Sugar Addiction and How I Overcame It

Before I started keto I had a sugar addiction. And I mean, I had one bad.

It's not like I was eating spoonfuls of sugar, but I was definitely eating more than I thought I was. And I craved sugar All. The. Time.

For instance, I couldn't really get though that 3 pm hour without chocolate of some kind. I craved something sweet in the morning. I never passed up a chance to eat some kind of candy or sweet that was offered to me.

Cookies were a particular weakness as was cinnamon sugar toast.

As a result of this, my energy levels were all over the place all the time. I would feel okay when I woke up but would crash around 11 am and then I was okay after lunch but crashed at 3 pm. It was a constant cycle of refeeding myself some kind of sugar.

When I started keto, I knew that I would have to basically go cold turkey on traditional sugar. That was fine and I knew that it was part of the deal. Besides, there were tons of low carb sugar substitutes that I could use.

I knew I was a little sensitive to sugar substitutes, so I bought some Swerve, a naturally derived sugar substitute. I thought I found the silver bullet.

But then I started using it and I hated the chemical taste. And whenever I ate it, I would feel like crap about an hour after.

Because of this, I slowly stopped using it. And because of keto, I kind of naturally went on an entire sugar detox.

And damn if I didn’t feel so much better.

Np more 3 pm chocolate craving attacks. Actually, no more snack cravings period. I ate when I needed to eat and didn’t feel wild and crazy cravings take me down all the time.

Part of that could be the fat adapted part of keto, but I think a lot of that has to do with the sugar detox. Now when I reach for something sugary it’s raspberries. It’s the occasional 85% or higher dark chocolate. It’s peanut butter cup Halo Top. It’s coffee. (and I mean like...black coffee).

Everything tastes so much sweeter now. Like for instance, raspberries. Do you know how sweet and delicious raspberries are? They taste like candy to me now and it's really cool. And my coffee. Oh my gosh. My coffee. Nate encouraged me to try the Trader Joe’s New Mexico Piñon ground coffee and it tastes like coffee with melted chocolate and caramel in it. And I drink it black.

I don’t think I ever realized how much sugar I was eating until I stopped eating it. Now, when I see full sugar things my stomach and head have a twinge of pain, because I know how my body reacts to it now. My little brother offered me a peanut butter filled egg from Malley’s on Easter weekend and I declined. Because I knew that the sugar in it would make me feel like I was dying.

The truth is, things got so much tastier when I cut out sugar because of keto. Everything developed such a depth of flavor and I started noticing things in my food that I never noticed before and that was and has been cool for me.

Now I know that sugar is the new “evil” in the health world. Everyone is looking to cut out sugar, reduce sugar, blah blah blah. And that’s good! In fact that’s great! But there isn’t a one fix solution for everyone. Should we all probably eat less sugar? Yes, for sure. Will cutting out sugar fix all health ills? No...not even a little bit.

Truth is, cutting out sugar is only going to do so much for you and if you are just doing it because some health magazine told you to, you're probably not actually going to last long with cutting it out.

When you make a health change, you have to make a health change. You have to decide for yourself that you want to make a change in your health for you. And not because someone told you to. Because you want to. You need to decide what works for you.

Once you figure that out. Nothing can stop you.