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Sugar has no power over you.

Avoid sugar and problems like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, and accelerated cognitive decline.

You can overcome your compulsion for sugar.

Are You Hooked on Sugar?

The desire for a sweet taste is natural and human. You may even crave sugar and eagerly anticipate the next time you'll be having something sweet. The food industry is aware of the potential sugar has to satisfy most individuals. To make food tastier, they have added sugar to numerous otherwise healthy foods. Read the ingredients label before you indulge to be fully informed.

Consider these factors:

Sugar is a factor in these medical problems: obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Excess sugar drives inflammation, causes high blood pressure, accelerates skin aging, and contributes to dental decay. It also triggers energy crashes, fatigue, and can lead to cognitive decline. One in three Americans is clinically obese with a BMI of over 30. Alternatively, natural sugar in fruit, rather than added sugar, is healthful for most individuals.

The good news is that a craving is merely an influence and not a direct cause of eating sweets. Craving sugar isn’t just a dietary issue—it’s a thinking issue. When you change your beliefs about dealing with cravings, indulgence, and discomfort, your behavior follows naturally. You can move from demanding short-term pleasure to choosing long-term well-being by practicing techniques through modalities like rational emotive behavior therapy.

Our emotions and behaviors have many influences. For many people, a sugar craving is one. To a large extent, people have a natural, or at least biologically rooted, tendency to crave sugar, which has been heavily shaped by both evolution and our modern environment. However, the immediate cause of compulsively indulging in sugar lies in our thinking about it. To see in black and white how this operates, consider this:

A. (Activating Event) I am experiencing a craving for ice cream, a cookie, a slice of cake, or a brownie.

B. (Irrational Belief) I absolutely must satisfy my craving.

C. (Undesirable Emotion or Behavior) Compulsively eating sweets.

D. (Disputing or Questioning the Irrational Belief) What is the evidence that proves I absolutely have to give in to my craving for sweets?

E. (Effective New Thinking or the Answer to the Question) There exists no evidence, logic, or pragmatics that proves I absolutely have to give in to my craving for a sweet. Although it is extremely tempting to have a sweet, I will survive without it. The more I remind myself I'm risking diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, accelerated cognitive decline, fatty liver disease, certain cancers, gout, kidney disease, dental decay, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, the easier it will be for me to refrain. I'm in control of what I put in my mouth, and I can choose to refuse to give in to temptation. I can put up with feeling deprived in the short-term to be much healthier in the long-term.

F. (New Feeling and Behavior Resulting from the Effective New Thinking) Skipping sugar when I have a craving.

What are healthy approaches to dieting?

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