Drink a full glass of water before you drink pop.

Eat no processed foods, only meats, fish, eggs, fruits and veggies. No breads, cereals, cookies, cakes, sugared yogurts, ketchup, pre-jarred/canned pasta sauces, no sugar in your coffee etc.

Only eat meat.

What @Coloma said. No sugar drinks. I switched to Diet Coke many years ago. That is probably the number one most fattening thing people do to themselves without realizing it, is drinking pop.

And do not eat the butter ball cookies I am eating right now!

also, plants contain sugar, too.

The only way to eliminate sugar completely is to stop eating. But I don’t think you want to eliminate it, you just want to reduce it. That’s good, too, because without any sugar you would die. I would recommend you start by writing out a week long calendar of your normal diet. Then go through item by item trying to find low sugar substitutions for any item that seems like it’s contributing to your overconsumption. Then follow the new calendar as rigorously as possible for a whole week. If you can do that, try for a second week. Then a month. That way, you’re actually changing your dietary habits right away. But giving yourself short term goals and slowly extending the period until you can declare success will help you make it a habit that eventually you won’t have to think about.

Don’t buy any snack food, except for fruit and vegetables. Personally I always keep carrots, apples and tangerines in the fridge.

I like how a friend raised her kids. I use this line on myself. “If you’re not hungry enough to eat this [apple, carrot whatever] then you aren’t really hungry, right?”

Now as teenagers they think junk food is weird.

My husband is a big junk food fan. I had 2 teenagers at home when he moved in. Not long after bought a bag of potato chips which he left on the counter (why people leave food on the counter?) A couple of week later he commented on the fact that the chips were still there, untouched. I dunno. I never bought chips and junk. They just had no desire or habit for them, I guess. They didn’t snack around.

@MooCows What types of sugary foods? You say that you “eat” too much sugar, which tells us that you’re not referring to sweetened beverages. Is your weakness candy, or maybe baked goods? If you give us a better idea of your habits, and we’ll try to help.

^^^ True.

BTW, @Patton said “because without any sugar you would die.” That’s not exactly true. You do need sugar, but your body can metabolize glucose (sugar) out of very common and plentiful foods like potatoes and grains like rice, flour, corn, etc. You don’t need an external source of pure sugar.

I’m still interested in hearing about your diet, and the ways in which you eat too much pure sugar.

You could try a sugar detox or whole food challenge.

It sounds like you’d like to cut out added or processed sugar. I’d encourage you to also eliminate sweet tasting imitation sugar (or “diet”) products.

And everything that @coloma said.

Are you trying to only cut down on processed sugar? Or, all sugars? If just the processed sugar try increasing your fruit intake a little as you wean off the white stuff.

I am maybe 20 pounds over weight and i do not drink any
sodas at all or alcohol. I don’t eat any bread or crackers or chips
but I like to snack on cookies, donuts, pie, etc. I know that those
other items like bread and soda put weight on you so that is why
I don’t eat them BUT for some reason I can’t get my mind to realize
that this snacking habit is probably worse than bread-chips etc!
If i was fat and really needed to loose weight I would probably
stop the sugar snacking but since I can kinda “get away with it”
I don’t stop but I frustrate myself daily because my diet does mean
something to me but just cannot get beyond the goodies.

I was a fat child or so my mother titled me and was restricted
from having anything sweet unless I hid it or ate it at someones
house. My brother was so thin and I hated him because he got
to eat anything and everything! Heaven forbid my mother was going
to have a fat daughter. She herself smoked to stay slim. Thankful I
didn’t pick up that bad habit. Maybe that is why I snack now because
I no longer feel guilty because my mom is in heaven. Just a thought.

When I stopped drinking Coke I started craving more candy, cookies, chocolate, etc. I figure my body wanted a certain amount of sweet. Previous to quitting Coke I could have cared less about having dessert. Cake, cookies, and candy not only had sugar, but fat and cholesterol too! I might have been better sticking with the Coke?! I’m half kidding.

I try to eat a little more fruit than I used to, and less other starches and sugar. The fruit has better nutritional value at least. I have less cravings for sweets doing that.

If you in particular crave chocolate, keep in mind that can be a caffeine craving. My desire for chocolate increased dramatically when I quit caffeine.

I like the idea about eating fruit but still getting some natural “sweet”
and maybe I won’t be so dire for processed sugar in junk foods.

One additional thing, if you let yourself get too hungry your body will likely crave sweets. Sugar is instant. Starches and sugars start digesting in your mouth. You have to stay full on the healthy stuff, like vegetables, to not crave the unhealthy stuff so much.

Glad you brought that up as I don’t stay full because subconsciously
if I eat very little I am doing myself a favor but then I do get hungry
and tell myself “you didn’t have much lunch-go ahead and have a cookie”
Then that’s when I start grabbing the unhealthy sugar laden junk.
My mother screwed up my thinking on food.

And my husband insist on having junk in the house he can
snack on because he says there were 7 kids in his family
and they never had $ for junk food so he’s making up for
lost time!

Well, your husband needs to be more supportive of you and keep his stash at work. Assuming he works outside the house.

Be aware that getting off of sugar takes about ten days to two weeks for cravings to ease.

Once your body stops processing sugars and carbs from flour, potatoes, rice, it will get your insulin reaction back in line and your body will not need the glycemic load.

In addition to all the cookies and cakes, be careful what fruits you eat; there are only a couple that are low in glycemic load. Juice is out, too. And milk is full of milk sugars (although cheese and butter are okay on a low sugar diet).

