so through three mechanisms.

• Weight: The standard medical opinion of sugar is that it contains calories, so it may add to our growing obesity epidemic, but only because of the calories it contains. This is true, but sugar does so much more to add to our weight. When our blood sugar is raised to the high levels that occur when we eat sugar (and especially when we drink sugar), our bodies store that extra sugar-energy as fat. This is a unique aspect of sugar that doesn’t occur, say, when you eat a steak.
• Insulin Insensitivity: Consistently high blood sugar leads to insulin insensitivity. When the cells of our body become insensitive to insulin it creates a downward spiral to poor sugar control, including metabolic syndrome and eventually diabetes.
• Toxic: Sugar is toxic in much the same way that cigarette smoke is toxic to the lungs of a smoker; only sugar harms our blood vessels. As sugar enters our blood stream, it damages the very blood vessels that carry sugar throughout the body. We see this damage dramatically in people with very high blood sugar (diabetes) whose eyes, kidneys, hearts, and nerves are all damaged by sugar. The same sugar damage occurs in people who are not diabetic, only at a slower rate.

Sugar is at least partly responsible for the ever growing epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and even heart disease and it even affects the brains and moods of our children.

How to Survive Sugar Land

For most of us, completely eliminating sugar from our children’s diet is an impossible task. Not only do we have to face our children’s and our own addiction, but our children are out of our sight for much of the day – especially as they grow older.

In the study mentioned above in the journal Pediatrics, researchers found that most of the sugar consumption (55-70 percent) occurred in the home, so parents do have a lot of control. Here are some ideas to help you control the amount of sugar your children are consuming:

• Get rid of soda: Removing all soda from the house can dramatically cut down on the amount of sugar that children are eating. Fruit juice should also go, but many parents feel they need some sweet drink in the house and while fruit juice still alters blood sugar, it does contain some nutrients – use with moderation.
• Look for hidden sugars: While you won’t know if everything on a label is sugar, look for the OSE at the end of the ingredient. Examples of sugars include glucose, maltose, fructose, dextrose; this won’t help you find all the sugars, but it will take care of most of them.
• Eat crunchy: Encourage your children to eat something fresh and crunchy with every meal. When we try this in our home, our kids always say potato chips are crunchy and we have to say, no: fresh and crunchy. Good crunchy foods are carrots, celery, apples, pears, peaches… and really most fruit.
• Eat Fruit: For the most part, fruits, eaten in whole-form, are much better and don’t cause a rise in blood sugar the way that juices made from the same fruits do. Try mixed berries with a little whipped cream as an afternoon snack (whipped cream makes anything fun).
• Stay away from artificial sugars: While the subject of artificial sweeteners is an article (or a book) in itself, let me say that these chemical sweeteners are harmful enough to recommend eating sugar over them. Artificial sweeteners are chemicals that shouldn’t be in our bodies and we are just beginning to see the damage that they cause.
• Sugar substitutes: The best natural sugars are Stevia and xylitol. Stevia is an herb that is super-sweet but has no calories, and it actually helps with blood sugar control. It takes some effort to learn how to cook with it, but it usually satisfies that sweet tooth. Xylitol is a sugar that has some benefits including not increasing blood sugar dramatically and it has also been shown to be an anti-cavity sugar.

What to do if you can’t stay away from sugars:

• Know what keeps blood sugar low: If you cannot get sugar out of your life, you need to understand how to keep you and your children’s blood sugar low. The nutrients that keep blood sugar low are: protein, fats and fiber. So the best way to eat a sugar is to eat it in a meal where protein, fats and fiber are present. This means giving children their desert right after dinner, or having them include other foods (that contain a protein, fat or fiber) with their snack. So don’t pass out the cookies without, say, a hot dog. Don’t give a juice box without, say, peanut butter. Peanut butter (especially the non-added sugar kind) makes everything taste good: put it on apples, carrots, celery… whatever they will eat.

Sugar Challenge

You are in for a challenge when you try to keep sugar away from kids; doing the right thing is hard. Every step you make to remove sugar is a step in the right direction. Sugar is a powerful foe, but you can lessen the damage with a few simple changes in what you are offering your children. If you are really brave, you can check out the 30 30 Sugar Free Days Challenge.

Good luck and good eating!

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Most people don’t think that they can, but a sugar free diet is a great way to give your health a boost and extend your life. If you were thinking about joining an expensive weight loss program – where you are stuck buying their food – I have a better (and healthier) option for you.

Sugar is harmful: Despite what the sugar industry and medical associations are saying, sugar is harmful. It is harmful in three ways:

• Adds Weight: As discussed above, sugar adds pounds to our bodies. This causes harm to our bodies because being obese or overweight increases a number of diseases: diabetes , stroke, heart disease, certain cancers and many more diseases. Obesity cuts life expectancy by as much as five years.
• Insulin Insensitivity: Consistently high blood sugar lead to the cells throughout the body becoming insensitive to insulin. This insulin insensitivity is at the heart of diseases such as metabolic syndrome and diabetes. Having diabetes, by the way, can clip as many as 10 years off your life and, maybe as many as 18 quality years off your life.
• Toxic: Sugar is toxic to our blood vessels, much the same way that cigarette smoke is toxic to our lungs. As sugar flows through our blood stream, it destroys the very blood vessels that carry the sugar throughout our bodies. This destruction is easily seen in people who have poor blood sugar control (like diabetics) who have high rates of eye disease (retinopathy), kidney disease, heart disease, nerve disease (neuropathy), and strokes, all caused by the destruction of blood vessels. The destruction also occurs in people who don’t have diabetes, only at a slower rate.

