Speaking of willpower, yesterday was my first day back on track and I attended a class in the evening.  It was someone’s birthday, and there was a sheet cake, homemade pumpkin bread, homemade bars with chocolate chips, cherries, and nuts, white and dark chocolate covered shortbread cookies, and glazed chocolate bundt cake. 
But I had made myself a promise to begin again that day and I had herbal tea instead.  It seemed like some kind of test and I know there will be many more.

A willpower workout. It’s not fun, but you did it and you’ll do it again!

How do you have that willpower? and what about ice cream. cause thats a biggie? what do you do

Practice! A thousand times saying no and two thousand times giving in. To ween off ice cream I suggest Coconut Bliss. It’s a borderline replacement food for sure but it will get you off the hard sweets. Fruit smoothies replace ice cream in the summer. Still sugar, but natural. Ice cream consumption comes with ritual so you need to remove the ice cream and possibly remove the habitual ritual.

Cocoa isn’t the bad guy in commercial chocolate candy. Unadulterated with sugar, soy, and problematic oils (nevermind shelf-life extenders and packaging), there may be a substantial argument for cocoa to sing with the right accompaniment.

I just wrote a long comment on the “10 Reasons Why Quitting Sugar Will Make You Happy” thread. But I just wanted to add here that if you quit fructose, there’s no willpower involved. If you’re still consuming it (which it appears you are; not pointing fingers, we just didn’t know until now), you haven’t fully restored your appetite control and your sugar addition, which is why you might have cravings and willpower issues. When you stop feeding your body something it can’t handle, its internal system return to what nature designed them to do.

So to anyone who beats themselves up over not having the willpower to fight the sugar cravings, it’s not your fault. It’s nobody’s fault; we just didn’t know. But the science is in (new science completed in 2010). You can’t beat the sugar addiction without quitting the fructose intake. It won’t take any willpower at all. Your body has hormones to tell you when you’re full, but they don’t work properly if you’re overconsuming fructose. Please investigate the fructose thing (and look at my other comment for more info). It will completely change this battle. In fact, I think the two Davids should get in touch with each other.

Hi ThatGuy. How did you do it? What was your sugar intake like before and how is it now? What do you eat? How long have you been eating only the “proper” sugars? How long as this been working for you? How did you learn all the science so quickly?

See http://www.reuters.com/article/ 2010/08/02/cancer-fructose-idAFN0210 830520100802
___________
“Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Kraft Foods (KFT.N) have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda. [ID:nN12233126]

The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.

Heaney said his team found otherwise. They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.

Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate. “Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different,” Heaney’s team wrote.

“I think this paper has a lot of public health implications. Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets,” Heaney said in a statement.
...
U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.”
_________

Compare to page 3 chart “Figure. Overweight and Obesity, by Age: United States, 1971–2006.” on http://www.win.niddk.nih.gov/pu blications/PDFs/stat904z.pdf.

That’s probably way too simplistic a conclusion to draw on high fructose corn syrup alone, or even if other $ marketplace hasn’t driven other competition for tastebuds, shelf life extenders, additives and supplements, lifestyle stress and activity changes or other factors. However, the comparison might lead to additional questions about the nature of cancer, the nature of fuel in the human host, and even human immune function and the micro-biome and -viome and other little non-us entities we carry about.

The real sweet spot in the complexity of the issue may not be a direct line between cause and effect. Fun talk on many blogs though.

ThatGuy-  It would be interesting to hear back from you after you have been sugar-free for say, 6 months.  You don’t say how much of a sugar habit you have, but some of us started out strong and then caved at some point.  All the science has not kept me consistently sugar-free.  (I read Sugar Blues (Dufty) over 20 years ago).  The American diet is fraught with traditions and activities that revolve around or include sweets.  Sweets permeate our culture and it is sometimes daunting to say no, especially if one has a heavy sugar habit.  There is also an emotional component as well as what some experts deem an addiction aspect.  Additionally, we are lured in by big corporations and advertising.  Also, what parameters do we establish-sugar in anything (catsup, beer, bread, etc.), an occasional treat, only refined sweets, etc.  I am grateful to this site and to new science that may help stop the cravings.  We are learning all the time.  I gave up agave nectar when I read all the science behind that. 
Were it just that easy to “just say no” we wouldn’t be discussing this.

Sorry but I won’t be participating on this blog. I was accused of spamming, and it’s not even my book. The host of this blog apparently doesn’t want open discourse, so I will oblige.

My apologies, ThatGuy. I didn’t mean to offend you so deeply. As previously stated, the way in which you commented set off the spam alert on my website, but I haven’t removed your comments. You’re welcome to participate in the discussion. I’m sure everyone would like to know more about your story if you’re willing to share.