Good luck!

Yeah, I mean whole fruit, not juice. Orange juice has the same amount of sugar as coca-cola. Plus, I don’t mean eat fruit all day long, I mean add one fruit to your diet a day. One apple or one banana or a portion of melon, etc., and subtract the cookies.

I just bought the 1st watermelon today and it is divine. Yes, there is sugar involved but not processed sugar and watermelon is one of those foods you can pretty much eat all you want of.
With summer coming go for the melons, blackberries, strawberries, plums etc. You really can’t eat too much fruit IMO.

Until you’ve got your sugar addiction under control, I’d give fruit a miss too. Some vegetables are high in sugar too. David Gillespie has written a lot about cutting sugar out of diet.

We need sugars for our bodies to function but we don’t need it in the form of cookies donuts and pies. You like these things not just because of the sugar but it is the sugar to fat ratio that our brains become addicted to so uncontrollably. They did studies on rats and found that a cheese cake with a particular fat to sugar ratio made them eat it beyond their needs and made them obese and dead. Something with just sugar or just fat offered and they would just eat until full and not much more. Get off the fat/sugar foods. Have grapes or apples instead. Don’t worry about the natural sugars. They don’t carry the empty calories and your body and brain will feel more satisfied. The hard part is that these foods stimulate the same area of the brain as opiates. It is an addiction.

@JLeslie I think @MooCows lives on a farm so I think they must eat all meals together.

@MooCows someone suggested making a food diary. I would recommend this too. There are several websites with Apps that you can use whereever you are to record your food. I still use MyFitnessPal which is a calorie counting diet website plus exercise. You choose from a vast database of foods and products, adjust the amount to match what you ate – half a jar of spaghetti sauce, quarter of a bag of pasta etc. Then log it against the meal for that day. You log every morsel of food. It’s quite a habit to acquire but even the act of logging your food has been shown to help you maintain your weight by making you more aware of what you are putting in your mouth. It also helps you make those important healthy choices. For example if you think that you want to eat a cookie and go to log it and see that it has 240 kcal, and 50g of processed sugar then you might chose to reach for a banana and a handful of almonds instead.

I would also buy more healthy snacks. Put your husband’s junky stuff in a special drawer or box and don’t go there – that stuff is his not yours. You wouldn’t want him to be deprived now, would you??

I read a lovely pithy statement about diet. can’t remember who said it but it goes: ‘Eat food, mainly plants’. Up the amount of fruit and veg you eat, especially the veg.

@Stinley That is one of Micahel Pollan’s 7 Rules of Eating.

It sounds to me like the satisfaction you get from munching is part of it, the whole hand-to-mouth, oral gratification thing, so start eating things that will help satisfy that without packing on sugar…wait. I know….SUN FLOWER SEEDS IN THE SHELL!!!

Also, canned aspargus.
Celery with cream cheese
Life Saver’s candy.

Also, I’d sat trade crackers for donuts and chips for pie. Yes, crackers and chips are “fattening” but compare 5 crackers to one donut:
1 glazed donut=126 calories
5 Saltine crackers 70.

5 crackers will last a bit longer than one donut.

First of all, craving sugar is exactly what the little beasties that inhabit your gut when you eat a lot of sugar do (candidiasis). They cry out for sugar, making your attempts to quit very difficult.

So, brace yourself, and know that you will be fighting sugar cravings actively for about a week. For the first week, I would also eschew fruit (except berries).

What is your worst sticking point? Is it desserts? Sugar in your beverages? Find alternatives and use them. Some that I have had success with include Atkins Endulge (just watch the portion control as the maltilol will get you if you overdose), Dixie Carb Counters Snackin’ cake (available on the web from Netrition).

Then, I would look for hidden sugar in things that I eat. For example, many breads are now made with sugar, which is so unnecessary for the taste. You have to become a label reader and learn all of the ingredient names that mean sugar such as glucose, corn syrup, fructose, and the others listed here.

Well, yeast breads need sugar to activate the yeast.

Your appetite for sugar is not your appetite.
You have too many intestinal flora that like sugar in proportion to the flora that digest other foods. All the intestinal flora will put chemicals into the bloodstream when they are hungry to encourage you to eat what they want. You become their zombie-slave, eating what they want instead of what’s good for you.

What you need is to change the proportions of intestinal flora types. You can do that at least two ways.
One way is simply stop feeding the sugar-loving “parasites” so they die back to a healthy proportion – but this means you’ll have to endure the raving appetite of the very hungry excess bad guys.
Another way is to take pro-biotics to increase beneficial flora so they crowd out the bad guys.

FYI I have not had any sugar in 3 days and that is a record for me!
I went grocery shopping and re-did all the food that I eat in the house
so it was clean. Now all I am eating is vegetables and all natural chicken
and some beef, soy-free eggs, a little cheese and a pickle when i get really
hungry for sugar! I have also been walking and so far I feel great.

That’s really great, @MooCows!

@Dutchess_III All the foods you mentioned have sugar in them. So yes, what I said is definitely true.

I had to go back to pick up the thread of our conversation.

Yes, it’s true. Without sugar your body would wind down and die. I’m saying that you don’t need to go out of your way to get sugar, like buying candy bars or adding sugar to your cereal or honey to your toast. There is plenty of sugar in the form of carbs and starches found naturally in unsweetened cereals and bread, rice, and in many other foods, such as potatoes.

You don’t have to go after it the way you have to go after salt, which your body can’t metabolize out of other compounds like it can sugar.