How to Handle the Cravings when You Stop Eating Sugar

Have you decided that you will be healthier, thinner, and feel better if you stop eating sugar? Congratulations - you've made a wise, healthy choice. However, you should remember that most people continue to have a desire for sugar and other sweet treats even after they have successfully detoxified their bodies and they have already gone through the mild withdrawal symptoms associated with sugar addiction. If you know any smokers who successfully kick their habit, but still wistfully watch other people smoke, you know that getting rid of any addiction takes time and lots of patience and determination.

One reason that it is so hard for most people to permanently give up sugar is that we do have a natural appetite for sweetness.

Why? Because millions of years ago, this appetite encouraged us to eat fruit, which is loaded with the micronutrients we need to stay healthy. That, of course, was before sugar was refined into its pure form from beets and cane. Now, we feed our natural cravings for sweetness with "artificial fruit" (sugar) that has no nutritional value at all, and which makes us fat and increasingly unhealthy. Since the pure sugar is so much stronger, and our systems react to it more powerfully, the fruit we really need doesn't taste all that sweet to us any more. We want the instant power surge we get from that donut, even though we know the high blood sugar it causes will soon turn to low blood sugar, and a craving for more sugar.

You cannot take away this natural craving entirely because it is part of your survival system, which has been corrupted by the availability of pure, processed sugar products.

One way to get around this problem is to pay attention to your body and feed it with the fruit it really needs. According to Dr. Joel Fuhrman, who has helped thousands of people lose weight and regain their health, if you listen to your body and give it the nutrients it really needs by feeding it fruits, raw and cooked vegetables, nuts and whole grains, you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight. I know he's right, because I've done it.

As children, we were trained to feed our appetite for sweetness with sugar - in candy, baked goods, soft drinks, and even vitamin pills. Even when people kick the sugar habit, they still equate a craving for sweetness with a craving for sugar or chocolate. They fight against their cravings, which is really a fight against their own survival system. No wonder so many diets fail.

A healthy diet will include large amounts of low-calorie food like raw and cooked vegetables, and plenty of the fruit that dulls the sugar cravings. When you switch to a truly healthy diet like this, instead of a restrictive diet that makes you cut down on calories without increasing the amount of fruit and vegetables you eat, the weight really does drop off, almost miraculously. You may still have sugar cravings, but if you recognize that your desire for a chocolate bar is really your body's way of saying it wants an apple, (and then follow through and give it that apple, of course), your cravings will eventually go down, and you won't feel that you're fighting them so much to stay on a healthy diet.

I have become convinced that any diet that does not include adequate amounts of fruits and raw vegetables will make it all that more difficult to stay committed to a diet. Even more importantly, without the nutrients in fresh fruit and vegetables, no diet can really be healthy for you in the long run, even if it temporarily helps you lose weight.

Make it easy on yourself. If you decide to kick that sugar habit that makes you fat and unhealthy, eat plenty of fruits and raw vegetables so that you have a fighting chance to stay off sugar for good.