Sugardude's Diet Puzzle

[Moonbeam]

SD maybe there is a sweet that you could use as a substitute when you get the cravings, something you can't possibly binge on.  For me, that is very dark chocolate.  Maybe there is something else for you, and it could also be used like Todd is saying--if not dark chocolate, maybe very strong honey?  A teaspoon of that might do it.

[SUGARDUDE]

SD maybe there is a sweet that you could use as a substitute when you get the cravings, something you can't possibly binge on.  For me, that is very dark chocolate.  Maybe there is something else for you, and it could also be used like Todd is saying--if not dark chocolate, maybe very strong honey?  A teaspoon of that might do it.

I wish. I've been down this road many times before with the same result.

Today I was having a deja vu of sorts relating to my previous discussion of "opportunity" When I was in my final months of drug use, I actually increased my usage because of my perception that I only had little windows of opportunity to do it. (I was soon to be married to a non drug user). I see a parallel with my sugar usage at times. Especially when I have a slip. The mind set is "okay...I've now slipped for the day so I can use the rest of the day to gorge because tomorrow I have to suffer again"

[Moonbeam]

Oh I totally know how that goes.  It's such a trap, I know.  But--you say it has happened to you before, right before you really quit:  that's a good sign! 

I was thinking about the times I've changed (and the things that I fail on).  I think there has to be a very compelling reason to break a strong habit.  It's obvious for things like smoking and drug use, but maybe not clear, emotionally anyway, for things like overeating or binging on a particular food.  When it's just food, it doesn't interfere with work or functioning, and the detriment to health is not quite as glaring.  Other people don't look at as being such a bad thing, so you don't get the negativity that might help with the others. 

Do you maybe just need to convince yourself beyond just the rational decision?  Sugar is poison (not that I haven't indulged in a lot of poison of various types in my life including sugar), but if you can emotionally start to feel that; start thinking about all the excess insulin that you are going to cause to be released, the damage to your body, etc.  Maybe read everything you can about the horrors of carbs and processed food, how much cancer and illness and everything else it causes--even if it is repetitive, it will hopefully become ingrained so that another part of your mind, beyond just the rational part, can help you control the part that wants to eat. 

[SUGARDUDE]

     I hope I don't need to do that Moonbeam. You may be right. I had to hit bottom to stop drugs. I guess hitting bottom with sugar for me would be getting diabetes....or actually dying.

     I started taking three vitamins yesterday. I'm not really on any diet plan. I'm just letting my body adjust and see how it goes from there. I may try to go back on a plan at the beginning of June.

[Moonbeam]

The important thing is to never give up.  You can do this, there is no doubt, if you keep trying.  If one approach doesn't work, try another.  You don't want the bottom to be something irreversible. 

I was reading back thru the thread trying to find a clue to any hints that could help.  Regarding drugs, you said that you just didn't want to live that lifestyle anymore.  Sugar addiction is a lifestyle too, and it makes you miserable.  (This is a from a person who has eaten a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts at one sitting, and nine Cadbury eggs another time, so I know what it's like.)

Reading stuff on this blog and forum has really somehow mentally helped me; I wish I could narrow it down to specifically what is making sense and why things seem to be coming together for me diet and exercise-wise when I've been struggling for so long, so I could specifically point to that for you, but I'm too scatter-brained to do that, I don't know exactly what part it is.  All I can say is that I think there is some very valuable information centered here and radiating out in the books and links, and if you keep reading something may click for you.  (I don't mean to sound like all fixed; it's only been a few weeks!  But I've been doing stuff easily that I've struggled with for a lot of years, so there is something going on.)

[SUGARDUDE]

I'm not giving up. I'm just letting my body adjust to the vitamins. Starting on Tuesday I'm going to try a South Beach phase 1 for two weeks and see how that goes. I did this successfully once before but didn't make it very far into phase 2.

[Moonbeam]

I always like low-carb diets.  The hunger goes away, and you see such difference right away.  And it goes well with SLD if you do that.  Maybe if you just keep reading every low-carb diet book there is, constantly reinforcing the evils of sugar until it gets into your subconscious, it will help psychologically with the cravings. 

A donut is pure poison.  Refined grain fried in refined oil rolled in refined sugar--it's not food.  It's a drug.  There is nothing beneficial about it.   It's the devil.  It wants to seduce you for its own evil purposes.  Be stronger than the donut.  You should as soon throw it in the toilet as put it in your mouth, that's how repulsive it is.  The people who made the donut are your enemy, and they win if you eat it.  Don't let them win.  You laugh at their feeble attempts to control you with sugar molecules, and pity the weaklings around you who give in.

(That kind of thinking can work for me.)