There are many reasons why you will want to join us on our sugar free adventure:

• Sugar is addictive: For many of you who read this blog regularly, you know just how powerful sugar addiction can be. Sugar often feels like it has the power to control us instead of the other way around. Sugar addiction shares common traits with all addictions, including: hoarding, binging, using the addiction to change moods, and many other addictive-like behaviors. Seeing sugar as an addiction explains a lot of how we act around sugar and is likely the reason why so many of us yo-yo diet. If you really don’t think sugar is addictive, try staying away from it for a few days and see; most people become acutely aware of just how addicting sugar can be when they remove it from their lives.
• You Want to Feel Better: Kicking sugar and eating a sugar free diet will be hard at first. But most people who are on the diet report that they feel better, have more energy, and even sleep better. Many people also report the almost magical disappearance of stomach problems, fatigue, depression, sinus infection, skin problems and more.
• Weight loss: Sugar has more to do with weight gain than you might have been led to believe by medical and nutritional professionals. Sugar does contain empty calories, but sugar is also special in its ability to add to your waistline. Your body has certain energy needs and once those needs are met by what you are eating, any excess sugar in your blood stream is going to be stored as fat. Excess sugar is very common when you are eating sugar and foods that act like sugar on a consistent basis. Keeping sugar out of your diet keeps your blood sugar low and, consequently, keeps your body from storing fat.
• You are curious: The last reason you may want to join us on our 30 Sugar Free Days is that you are curious to find out if sugar is addictive and can change your weight. Believe me when I say that those answers will become very clear for you if you join the 30 Day challenge.

Break the Habit, Break the Cycle

Breaking the sugar habit can be hard, but I am here to provide you with the support that you need, including meal plans, recipes, a newsletter and the ability to contact me with your questions; all at no cost.

Taking the 30 Sugar Free Days challenge is a step towards your better health. So many weight loss programs are designed to help you shed pounds, but do nothing to address your health. Why not have both good health and weight loss?

If you think you can go 30 days without sugar, please join us. You can sign up to receive our newsletter by clicking here: 30 Days Sugar Free.

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Sugar cravings can be awfully hard to break, but luckily there are comforting ways to help us through our sugar habit.

Most people shrug off sugar cravings as a lark or something to laugh at, but for anyone who has ever tried to kick their sugar habit, sugar cravings are anything but a laughing matter. Sugar cravings can be very intense and drive us to eat more than we want to (sometime when we are not even that hungry) and binge on certain foods. Scientists are just now discovering how serious sugar cravings can be and are conducting experiments that show sugar craving to be every bit as powerful as cravings for drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

Sugar Cravings Get Complicated

Here is the strange things: sugar cravings can carry over from sugar itself to foods that act just like sugar in your body. These foods, mostly grains and starchy vegetables (see: foods that act like sugar ), cause your blood sugar to rise just as if you were eating sugar. So, while you might want to stay away from sugar for your health, you need to include these foods that act like sugar if you really want to make an impact in your health; otherwise, you are just trading one sugar for another.

Check out my 30 Days Sugar Free Days Program that you can join if you want to try to stop all sugar and foods that act like sugar.

Cravings are also your body’s way of directing you towards foods that your body needs. The only problem is that once you become addicted to something, your cravings have gone haywire. Do you think that a smoker should follow their cravings to smoke, or an alcoholic to drink? Probably not. Likewise, your sugar cravings can often lead you astray.

Where Can You Find Comfort?

By now, you are scratching your head. Not only is sugar addicting, but there are also many other foods that act like sugar in the body and, while you may have cravings, you can’t really follow them. I’m willing to bet that every single one of your traditional comfort foods are either a sugar food, or a food that acts like sugar in your body. What are you to do?

Here are where you can still find some comfort:

• Okay, this is going to sound a bit silly, but sugar cravings come from, well… eating sugar. The more that you eat, the more that you are going to crave. I have a name for this and I call it the “sugar magnet”: once you put sugar into your mouth, more is going to want to follow. So, to avoid many of these cravings, you have to avoid the sugar.
• It is your brain that is telling you that you need to have sugar, not your body. Your brain has a set of chemicals called neurotransmitters that are involved in all sorts of brain messaging, including cravings. These neurotransmitters can be manipulated by what you eat. A diet that has plenty of good proteins and vegetables provides the raw materials for good neurotransmitters. By eating the right foods for your body, you cravings will lessen.
• Eat often: eating many small meals throughout the day is one of the best ways to keep cravings at bay. You might think that this will cause you to gain weight, but, in fact, the opposite is true: eating many small meals throughout the day can actually boost your metabolism.
• Sugar cravings also come from high spikes in blood sugar. Staying away from foods that act like sugar keeps your blood sugar more steady throughout the day and keeps the craving monsters away. There are many foods that you can eat that don’t affect your blood sugar at all: see the list of Below the Glycemic Index Foods.
• Comfort foods: Comfort foods generally have to characteristics: fatty and sugary. Look for hearty soups, stews, meals with plenty of good proteins (beef, poultry…). Things like peanut butter and beans can have the creamy, fat, sugary kind of taste you are looking for.
• If you find that you absolutely need something like a potato or grains, make sure that you are eating them near other low-sugar foods.

Kicking and Comforting

Trying to kick the sugar habit and finding your comfort foods can sometimes seem like opposite goals, but they really aren’t. Both are steps you trying to make to take care of yourself — only keeping sugars and foods that act like sugars out of your life actually accomplishes that goal. Many people report that their traditional comfort foods aren’t that at all, they may taste good for a while, but then they make us feel bad later. Find the true comfort foods, the foods that really feed your body what it needs, you will feel better much sooner than taking the old way.

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