5 Tips To Break Your Sugar Addiction

Do you find yourself seeking out sugar and not being satisfied until you get your fix? Once you start eating sugar is it really hard for you to stop?

There’s a reason sugar has such an infectious way about it. The fact is that sugar is a drug and just like any drug it has powerfully addictive properties. Weaning yourself off sugar can be a challenge — often people can suffer from withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and fatigue . However, the more you get it out of your diet, the easier it becomes to steer clear of it.

These 5 tips are a great place to start to break up with sugar for good!

1. Sugar Swap: Step away from the Swedish Fish and turn to nature’s candy – fruit. A serving of fruit such as a pear, an apple or ½ cup of blueberries is a nutritious way to satisfy your sweet tooth.
2. Eat Healthy Fats : Whether subconscious or not, we often reach to sugar for the energy spike it provides. Healthy fats such as coconut oil, avocado, nuts, and olives take longer to digest and therefore provide lasting energy as opposed to a sugar spike of energy that quickly fades.
3. Add In Sweet Spices: Use spices such as cinnamon, anise, mint, nutmeg, and cardamom that have a natural sweetness about them. You can add a dash of these to your smoothies and/or purchase herbal teas that have them listed among the ingredients.
4. Include More Sweet Vegetables: Sweet vegetables such as sweet potato, beets, carrots, and butternut squash are a great way to add natural sweetness to your meals. By satisfying your palate in this way, it often reduces the need for additional sweetness outside of meals.
5. Seek Out Healthier Rewards: For most of us, sugary treats were used as a reward system throughout our childhood. If you’re ‘good’, you can have a cookie. If you clean your room, you can go to your favorite ice cream shop. This sugar based reward system easily trickles into adulthood. Make a list of other things you find rewarding – maybe it’s getting a pedicure, a massage, taking a bath, or making it to your favorite yoga class. Try to make your reward something that is nourishing rather than depleting.