[jared33]

A donut is pure poison.  Refined grain fried in refined oil rolled in refined sugar--it's not food.  It's a drug.  There is nothing beneficial about it.  It's the devil.  It wants to seduce you for its own evil purposes.  Be stronger than the donut....(That kind of thinking can work for me.)

Moonbeam, I see where you are coming from.  But I think that demonizing sugar is the opposite of the deconditioning approach that Todd has written about and that Heidi seems to be having success with using her Non-Addictive Food diet.  Seeing sugar as the enemy is more like the abstinence approach of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's the conventional approach. I think it might work in the short term, but then if you ever happen to take one bite of a sugary food, maybe even by accident, you might end up right back where you started.  I don't really have any addiction myself, so maybe I don't understand it as well as someone who has an addiction. But still, it seems more rational to me to see if you can build yourself up to be able to handle sugary foods by exposing yourself to them, but preventing the out of control response.  Then you are truly free and no longer vulnerable to the devil sugar, because you can handle it.

[SUGARDUDE]

Well Moonbeam, I've been reading some very interesting views from this blog http://www.raisin-hell.com/2009/04/how-to-stop-eating-sugar-part-2.html
Which mirrors the sugar as a poison view but also discusses a behavioral component.

The vitamins have not made a difference and in fact things have gotton worse.

I'm at the point where I'm probably going to have to do something drastic like somehow elimating sugar from my diet altogether. In that regard I'm currently reading a book Sugar Blues which may change my whole outlook on eating sugar.

[Todd Becker]

Sugardude, I'm sorry to hear the vitamins and minerals did not help. Did you try all of them: high dose B-complex, chromium, magnesium and zinc? These tend to work in synergy to normalize sugar metabolism. A normal "one a day" mix of all vitamins at ordinary minimum daily requirement levels won't do the job, nor will just one or two of the B vitamins. The B-vitamins working together as a "complex". The most important ones, related to stress and cravings, need to be taken at high levels daily:

• Niacin (As Niacinamide) 100 Mg
• Vitamin B-6 (As Pyridoxine Hcl) 100 Mg
• Pantothenic Acid (As D-Calcium Pantothenate) 100 Mg

But if the vitamins and minerals did not work, at least you have ruled out a nutritional deficiency. And as you said, you are in this for the long term, and sometimes it takes a while to figure out what will work for you. I think that is a very admirable trait of yours, that you want to get to the bottom of this and persist until you have an answer. Everyone is different, so what ends up working for you may be very different than what works for others. Even if a particular idea, like vitamins and minerals, doesn't work for you, at least you are able to eliminate that as an option and focus your search elsewhere.

From reading your posts, it appears that your sugar addiction is very strong. I had coincidentally read William Duffy's "Sugar Blues" several years ago, and it is one of the books that helped push me to low carb dieting. I looked at the "raisin hell" website you linked to, and the "sweet poison" videos. Wow, I had no idea that sugar could be such a powerfully addictive drug, with such horrible withdrawal and adverse health effects! I've seen cravings and poor health effects in some family and friends, but never to the extremes of those videos. Impressive.

If you think you have something like that kind of addiction, then it does seem like it will require a major effort to beat it, but it's worth it. Perhaps, as you are suggesting, total abstinence is a good first step, since that will allow you to regain some measure of control. Certainly, that is the message of "Sugar Blues", and it may work for you. I'd be interested to know if there is some specific practical advice you are finding in Sugar Blues that you think will help you?

My main problem with the total abstinence approach is that it does not really address the root cause. Your "sugar addiction" brain circuits will always be there, they will just be dormant. But then the first time you stray, the first bite you take of a sugary treat, you are off to the races again.  It seems to me that it would require extraordinary discipline and "willpower" to stay away from sugar the rest of your life. It's like the Alcoholics Anonymous approach - it works for many, but I've also read many accounts by alcoholics who found that AA failed them in the end.

That is why I still think some kind of deliberate deconditioning strategy offers a longer term, saner solution. It's not an easy approach, but I think something like Heidi's Enlightened Tasting could work. It is not a quick fix and it would take time and discipline of its own sort. But the end result would be an ability to occasionally or moderately eat sweet foods without ignitiing the addiction circuits. Have you tried her approach -- chewing and tasting your favorite cookies or candies and then spitting them out without ingesting? Could that work for you? Or would the cues just be too powerful to resist? If so, could you try Enlightened Tasting with just one or two very small bites of the sweet food, and then stopping. Perhaps doing the tasting immediatley before some pre-planned alternate activity, such as exercise or work, that would be incompatible with following through?

You may want to get Karen Pryor's book "Don't Shoot the Dog", which I discussed on the Psychology page of the blog. Chapter 4 “Untraining: Using Reinforcement to Get Rid of Behavior You Don’t Want”, is the most complete catalogue I've seen anywhere of classical deconditioning techniques. Since you are clearly motivated to find ideas that might work for you, you might find that some of Pryor's ideas could work for you, possibly in combination with some of the other ideas you are pursuing.

