Sugar Cravings – How To End Your Sugar Addiction

Do you struggle with sugar cravings? Are you fed up of battling your sugar addiction?

Whether you are seeking to be healthier and feel in control, or if sugar cravings are sabotaging your weight loss progress, there’s no doubt that the battle with sugar addiction continues to infiltrate our eating habits.

Week in week out, we are told that too much sugar leads to illness, health issues and obesity, yet willpower never seems to be strong enough or last long enough to really quash those cravings once and for all.

So how can you end sugar cravings and break your sugar addiction?

Sugar Cravings – Evolution or Revolution?

Where do sugar cravings even come from? It wasn’t that many decades ago that sugar was just something for the rich and wealthy yet now it is prevalent wherever we go – from sweets at the corner shop, cakes at the coffee shop to tablespoons full in our soup.

Some scientists believe we are primed to consume sugar at an instinctive level; that our hard wired evolutionary instincts crave sugar for energy for survival (and of course we developed this instinct for sweet foods long before sugar became so available).

Others argue that we learn to feel addicted to sugar – after all if it is in our food, in front of our eyes and literally in our face all day long, it becomes normal and natural to want something sweet and to enjoy the ‘sugar high’ of addiction.

Either way, I know from helping clients, as well as from stories online of people who have removed sugar completely from their diets, that it is possible to take back control over cravings.

So whether sugar cravings are evolutionary or from the sugar in food revolution, it is possible to take control over sugar and only consume it when you want to, and then only as much as you want to. You can succeed with weight loss and be healthier and happier.

It all comes back to who is in control – you or the sugar?

Overcome Sugar Cravings

Follow these four steps to overcome your sugar cravings and take back control:

1) Know Your Triggers – it’s unlikely that you are scoffing sugar every minute of every hour of every day, so take note of when your cravings strike – is it after meals, when you get home in the evening, is it when you see those treats during the day, are you hungry or dehydrated, or is it when stressed or bored or for something to do?

Knowing the beast means you can focus your efforts on taming it – once you know the high risk times and places you can start to plan for how to change those behaviours and do something different. Which leads to…

2) Crushing the cravings – we are all creatures of habit and association – it makes life easier to usually do the same things in the same way we’ve done them before. And 95% of the time this is helpful because it means you can get things done quicker or while thinking of something else. Yet it makes it trickier to break the patterns we have established.

So to get a different result you need to do something differently. Start to change what you do around those high trigger moments you spotted. For example, if you crave sugar when stressed then go for a walk instead. If you crave sugar when you get in from work then change the order in which you do things. Even the smallest change can start to reap big results.

And while you’re at it…

3) Just Eat Sugar – let me qualify that: when eating sugary foods (or any food if you want to be healthier and slimmer) do nothing but eat it. Pay attention to it. Eat it slowly and think about the taste, think about the sensations on your teeth, think about how you’ll feel in ten minutes time after you’ve eaten it. In my experience with clients, often the sugary thing is consumed in seconds and the desire remains strong so you have more and more before the inevitable crash, self criticism and feeling bad or guilty.

To really take back control, whenever you eat sugary things over the next two weeks, pause and pay attention – which means no watching TV, no messaging on your phone, no surfing the internet while eating. You can’t hope to end sugar addiction if you don’t pay any attention to what you are actually doing.

And in addition to using your actions and behaviours, you also need to harness the power of your mind…

4) Imagine having willpower – relying on good old fashioned willpower is unlikely to lead to long term success because your imagination will always be stronger. If you’ve ever eaten too many sugary foods and promised yourself you are never going to do that again or decided to finish the packet because you won’t buy any more, then you know willpower just won’t cut it. After all, if you allow yourself to imagine the look, feel, colour of that shiny sugary treat that tastes so good, and that feeling of it on your tongue and…so on.

Whether you realise it or not, as soon as you start imagining the taste and appeal of the sugar, you’ve probably already lost the battle of whether or not you will eat it (it starts to call you louder and louder…).

So start to imagine success; close your eyes, relax your breathing and imagine having total control over food. Imagine going a whole day without sugar, saying no to those old foods and being the new, healthier you. Make it as vivid as you can in your mind and as real as you can so that you programme your mind to quash the cravings (many of my clients use my free Rapid Relaxation audio to help relax and programme the mind for sugar freedom).

Recently a client told me how she was amazed how quickly she was able to end her life long battle with sugar cravings with hypnosis, and by following these four steps you will soon be on the way to control over sugar.

To your health and happiness,

Dan Regan

The Hypnotherapist in Ely & Newmarket

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