Live Out Loud: How I Kicked My Sugar Addiction

In response to an article in today's Province newspaper entitled "Sugar Should Be Controlled Like Alcohol: Report" I posted this on my Facebook wall:

I'm evangelical about this topic. Sugar ain't sweet. It's addictive poison. Especially in the quantities that we eat it. And that's the rub - it is so addictive, not many have the ability to "eat sugar moderately." Please also remember - simple, processed carbs also = sugar. That dinner roll = sugar. Those Doritos = sugar. French fries = sugar.

Then someone on Facebook just asked me a question that I get asked a lot. How did I kick my sugar addiction?


Here's my answer:


I didn't.


This may sound ridiculous to some, but I see sugar addiction exactly the way I see alcohol addiction (it should be noted that alcohol and sugar have an eerily similar journey once they've entered our bodies) - once addicted, always addicted. Hello, my name is KJ, and I'm a sugarholic.


Which means that if you want to be a sober sugarholic, most of you (I only say most because it is more politically correct...what I really think is ALL) need to completely detox. In the beginning, reducing will hardly, rarely work. And it will almost NEVER permanently get you "off" sugar.


Does that mean I stopped eating fruit when I did my detox? Yes. I ate no more than 15grams of sugar in a day. Which means, IF I ate fruit, it was, like, 6 blackberries. Exceed 15g of sugar and your body chemistry does that crazy biochemical dance that will ultimately lead to your weight gain, cravings, irritability, headaches, anxiety, fucked up sleep patterns, acne, depression...and worse.


Don't believe me? Fine, don't. But I betcha if you spend the next seven days eating under 15g of sugar a day, your detox will be so hard core it'll knock you on your ass.


And then? And then afterwards, your life and your health will change in ways you never thought possible.


Things I did to help myself through that difficult period:


HERBAL TEA:


I'm a night owl, and that is also when my cravings appear. Tea helped. Fruity, herbal teas. It wasn't so much the TEA (I know, I know, you're thinking - you think TEA is gonna satisfy my craving for APPLE PIE? Or POPCORN? Or GUMMY BEARS? KJ, you really have lost your mind). It was the ritual around making the tea that distracted me, and gave me something else to do that wasn't the same, self destructive choices.


GREEN SMOOTHIES:


I really feel that if I could give everyone I know ONE health tool, it would be the art of the green smoothie. They work because the more INSANE amount of nutrition you put into your body, the less garbage you crave.
Watch one of my green smoothie videos here...


GOOD FATS:


Saturated fat has been vilified wrongly. There are plenty of heart healthy fats that are high in saturated fat - like my life saver - coconut oil. By finding ways to add these kind of fats into my recipes, I felt more "satisfied" and, thus, it was a little less difficult to keep myself from breaking down and going to Tim Hortons.


STEVIA:


Yes, I used stevia. BUT BARELY. Especially at first. And that is because even a natural sweetener like Stevia keeps a sweet tooth alive. (Oh, and I'd sometimes chew a piece of gum sweetened with Xylitol since Xylitol is actually great for dental health.)


80% DARK CHOCOLATE:


2 squares of this stuff was the way I would "award" myself in the beginning for making it through one more day of detox-intense-cravings-give-me-sugar-or-I'll-die-ness.


GET GOOD AT GOING TO SLEEP HUNGRY:


I had to train myself that it was okay for me to go to bed hungry. Now, don't get your panties in a bunch. This isn't me saying I starved myself. This is me saying that if I had supper at 7pm, then tea and a couple squares of dark chocolate at 9pm, then at midnight, as I worked away (remember I'm a night owl), it was okay to just sit with the feeling that I could eat again. By the time I turned out my light at 1 or 2, my stomache was full on growling, AND THAT WAS OKAY. When I awoke at 10am the next morning, I was ready for my green smoothie!


KALE CHIPS:


Since chips are my crack, I needed to find no-sugar (remember white potatoes = sugar...not to mention all the other crap they put into potato chips) alternatives to things that had a CRUNCH in my mouth. Kale chips, sprinkled with nutritional yeast & sea salt are still life savers for me. ?See my video here.


