Are you a sugar addict? I am.
In 2005 I vowed to quit and began
writing about life without sweets.
This site contains a forum,
product reviews, my journal,
educational Sugar Challenges,
and the Stop Being Sweet ebook.

Happy Holidays!

December 24, 2009 • Comments (0)

Best wishes to you and your family this holiday season.

If you can’t make it through the holidays sugar-free, check back on Monday because I’ll be posting about ways to Stop Being Sweet in 2010!

Also, remember that the Stop Being Sweet forum will re-open on January 1st. It will be free to join and use so get some people together and get ready for a sugar-free new year.

Posted in Tips, Tricks, Info & News on 12/24/09 • Comment

Sugar & Mind Control in a Can

December 23, 2009 • Comments (0)

The following video might change the way you feel about soda pop. It talks about how sugar addiction works and why we love to love sweet drinks. About ten minutes long…

Posted on 12/23/09 • Comment

Ways to Deal with Family and Avoid Sugar During the Holidays

December 22, 2009 • Comments (0)

Hopefully you’re planning fun and friendly gatherings this year. However, for many people, the holidays can mean spending time with strange folks you only see once a while. In some cases the people you spend the holidays with are not your first choice and in the worst case scenario you just plain don’t like them. When your Uncle Jerk and Aunt Meanie make good cookies and your Cousin Callous bakes a delicious batch of brownies, dessert quickly becomes your holiday oasis!

Wherever you go and whatever situation you find yourself in, sweets are most likely going to be there as well. The people around you can help or hinder you on your mission. Your mission, of course, is to stop being sweet—that is, avoid sugar and don’t be so kind that you let others tell you what to eat. For some, peer and family pressure is worse than personally fighting off the ginger bread man. Here are some typical situations and some ideas for coping.

Total Support

Your family supports you. Someone makes sugar-free dessert for you just because they know you’re coming. Happy Holidays! You’ve got it made. Make sure you’ve committed yourself because being firmly set into your seat on the sugar-free wagon is up to you. Also, thank your supporters with a gift!

Friendly Mixed Reactions

Some get it, some don’t. When some members of the family support you and some dangle cookies in front of your nose until you crack, hang around the supporters. Chances are supporters will join you or help defend you. It’s much easier if there are several people avoiding sugar because you can all eat from the veggie plate that you made and/or brought. A true host/supporter will offer you every kind of food to help you feel full without having eaten sweets.

Temptation

It’s everywhere. As if it isn’t hard enough to avoid the giant storage container of fresh smelling, home-baked chocolate chip cookies, there’s always someone who will hold them in front of your face and tell you how delicious they are. Truth is, this should only be a problem if you started avoiding sweets the day before the holidays. Anyone who’s been more than six weeks can more easily avoid the temptation because their physical cravings are gone. Either way, the person doing the tempting is annoying. Do not get upset. Keep everything light and stick to your guns. Some tempters never stop and should be avoided and ignored as best as possible. If you have a supporter, go and hang with them.

Total Loving Freakout

Your family loves you but will have a spaz-attack if you don’t eat dessert. If your family freaks when you don’t eat their desserts and thinks you don’t love them anymore, make sure you express plenty of love to everyone. Let them know why you are not eating sweets so that they know that it’s not a backhanded way of saying you hate them. Many families show love through sweets. There are two roles in this case, the baker and the eater. The baker shows love by making the sweets and the eater shows love by devouring the confections. The person who used to play this game but suddenly stopped can appear as an angry party who no longer wants to participate in the family.

Loving Guilt Trip

They made all these desserts and you’re not going to eat them? Unless you’re the only one in the place who eats dessert and the person really went out of their way for just little old you, then you’re being manipulated in the form of a guilt trip. The guilter “inspires” you do something they feel you ought to be doing because it confirms their ideas of how things should be. If they think you don’t love them, express love in other ways. If they need you to eat in order to feel that they did a good job, eat more dinner. If they are just plain controlling, stand your ground. There is nothing wrong with not eating sweets. There is also nothing wrong with eating sweets and so point out that you are not asking them to not eat sweets nor are you asking them why they want to do so. If guilting persists, become curious and ask questions to discover and quell their fear. Their fear might be that you don’t love them. It might be that they will be stuck with all the cookies and will have to eat ‘em themselves. It could be that they are angry that they went through the trouble and you are appearing unappreciative. It could be anything.

Fear

You’re not going to become one of them _________’s, are ya? If you stop eating sugar then that means you’re bound to move to another country, change your sexual orientation, become radically political, worship reptiles, or generally no longer be yourself. If you stop being you, who will the scared person become? Fear of the unknown is scary. Reassure people if you feel they need and deserve it. Also, make sure the discussion stays on topic and doesn’t drift to something that isn’t happening—like you living on a sugar-free commune in South America.