I'd be very interested to hear your thinking on this, especially if you think I'm wrong or have misunderstood certain points. After all, I can't possibly put myself in your shoes, because I haven't had a sugar or drug addiction myself. I am, however, very open to learning about how addictions work.

Best of luck.

[SUGARDUDE]

Thanks for your input Todd. I really appreciate it.

The Vitamin includes 190 mg of Niacin, 100mg of B6, and 500mg of Pantothenic Acid (As D-Calcium Pantothenate). There is also 100 mcg of B12, Zinc 30mg, chromium 200 mcg as well as a bunch of other things as well. I'm taking three of these together.

I do feel that I have a deep addiction to sugar which I have been reinforcing everyday for 40 years or so. It was Moonbeams post which suggested I read every low carb book which reinforced the evils of sugar. My wife said she stopped using sugar for a while after reading Sugar Blues so I thought that was the obvious place to start.  

I really don't think the enlightened tasting is a good approach for me for obvious reasons. That's like telling a crack addict to put a filled pipe to his mouth and light the flame but stop there.

I'm not really sold on an abstinence approach since I'm just starting the reading but i think the idea behind it is to lose the desire. I think it's sort of an extinction strategy since you are no longer pairing environmental cues with the sugar reinforcement. There was some discussion of this in the Raisin Hell blog. (continued in next post

[SUGARDUDE]

I think that by putting the behavior on extinction, I do get to the root of the problem. This has worked for me very well with smoking. I do not ever crave cigarettes anymore. The last time I did, I took a puff and it made me sick. So the brain circuitry that you refer to can be attenuated in that regard. But it makes sense to me that in order to decondition or extinguish a behavior that I have been reinforcing for 40 years, it's gooing to take a lot longer than 2 weeks (the amount of time Dr. Agatston would have you believe it takes to get rid of cravings). I don't believe it has to be a stop for life, but I'm guessing that if I were able to follow such a plan for a significant period of time, I'll get to the point where I can take it or leave it.

But frankly I have serious doubts about being able to even give it up completely. After all, that's what I've been trying to do for 4 years now. I once made it two weeks.

One problem I have that complicates any "diet" for me is that I'm a picky eater So I don't have a lot of options especially when it comes to vegetables.

Thanks for the suggestion about Karen Pryor's book.  It appears to simply be a discussion of behavior modification concepts which I'm already extensively trained on. Does the book apply the concepts to weight loss?

[Todd Becker]

Sugardude,

I'd forgotten that you have a background in behavioral psychology, so the material in Pryor's book may quite familiar to you.  Still, I think she presents it in a clear, engaging and entertaining way.  While she doesn't specifically address weight loss, the book is full of many interesting specific examples, so its just a good source of practical ideas. So it might be worth picking up.  (If nothing else, it will help you train your pets.  I even got my beagle to stay away from his food bowl when I say "leave it" and eat only when I say "get it".  If you know beagles, that should impress you).

It's very interesting to me that you were so successful in quitting smoking, to the point that you not only lost your craving for cigarettes, but taking a drag was actually revolting to you.  That's impressive.  Can you say more about how you extinguished smoking?  Was it by abstinence and avoiding reinforcing for a sufficiently long time -- weeks or months?  And then it just extinguished like that?  Or did you first "put it on cue" by initially restricting smoking to certain limited situations or cues...and then you just avoided those situations or cues?  Or how DID you do it?  If you can retrace the logic of what you did, can you apply the same logic to overcoming your sugar addiction?
   

[SUGARDUDE]

Todd,

As I posted on page two of this thread, I went cold turkey. I picked a three day period to start where I would have the least amount of stress. I did subsequently experience some cravings during emotionally charged arguments with my wife but it pretty much made me sick to smoke. Now I have no cravings to smoke ever. It's probably been about 3 years since I last smoked on a daily basis. I don't even keep an emergency pack anymore.

I'm hoping that using the same strategy will duplicate those results as it pertains to sugar. I'm starting on Monday.

[SUGARDUDE]

I finished reading Sugar Blues while on vacation and it sure does paint a bleak picture of the use of refined sugar and it's effect on humans (and animals for that matter). I'm sure there is more truth than folly to the book but there are some pretty big leaps regarding causation that the author makes. Duffy would have you belive that refined sugar was responsible for Bubonic Plague, Beriberi, Scurvy, schizophrenia, cancer in addition to slavery and witch hunts. There is much documenation of a seeming conspiracy between the sugar companies, the goverment, and medical professionals to deceive people into using sugar extensively.  He also posits that all one had to do was stop eating it to be cured of any health ill. Maybe he's right but I note that he died of cancer in 2002.

In any event, I think there was enough there to convince me to try to go sugarless as much as possible.