MADE MY HEALTHY EATING A NEW HOBBY:


The time I might have spent buying McDonalds, I started to use researching how to sprout. Or research cool, SIMPLE recipes for ways to get flavours I loved without the sugar or high carb count. I joined e-course coaching groups filled with people who were on the same path as I was, and we had each other's backs. I made vlogs about the new things I was experimenting with. I immersed myself with research about what my old way of eating was doing to me.


Things I didn't do, and I don't recommend to you:


DRINK CAFFEINE:


This will truly make your sugar cravings increase ten fold...not to mention all the other crap caffeine does to you. ? Plus, most people dowse their coffee/tea with sugar. Probably because the stuff is VILE and they are trying to make it taste less like TOXIC MUD. (ooops, did I say that out loud?)


USE ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS:


Not ever. Na da. This will not help you to lose weight or kick a sugar habit. It might seem to at first, but ultimately people that think SPLENDA or ASPARTAME is the key to their success, fail. Just don't do it.


DRINK, SMOKE OR TAKE DRUGS:


I get that I'm a bit of a nun in this department, but we all know that none of these things will help you down the road to kick-ass-ed-ness. Anyway, this topic is hugely controversial (especially when I tell you that I include pharmaceudicals in my term "drug taking" & that the only reason wine is high in antioxidants is because it is made with GRAPES. So, cut the crap, and if you care about antioxidants, eat grapes and skip the booze), and should be left for future posts.


DRINK VERY INTERESTING BEVERAGES:


Just water. Or herbal tea. I could sugarcoat it for ya (*cough*), but this is just a sheer discipline thing. Sure, I'd add lemon or lime to my water sometimes, but mostly, I just had to want a healthy body more than I wanted a chai latte or iced tea.


EAT OUT MUCH AT ALL:


I adore eating at restaurants, but one of the biggest changes I had to make was cooking my own food at home. Two full years later, and I'm actually starting to enjoy it...I even got an apron for Christmas:-)


GIVE UP:


I fell off the wagon. I still do sometimes. I'm not perfect. But when I got through that first week, and then slowly through the 2nd, and the fat started coming off, and my skin cleared up, and my bowel movements were easy & plentiful, and my energy was even, and I felt happy & hopeful all the time, and my chronic yeast infections disappeared, and thus my sex life improved, and I wasn't getting any of the "bugs" that would flatten everyone around me...well, it motivated me to get back on the wagon. And never look back.


Why do I say I never kicked my addiction? It is because I can feel it, every day, lurking. Wanting to take me down. And when I give in, just a little bit here and a little bit there, I find myself back in that very dark place of stuffing food into my face that I know is harmful and will undo all the good I've done. In Mexico, because for two weeks I didn't have a kitchen or a real grocery store, I struggled to stay above sugar-addiction (aka simple-carb-addiction...same thing) water. I gave in a little, and then a lot, and watched all my old symptoms reappear (as well as a couple of hard-lost pounds). It reminded me that my addiction to sugar (mostly: doritos, french fries, donuts, apple pastries) will always be waiting to help me self-destruct.


I'd love to teach some Sugar Blues workshops, and really delve into this stuff with people who are motivated to make some changes. I'd talk about hidden sugar, and food that we don't think of as "sugar", but act that way in the body. I'd talk about how to read labels to figure out how to stay under 15g. I'd talk about all the AMAZINGLY tasty food I eat each day, so that people could stop believing that in order to eat healthily, they have to "give up" some wonderful life experiences, and the enjoyment of food. I'd talk about how everything is connected, and so even decluttering your living space can help you combat sugar addiction.


But this preacher is getting off her pulpit now.


Amen:-)

Source: http://www.kjkonkin.com/2012/02/how-i-kicked-my-sugar-addiction.html

gabby giffords gabby giffords geithner elizabeth banks gabrielle giffords juliette lewis nancy pelosi