I'm addicted to sugar. If I stop eating it will the weight fall off?

[RedNailsAndRedDress]

As in the title really!

I have an extremely sweet tooth and am now a good three stone oversight

My main meals are always completely healthy. it's just sugar in the crap afterwards that is my downfall. If I cut it out then will the weight fall off?

I quit all carbs for two weeks and lost 11lbs ( I am now doing maintenance - some healthy carbs but not enough to put weight on)

I went from craving sugar and carbs (all carbs are sugar, when broken down in the body) to having NO cravings whatsoever and it's been wonderful.

I recommend a blitz like this to clear carbs from your system before moving to a more manageable sugar free lifestyle.

I probably have an agenda though because I couldn't survive a week without pasta

Place marking. This is all very interesting.

Sarah Wilson's I quit sugar website and book are good too.

They have an 8 week program starting on January 12th next year.

When you say:

My main meals are always completely healthy

What do you mean?

If you're eating a lot of carbs, then your body deals with these just as it does with sugar. So it's not just about eating biscuits/sweets/chocolate, it's about eating potatoes, rice, pasta, bread, flour-based sauces, etc!

Shove... the thing about sugar is that different types are metabolised differently by the body. Eating 100 calories of glucose in the form of starch in a jacket potato has a different effect on the body than 100 calories of high fructose corn syrup. They are isocaloric but not isometabolic. Glucose gets stored as glycogen. Fructose, on the other hand, especially in the form of juices and sodas, is very lipogenic... fat producing. The liver rapidly produces fat from fructose to store it away. We get fat, triglyceride levels rise in the blood which causes a cascade of medical issues like heart disease and diabetes. (Not so much fruit, which has lots of fibre to slow down the assimilation of fructose in the body... though non fibrous fruits like bananas and grapes should be eaten sparingly unless very sporty and active). Also, table sugar is a double molecule of one fructose and one glucose, so there's a big fructose hit eating cakes and biscuits and standard packaged sweetened food.

Autopsies were done during the Korean war on both Americans and Koreans. The Koreans eat a lot of starch in the form of rice but (then) low sugar. Americans eat a significantly higher load of sugar. The American troops were found to have high levels of atherosclerotic plaques in their arteries, even the very young ones, whereas the Koreans were pretty healthy.

Good article here for further reading www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html

Well I've been eating a Ketogenic diet past 5 weeks(high fat, very low carb..so NO sugar, grains, potatoes, pasta etc, just fish, cheese, eggs, nuts, cream, all full fat..tahini, nut butters, tons of salad, especially Kale & Kale smoothies, apple cyder vinegar and fresh squeezed lemon juice..)
following Dr Berg videos on YouTube.

I've lost a stone in this time :) ...not done exercise except housework.
All the Potassium from the Kale smoothies stops you craving sugar apparently..I've had no cravings, so must work. My bowels are now great and Thyroid fantastic.

I have really cut back on my sugar in the last four weeks. I have cut out wheat (so bread and pasta), most dairy (I use almond milk instead of milk and only have limited yogurt/cheese), alcohol, added sugars. But most importantly, I have stopped drinking diet juices and only have water and sparkling water. I think this has had the biggest impact as my sweet tooth has almost gone. I do have 20g of 85% chocolate each night and that seems to be enough to hit any cravings on the head. It's not been easy, but I don't really miss anything that much (and I will have it if I really want it or am a bit stuck and end up having to have it, 2 bits of bread won't ruin my diet once in a while!).

And I'm 42 & hadn't been able to lose weight since my metabolism seemed to die at 36. I had done the whole eat less and exercise more and didn't lose anything! Eating high fat keeps your insulin down, stable fats like saturated are best (& no apparently doesn't block your arteries, it's carbs that do that by causing inflammation every time your Insulin rockets).

Although from what GourmetGold says above, maybe my spinach smoothie in the morning is what's doing the trick!

I recommend two books:

The Sweet Poison Quit plan by David Gillespie

and

The No S diet (most of the information available on the website: nosdiet.com )

The first one is in line with the article above advising giving up refined fructose specifically. The second is less purist and is very sustainable for the longer term (no sweets no snacks, no seconds except on days beginning with S)

Both diets are very simple and get easier as you go along as you get over the sugar addiction. Fine to start before Christmas in my opinion especially no S.

The weight won't fall off but it will come off.

Nothing like a greens smoothie .

