10 Steps For Dealing with Sugar Addiction
- Reduce or eliminate caffeine. The ups and downs of caffeine include dehydration and blood sugar swings, causing sugar cravings to be more frequent.
- Drink water. Sometimes sweet cravings are a sign of dehydration. Before you go for the sugar, have a glass of water and then wait a few minutes to see what happens. Caution: soft drinks are now America’s number one source of added sugar.
- Eat sweet vegetables and fruit. They are sweet, healthy, and delicious. The more you eat, the less you crave sugar.
- Use gentle sweets. Avoid chemicalized, artificial sweeteners and foods with added sugar. Use gentle sweeteners like maple syrup, brown rice syrup, dried fruit, stevia, barley, malt, and agave nectar.
- Get physical activity. Start with simple activities, like walking or yoga. Start with 10 minutes a day and gradually increase. It will help balance your blood sugar levels and reduce tension without medicating yourself with sugar!
- Get more sleep, rest and relaxation. When you are tired or stressed, your body will crave energy—in the form of sugar. These cravings are often a result of being sleep-deprived, going to bed late or waking up early, sometimes for months and years on end.
- Evaluate the amount of animal food you eat. Eating too much can lead to cravings for sweets. So can eating too little! A good health counselor will help you sort this out. Experiment. Respect your body’s individuality.
- Eliminate fat-free or low-fat foods. These foods contain high quantities of sugar to compensate for lack of flavor and fat, which will send you on the roller coaster ride of sugar highs and lows.
- Experiment with spices. Coriander, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom will naturally sweeten your foods and reduce cravings.
- Slow down and find sweetness in non-food ways! You body does not biologically need sugar, but it does long for hugs, time with friends, outside time, workouts, massages, etc. When life becomes sweet enough itself, no additives are needed!
From Get the Sugar Out: 501 Simple Ways to Cut the Sugar Out of Any Diet by Ann Louise Gittleman, MS, CNS.
Jo delAmor, HHC of Radiant Balance
can help you integrate these new habits into your daily life,
understand how they affect your health and resolve your general health concerns through
Holistic Health Counseling and Education.
Sweet Vegetables
Almost everyone craves sweets. Rather than depending on processed sugar to satisfy cravings, add naturally sweet foods to your daily diet to satisfy your sweet tooth.
Sweet vegetables soothe the internal organs of the body and energize the mind. And because many of these vegetables are root vegetables, they are energetically grounding, which helps to balance out the spaciness people often feel after eating other kinds of sweet foods. Adding in sweet vegetables helps to crowd out less healthy foods in the diet.
sweet vegetables
-deep, sweet flavor when cooked
try: corn, carrots, onions, beets, winter squash, such as butternut, buttercup, delicata, hubbard and kabocha, and sweet potatoes and yams
semi-sweet vegetables
-subtly sweet
try: turnips, parsnips and rutabagas
other vegetables
-don’t taste sweet, but their effect on the body is similar to sweet vegetables in that they maintain blood sugar levels, reduce cravings for sweets, and break down old animal foods in the body
try: red radishes, daikon radish, green cabbage, red cabbage and burdock
A simple way to cook these vegetables is to follow the recipe below that we call Sweet Sensation. It has few ingredients and preparation time is minimal.
Sweet Sensation Recipe
- Use one, two, three, four or five of the sweet vegetables mentioned above.
- Chop the hardest ones, like carrots and beets, into smaller pieces.
- Softer vegetables, like onions and cabbage, can be cut into larger chunks.
- Use a medium-sized pot and add enough water to barely cover the vegetables. You may want to check the water level while cooking and add more water if needed. Remember, vegetables on the bottom will get cooked more than the ones on the top. Cook until desired softness. The softer the vegetables get, the sweeter they become.
- You may also add any of the following ingredients: spices, salt, seaweed. You can add tofu or a can of beans for extra protein.
- When cooked to your satisfaction, empty the ingredients into a large bowl, flavor as desired and eat. The leftover cooking water makes a delicious, sweet sauce and is a healing and soothing tonic to drink by itself.
For more healthfully sweet recipes and ideas
you may subscribe to the Radiant Balance monthly newsletter
or schedule an Initial Holistic Health Consultation
with Jo delAmor, HHC