Ask Me Anything: How Did You Quit Sugar?
How to kick sugar addiction from a Doctor of Chinese Medicine who once ate Frosted Flakes topped with marshmallows and chocolate-chip cookies for breakfast.
Hey. Dana here.
As a person in long-term recovery from disordered eating, I know the holidays can be hard for folks struggling with food-related addictions.
Today’s AMA addresses sugar addiction, but my response hopefully offers ideas for working with other unhelpful patterns too—including binge eating, overeating, emotional eating, and other forms of excess consumption (whether of food, booze, shopping, social media, or anything else). Same goes for the downloadable ebook on eating disorders (and other addictions) here.
A subscriber asks:
“You’ve said you were addicted to sugar. How did you quit? I have months of doing great with food but then relapse with sweets (cake, cookies, muffins, coffee drinks) and can’t stop once I get started. I’m worried about the pressure to eat things I don’t want over Christmas and know it will go downhill from there. Help please!” —M.
Before we begin, a reminder that this Ask Me Anything column is a monthly perk for paying subscribers. If you’re not on the paid plan and want to be, I have a teensy sale happening here:
Oof. I hear you, M. Holidays and food can be rough.
First thing’s first: Huge recognition for the awareness you have around your patterns and how this particular pattern plays out. Huge recognition as well for asking the question! Addictions (and unhelpful habits) are painfully predictable. One of the most essential parts of setting change in motion is getting honest about what’s happening and where it always ends up.
We can’t take back awareness, and by articulating this pattern to yourself, you’ve already changed the trajectory. Articulating it to another (safe, supportive) person and asking for help magnifies that effect and makes freedom from a harmful cycle more likely. In other words: Good job. You’re already doing it.
Second and just as important: You are your number 1 caretaker. You get to decide what to put on your plate and in your body. This goes for Christmas. This goes for always.
If family, friends, or anyone else pushes you to do otherwise, I recommend keeping your responses short, simple, and about you rather than them. For example: “Thanks, but I’ll pass. I notice when I eat/drink that thing, I don’t feel well. I want to feel my best today.”
Change the wording as needed to make it sound more like you. But the key is to keep it short, simple, and focused on the fact that you feel worse rather than better if you eat/drink a thing. In the interest of not feeling worse, your answer is: “No, thanks. I’ll pass.”
If they still push (and some will), repeat the same line. Do not offer details. Do not give them a more in-depth reason or “problem” to solve. Simply repeat: “No, thanks. I don’t feel well when I eat that. I want to feel good today.”
If they STILL push (and some will—which says loads about their addictions and patterns), this might be time to reconsider whether staying in the situation is more harmful than helpful. You do not need permission to excuse yourself from a holiday party, family gathering, or any other occasion that causes harm or contributes to a painful cycle. You are not the problem here—if anyone should feel guilty it’s the person doing the pressuring. Whether we’re talking sugar or alcohol or anything else, recovery comes first. What’s more:
Food does not equal love.
Pressuring another adult to consume anything that they tell you they don’t want to consume does not equal love.
Anyone applying such pressure—whether overtly or through the subtlest of subtext—has an unspoken (and often subconscious) agenda. They are seeking something, and that “something” has to do with them and their own issues around food, alcohol, identity, love, belonging, validation, etc. It has little or nothing to do with you.1
Of course, the flip side is that you are your number 1 caretaker!
As adults, we have 100 percent responsibility for what we put in our mouths. We can always find justifications and “reasons” for perpetuating a harmful, painful cycle. The wider collective will readily undersign this, because the wider collective is deeply addicted to unhelpful substances and behaviours.
At the end of the day, we are the ones who choose to eat or not eat, drink or not drink, do or not do a thing. We are also the ones who know, deep down, whether we’re hurting ourselves through our choices.
This has zero to do with shaming or blaming. But it is about being honest, getting clear on the tradeoffs and consequences of our choices, and taking accountability. I don’t know how to recover from anything without that.
And, I also realize it can be so frickin hard to choose what’s helpful and to make that helpful choice for long enough and consistently enough that it becomes our new normal.
In my twenties, I was full-on addicted to sugar. I felt like I required sugar to keep my energy up and get through a day. On a certain level, I was right—by eating so much sugar and so many carbs, I’d trained my body and mind to depend on them for fuel (even if that meant energy crashes, mood swings, and feeling like crap an hour or less later).
I found freedom from this in my thirties, and that freedom has held. I’ll tell you how I did it and share a few ideas for escaping the sugar (or excess carb or overeating or emotional eating) cycle below—including through my more “official” lens as a certified Primal Health Coach and licensed Doctor of Chinese Medicine.2 But first…