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.

What Can You Eat When You Stop Being Sweet?

December 02, 2009 • Comments (0)

Many people ask me what’s okay to eat. It is up to you to figure out where you draw the line. That’s what it means to Stop Being Sweet. It’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. What works for me might not work for you.

There are many foods that people might be surprised to know I eat. For instance, I still eat bread. I eat bagels from time to time. I eat pasta and rice. I eat fruit and fruit smoothies. I do this because I chose to stop being sweet instead of trying to quit sugar. Quitting sugar might be impossible and I’ve never met anyone who really quit sugar—nobody.

For the record, I do not eat (but for once a year) candy, ice cream, cookies, cake, brownies, or any of the “fun” sweet stuff that I’d still-to-this-day get the desire to spend an afternoon consuming. I avoid refined sugar unless it comes as an ingredient in bread in which case I choose the healthiest bread I can find. In Portland we have Dave’s Killer Bread which is a favorite of many. I also like Vita Bee which Oregonians can find at Fred Meyer stores. Those are two decent sliced breads that do not contain High Fructose Corn Syrup.

So, to Stop Being Sweet is not all or nothing. It’s fundamentally about identifying and avoiding your trigger foods, breaking and replacing your negative behavior patterns.

Stop Being Sweet is not a diet, it’s a movement! If you want a prescribed diet, see a nutritionist or doctor. When you stop being sweet you learn about your behavior around food and YOU decide what you will or won’t eat of your own volition.

Posted in Tips, Tricks, Info & News on 12/02/09 • Comment

How to Stop Sugar Bingeing

November 30, 2009 • Comments (1)

I am no doctor and so I am offering my opinion from experience. I have managed to stop bingeing on sugar, but I still binge now and again (on sugar free foods).

Bingeing is a result of something. If you weren’t bingeing on sugar, you’d be doing it with something else. Gambling, gaming, sex, drugs, alcohol, knitting, etc. Obviously some things are better to binge on than others. However, knitting doesn’t have a chemical physical effect on your body the way ingesting sugar does. So yes, sugar can call out to you. It can wake you up in the middle of the night. It can sneak into your car with you on your way to work. It will sit in your pocket while you visit the dentist. And sugar will always be there waiting for you if you chose to abandon it. Sugar is everywhere and it’s calling your name. The trick is to figure out what is making you want to hear the call.

There are a thousand other things calling out to you right this minute—other industries and products that desperately want your time and money. Why is it that you can ignore them and you choose sugar?

Ask yourself:

1. What is it that makes you want to binge?

Next time you binge, write down everything that happened just prior to your binge. Are you celebrating? Beating yourself up? Bored? Take time and really examine why you are bingeing. Chances are—if you allow yourself to face facts—you know exactly why.

2. What is is that attracts you to sugar as opposed to any other substance or activity?

When you binge, why do you choose sugar? Is it because you’re sober and sugar is acceptable? Is it because you learned how to eat sweets when you were a kid? Why not go running instead? Binge-run ten miles! Take a walk. Binge-walk around the block twenty times. Binge-bike ride. Binge-knit a few sweaters. Does bingeing have to be something you do to your own body?

It’s not easy to change your ways but it’s also not impossible. If you want to stop bingeing you have to start examining. You’re not a bad person. Sugar isn’t bad. What is bad (for you) is the result of bingeing on sugar. If you manage to remove the sugar from bingeing but never figure out the origins of your binges, then you will transfer your binge. This may not be so bad if you manage to transfer your bingeing behavior to earning millions in stock market binges. But, chances are you’ll end up eating, smoking, drinking, playing video games or doing something worse.

Examine yourself and answer the questions above. And whatever you do, don’t forget that bingeing is your choice and you have control over it. Bring the issues back into your body, deal with them, and put the sugar outside of yourself. Good luck!

Posted in Tips, Tricks, Info & News on 11/30/09 • Comment

Sugar Challenge: Nov. & Dec. 2009

November 26, 2009

To all those who are celebrating today, Happy Thanksgiving!

Congratulations to everyone who made it through the last sugar challenge — from Halloween to Thanksgiving without eating sweets. If you tried but didn’t make it, that’s cool too. Nobody gets it right the first time and you have another chance.