Interrogation

There must be a reason for this! They’ll want to know why you’re not eating sweets. Answer slowly in simple, one sentence answers. Only answer the question asked. In other words, they might ask, “Why are you doing this?” Don’t go into the whole thing. Give one answer per question such as, “I find I feel better when I eat less sweets.” Let them go for a second question before you say, “I ate too many sweets at work last week,” or whatever. By taking it one question at a time you stall the whole explanation process and have a greater chance of being left alone or getting out of the conversation with a save like, “time for gifts!” The truth is that you do not need to explain anything to anyone. If you don’t want sweets you just don’t, period. It might behoove you to simply keep them guessing. “Wouldn’t you love to know,” is a valid answer.

Making Fun

Ha ha! You off sugar! Keep it light and joke with them but really listen to the jokes. If they make fun of you not eating sweets that’s fine. If they use you’re refusal of dessert to make fun of you, your weight, or some other issue, then that’s not cool. To stop being sweet means you avoid sugar and you stand up for yourself and your health. Being assertive can be just as difficult as avoiding sugar. Remember, none of this is pass-or-fail and all of this is practice. It might take two or three holidays seasons for you to be able to handle the sweets and the family reaction. It might take them several seasons of you refusing sugar to believe that you mean business.

Comparison

You’re off sugar, huh? So is blah-blah-blah. He/she lost 7,000 lbs. in 7 days. Don’t fall for this one! You are not comparing yourself to anyone else. Especially avoid this if you are being compared to someone who is more or less physically fit than you. If you are out-of-shape and they are not, you’ll feel awful about yourself. If they are out-of-shape and you are not, they might feel awful. Keep the conversation simple and about your relationship to sugar in that given moment. No need to announce your goals for the future. Keep it real and right now. And, of course, measure yourself only against yourself. How you’re doing is all about how you were then and how you are now.

Glooming and Dooming You to Failure

You? Off sugar? Yeah right! If your family is a combination of the negative scenarios above, consider your role in all of it. They can’t be successful oppressors unless you accept the role of the victim. Things happen to victims. If you don’t eat sugar, the unsupportive others become the victims. That’s why they’re scared, unsupportive, guilting, manipulative, and condemning you to failure. If you eat sweets they are no longer the victim of change. Stay off the sweets and you render them powerless victims stuck in their ruts.

If the family battle is something that you absolutely dread, and one that is particularly painful, then just lie. Yes, I said it: LIE. Tell them you ate something sweet over the weekend and it made you nauseous and sweet things haven’t been sitting right with you ever since. Really talk it up. “I wish I could eat that delicious sugary dessert with you but man my stomach is feeling ill. For some reason I’m craving carrots though.”

Let them think you’re pregnant or on crack. Keep your unsweet ways a secret. Nobody has to know that you’re avoiding sugar. Go for the fruit salad instead. Perhaps, when dessert comes, have more dinner and say how much you loved it. Maybe you don’t eat anything and say your stomach hurts. Go take a nap. Watch TV. Do whatever you have to do to make it through and take copious mental notes. How do they react? Why? Does anyone else opt out of dessert? Any potential supporters? You may be the only one not eating sugar at your family gathering, but you certainly aren’t alone in having to make it through the holidays without sugar.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that you want to reduce or remove sugar from your holiday diet. To actually do that you must first commit. If you go into the holidays knowing you want a little leeway then you must define that leeway BEFORE you go away or have people over. If you say you’ll allow yourself three cookies then set three cookies aside for yourself. Hide them if you must. It’s too easy to hit three and easily convince yourself, “just one more,” five more times when picking from the main tray.

Know what your goal is, stand your ground, and STOP BEING SWEET!

...and Happy Holidays!

Posted on 12/22/09 • Comment

The Truth About Sugar Video

December 21, 2009 • Comments (0)

In these videos, Nutrition by Natalie shows some familiar food products such as Starbucks, ketchup, pop-tarts, Coke, and how much sugar they contain. She also talks about High Fructose Corn Syrup and what it does to the body’s ability to know when we’re full. Watch this during your lunch break!

Part 2 gets even better…

Posted in Tips, Tricks, Info & News on 12/21/09 • Comment

Should I Quit Bread?

December 18, 2009 • Comments (5)

Having been sweet-free for a long time now, I have found that my relationship with food is different. I’ve never been a variety eater. Instead, I tend to eat the same things over and over. Confronted with the overwhelming attention assault that is the supermarket, there are a few things that always end up in my cart while the rest of the groceries remain uncharted territory.

Over the past year or year in a half, I have gained weight. I’m not obese by any means, but I am the heaviest I’ve ever been. There’s definitely a trend happening. Many people have asked me or told me about the worry of gaining weight if they quit sugar because they feel they’ll eat more to over compensate. It has become obvious to me lately is that I still eat habitually rather than when I’m hungry. Since I do a lot of work from home, the kitchen is literally a few steps away. Once again, I need to change my eating habits.

With 2010 rapidly approaching I have been considering doing something more challenging—something drastic. I think (notice my hesitation) that I’m going to stop eating any bread and flour products. I’m not sure I want to do it though. It sounds like the right thing to do but the reality is that I still love unsweetened peanut butter and pure fruit jelly sandwiches, on wheat bread of course. I still love a good sandwich. Perhaps I will limit the amount of food I eat in general. Hmmm… New Year’s Eve is fast approaching. Something’s gotta give. Any suggestions?

Posted in My Personal Journal on 12/18/09 • Comment