I do half pint of water, handful of flat leaf parsley, half bag of curly Kale, juice of 2 lemons 4 teaspoons apple cyder vinegar (keeps your Insulin low to aid weight loss) and half teaspoon of natural salt (grey colour 'Le Guerandais' from Amazon) blended in blender/liquidizer for a few minutes.

If you have it with food such as cheese, butter or cream, or other animal fat it helps you to absorb the the vitamins better.

I have done a no sugar slimming world and it works fine as slimming world is so flexible. No Hifi bars or mullar lights and syns used for chicken skin, cheese and butter in my version of it!

People always say to fill up on veggies, but personally I don't find them filling at all. I always eat a lot of veg but it doesn't displace other food from my meal! I have stacked on weight recently. I think the sugar thing might be the key, I know I eat a lot more sweet stuff than I used to.

If I stop eating it will the weight fall off?

In short, YES!!

There's lots of people far cleverer than me looking in to whether it is calories that are making us fat or insulin.

If you are interested, this gives really motivating information including the science.

Eat more fat and protein, less carbs, particularly sugar.

I am a sugar addict. I have dieted for four decades and only got fatter. I have tried and tried to eat low fat high carb 'balanced everything in moderation' diets but failed every one.

In March this year, after a lot of research, I began to eat Low Carb Healthy Fat. I was worried about how I would cope without carbs as I relied on them so much.

I needn't have worried though, as it quickly became clear that this way of eating suited me down to the ground. No more did I have to agonise about eating sweet stuff and not being able to stop. I just didn't start.

I initially had difficulties eating fat with abandon; bacon, cream in coffee, full fat cream cheese, lard, butter, olive oil, duck fat. However, I soon got used to it . The best thing was feeling full. I ended up eating less voluntarily because the added natural fats filled me up for hours. No snacking, no breakfast needed, only a small lunch. Wonderful.

Fast forward to now, nine months later, I am still following this way of eating and love it. I have lost 77lbs so far and am a size 14 from a 24.

I love being free from my sugar addiction, it makes life so simple and I can still eat out, have holidays etc and not have to worry.

OP, have a look at the www.dietdoctor.com site. It has a lot of information that you could have a look at, and if you want to do your own research it is a good place to start.

That's great MyCatsHateMLMtoo. I've found the same thing, the more fat the better! I only eat 2 or 3 times a day now because it's so sustaining and I don't seem to get carb cravings anymore. I used to be a bit of an emotional eater and that's just not happening anymore.

And the best thing of all, Gourmet, is that I don't need to eat "everything in moderation" including the addictive carbs, and it ending up in a binge. Every. Single.Time.

It is so simple now. I just leave the carbs alone (except the vegetables, of which I eat plenty, usually fried in butter or some other natural fat.)

Even better, people with Type 2 diabetes can reduce or reverse their high blood figures to 'normal' again. Wonderful.

It's brilliant isn't it! I don't know about you, but I have had a LOT hostile reaction when I tell people what I'm doing..mostly from other women. They just can't get their head around fat being good..especially saturated and get pretty mad .
Such a shame, we've been given the wrong information for years, some people are not open to change, their low fat yogurts and pasta are what's narrowing their arteries, not saturated fat.. and they don't know it

The DietDoctor website is very good at explaining how the whole 'low fat' culture came about - there was an influential study (Framingham study - still running) that published results in the ?early 60s showing the connection between high (blood) cholesterol and heart disease and stroke.
That led to the (probably erroneous) recommendation to reduce saturated fats in our food - which we promptly replaced with carbs while working less and less physically hard (how many of us dig ditches for a living? or hunt for our dinner? or dig up potatoes by hand day in and day out?? Thought not ).

and isn't it that cholesterol is our body's repairer and that the mistake in thinking it's bad comes from it being found at points in the arteries where a 'flake' has come off the the wall & caused a stroke...but all the cholesterol was doing there was attempting to fix the damaged artery wall?

The artery walls are actually damaged by constant inflammation from eating carbohydrates that cause massive fluctuations in insulin.

Any tips on how to manage a lower carb / low sugar diet if you're a vegetarian? I can't help feeling that it's too difficult to do if you don't eat meat.

www.facebook.com/groups/veglowcarb/

This is a fb group for vegetarians who do low carb.

Saw these vegetarian recipies on the dietdoctor site . They look delicious. www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/recipes/vegetarian