From Thanksgiving (or right now depending on when you read this) until New Year’s Eve on December 31st, eat no sweets. Wait! Wait! Hear me out before you bail out.

I understand that asking some people to go without sugar during the holidays would be like asking pro football players to do the Super Bowl without a football. So for those of you who absolutely must eat dessert on your chosen holiday, then make that day a sugar day and avoid sweets all other days. How’s that sound?

If you at least manage to reduce the amount of junk food that you eat over the holidays then you’ve done a good thing.

Posted in Sugar Challenge on 11/26/09

Sugar Does Not Equal Love

November 24, 2009 • Comments (0)

As we move into the holiday season I want to remind you of something.

Sugar is not love.

Love is an emotion. Love is not tangible. Love is free. Yet, for millions of people sugar represents love. Baking your sweetie something sweet is a popular way to say, “I love you.”

We give chocolate on Valentine’s Day and share sweets during the holidays. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But where we do go wrong is when we start to mistake sugar for love. Not everyone has this problem, but many sugar addicts do.

Sugar addicts tend to eat sweets as a result of wanting to connect with a loved one in person or from afar. Afar could mean the person is out of town, overseas, or has passed away. For instance, a daughter bakes and eats a particular cake recipe because she used to make that cake with her mother and it was her mother’s favorite. Or, a young man goes to get ice cream every time he feels that does something right because his father used to reward him with a chocolate chip mint sundae. Sound familiar?

As holiday madness takes control of your life in the coming weeks, keep in mind this simple rule:

Sugar does not equal love.

There are other ways to show your love besides eating and giving sugary foods. Find one that works for you.

Posted in Tips, Tricks, Info & News on 11/24/09 • Comment

On Demonizing Sugar

November 23, 2009 • Comments (1)

Candy Cigarettes Not too long ago, during a conversation with my friend, the subject of sugar came up. I mentioned something about how I find it hard to moderate eating sweets. My friend made a face and said, “...and so you demonize sugar.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement, possibly even an accusation. It made me think of many endless debates between blaming the object or the people who use/wield/consume that object. For example, “Guns, don’t kill people. People kill people.”

The problem is that sugar doesn’t kill people —at least not in the press-a-button end-a-life kind of way. It is common place for people to eat sugar. People often eat sweets their entire lives and never know what it feels like to be sugar-free. (Feels like are the key words in that sentence.) Even people who don’t think of themselves as having a sweet-tooth are often addicted to carbs and many people who think they are sugar-free are indeed ingesting a huge amount of added sugars without even knowing it.

My friend and I talked about how it became common place for people to take a smoking break at work. In fact, if you want to be able to take regular breaks at certain jobs, it would behoove you to take up smoking! How many people do you know who are allowed (meaning it’s socially acceptable) to take a phone break at work? Ten minutes standing out front of the building to make a call several times a day might get you fired. But in many places there is a designated smoking area for the smoking team. (Imagine a harmonica break!)

armtray There used to be ashtrays on the seat arms in airplanes. People used to smoke inside hospitals. They smoked in movies, on television, and at the table next to you at a restaurant. When I was in high school there was an outdoor smoking lounge for students. The idea seems insane by today’s paradigm. In fact it’s illegal. Why? You know why.

“But sugar is different,” my friend argued, “Sugar is in everything. We need sugar to live.”

I agree that sugar is in everything and we need natural sugars to live. However, we don’t need large quantities of added sugars in everything we consume. Sugar has been pushed on us since we were children. We have been programmed to believe that sugar is fun and gives us energy. Large corporations sell sugar to kids on television (cereal ads), in playgrounds (think fast food playground sponsorships) and in cafeterias at school. Food products that are labeled organic and healthy can still contain large doses of sugar. At the end of the day we’ve eaten a whole lot of sugar if we weren’t paying attention, and that’s often the case even if we didn’t eat candy-ish sweets.

smoke filled plane How much is too much? For certain addictive types, research pointing to fatty and sugary foods as being addictive might mean just a little is too much. Otherwise let Coke teach you and your family about nutrition.

So, to my friend and everyone who might have had the same thought as he, I don’t demonize sugar because we all know it’s bad for us. After all, sugar doesn’t ruin your health. You ruin your health.

Posted in My Personal Journal on 11/23/09 • Comment