Unhinged advice please

[MyWildOliveGoose]

I’ve fallen off the wagon over Easter … yes , I’m addicted to sugar.

I had lost 10kg before Easter and now I’m up 4kg due to indulging. I know it’s probably mainly water weight and will come back off but honestly.. please give me your unhinged advice on how to get back on this weightloss wagon please 🙏🏼

All I can think about is chocolate, cake, biscuits and cream cakes.

• please don’t suggest GLP1s, if I wanted to consider that I would post in that forum x

Not sure if you think it's unhinged or not but here goes....

Fill up on good, wholefood. Stock up, meal plan and prep so you are ready to stuff yourself full of vegetables mostly, also legumes, whole grains and lean protein any time you're hungry. Rinse and repeat all day.

Have a couple of healthy but indulgent treats on hand for sweet cravings. Very dark chocolate, your favourite exotic fruit, caramel or vanilla (for example) tea.

Sugar + fat = highly addictive. I'd go cold turkey and not have any chocolate/sweets/cakes/biscuits in the house.

I'd replace with other foods that are filling and healthy (although at this point, while going cold turkey from sugar, I wouldn't actually worry about "healthy" too much in the very short term... you just need to break the habit and it's easier to focus on one change at a time). Then start to make healthier choices including low GI foods, gradually decreasing portion sizes if necessary, etc.

I find that high protein takes my cravings for chocolate away. Today I realised that I didn’t reach for my evening chocolate after having eggs for dinner.

Prioritise high fibre and high protein and reduce or eliminate if you can sugar and refined carbs. Remove it from the house. Try for c. 2 weeks not to eat it. By all means eat fruit, even dried fruit but no sweeteners and no added sugar. Then see if you're craving as much. So wholemeal rice or pasta if you eat it but I'd even switch out your carbs for beans if you can as they're both good on complex carbs, fibre and protein. You might have some windy effects and changes to your stools if you increase fibre quickly (as a warning) but it does settle.

The reason I suggest this is your gut bacteria drive a lot of your cravings but they also change really quickly. What you feed in your gut is what you then crave. So the bacteria that like fibre and don't like a lot of sugar will then drive you to eat more of that. The protein will just keep you feeling full.

Probably will be hard for the first few days but after that you'll be more likely to be able to take it or leave it.

You said unhinged so I will say how I gave up smoking.

I gave up smoking by printing lots of pictures of diseased lungs off and posting them around the place. I didn’t have children and lived alone. It was also in the days before screen savers or I would have done them too.

I have never seen this as a doctor’s recommendation but it worked for me.

Unhinged? Give up alcohol, added sugar and refined carbs just before your son hits his GCSEs? That was fucking unhinged.

Only joking and ok the alcohol was 8 months ago but while I probably binged a bit on sugar after that, (hence my drive for cold turkey afterwards) it was the start of me really trying to get healthier, not just thinner.

This made me giggle, I love this. Off to make a screensaver of people’s fatty organs.

Oh wow, hats off to you. I don’t drink, and tbh, that’s when the crave for sugar really began. I was never a big drinker but loved a glass with dinner for example.. always had hanxiety the next day, so just stopped and replaced that glass with dinner with a pudding.. and it was one hell of a slippery slope. I am 100% addicted to sugar.

The other bit of unhinged advice I can offer, is to find a brutal exercise that will kill your, squash, spinning, CrossFit, hydrox, whatever you can do and work out how many calories that activity burnt off and then work out how much cake you can eat it for that session.

I don’t waste calories when I am doing the exercise and even if you start off doing 5 or ten minutes and build up you will end up fitter. I should also probably recommend you check with a doctor first. I have lots of strange ideas

When I get sugar cravings I eat high protein puddings or make a protein shake with protein powder, almond milk and frozen fruit. They fill me up and kill the craving. Are they good for you? No. But not as bad as actual sugary stuff.

Unhinged? Careful what you ask for.

There was a thread on MN years ago about the UK women being the bravest of based on how they acted during WWII. All the posters were praising how brave the women were , how courageous they were , how some went to war, were spies, took on hard life and so on…
And I was thinking, seriously, brave? They fought nazis and now they can’t resist a Mars bar?
This is my unhinged advice: every time you open the fridge, the cupboard or grab your wallet to pay for shitty snacks, picture yourself against nazi fighting women. Is it really this hard to say fuck off to those cake and biscuits.

Oh, and by the way, sugar is not an addictive substance. It triggers pleasure in the brain, but so do cuddles and other non food behaviours. Here, you are free to stop eating sugar because you are not addicted to sugar, you just like it.

I’m trying the same… I make sure I have a protein shake, and lots of food. Smoothies, cauliflower cheese soup, rice cake and peanut butter. My slip was having some ice cream when my son wasn’t trying it (0.4% for weight and ill, so needs anything I can get in him). I’m back on track. Really trying to remind myself that in 2 weeks I’ll be more able to cut portions when the cravings drop.

another i hinged thing I’ve done is the 2 day oatmeal cure - it’s for blood sugar regulation but helped cut cravings for me when I did it.

I wouldn't suggest this long term but it's worked for me in the past, buy everything ready made individual pots of yoghurt, single items of fruit, pots of fresh soup , low calorie ready meals from m and s. Make sure all you have available is your yogurt for breakfast, soup for lunch (can add a small wholemeal roll, your ready meal for dinner with a pouch of steamed veg, fruit as snacks eg apples or bananas, I would allow one low fat mousse for pudding each day. Just do it, after a fortnight even a salad will taste magnificent and you can move onto normal whole foods, home cooking etc and the cravings are broken.

I cut it all out and went cold turkey and told myself it was for 100 days - like one of those 100 day challenges. Cravings were dealt with in the evening by having a bath or long shower, brushing my teeth or imagining that bar of chocolate as a big lump of fat, or making a cup of tea - thankfully I like herbal and fruit teas! I also listed my wins/positives which was good to see my progress and treated myself with books, nice bath and shower products with the money I wasn’t spending on junk. I seem to have swapped sugar for nice smells, but it is much better for my waistline.

The only time I ever wanted biscuits or cake was with a cup of tea (I like to dunk).

If I wasn’t drinking a cup of tea I never really thought “ooh I fancy a biscuit”.

So I started drinking black coffee and green tea - barely touched biscuits or cake after that.

The thought of dunking a biscuit into green tea is just

I am very interested in hearing more about the 2 day oatmeal cure.. is it oatmeal made with oats and oat milk, can I add fruit and honey or strictly just oats? How much per day? X

This is exactly how I did it last time, I don’t know why but I’m struggling to do it the same way again. I am going to be tougher on myself though.

What about being kinder to yourself instead?

I have a thing for spice teas. So when I gave up alcohol and later, sugar, one of the things I do is buy some really nice tea. I only drink caffeine in the morning but I love chai (unsweetened). Two teas I adore are Pukka Vanilla Chai and Tea India Decaf Chai (you need to order the latter online but they do the full caffeine version in the main supermarkets.) They aren't cheap but they are both delicious. So for me, both are more valuable and feel like more of a "treat" because they're pricey.

So rather than punish yourself into changing behaviour, why not reward yourself? Just change the reward?

I think this is the video, but didn’t rewatch

I don't have any unhinged advice aside from cold turkey. But I am up for an accountability thread, if you are 🙂 (could be this thread)

Edited to say I keep gaining and losing 10kg. I intermittent fast and cut out sugar. I get to my ideal weight or just below, then I start to binge eat sugar again.

@Lemonthyme has kind advice 🙂