My Journey Through Sugar Addiction

This is a long(over 4000 words)  and very personal post about one of the most difficult problems I’ve had: my sugar addiction and erratic eating habit. My sugar addiction has affected my health and to some extent even my social life. It also has caused much guilt and shame in me, which I believe limited my spiritual growth.

The reason I am writing this now is because I believe I have figured out the key to leave it behind me. I hope this gives hope to everyone who is suffering from this often-misunderstood problem. I also think the same principle I used can be applied to other problems in life and encourage you to try it, even if it is not about addiction.

The principle of problem solving

In How to Resolve Any Problem Quickly and Easily, I shared the key is to love your problem. While you are working against the problem, you are on the same energetic plane that created the problem in the first place. Loving and working with the problem gives you the perspective of a new higher plane.

But this is difficult, right? Who wants to love their problem? We all want to get rid of the problem ASAP. Even acknowledging the problem is huge. My blogger friend Lance Ekum posted a Post Secret video that claims, “when we are keeping a secret, it is really that secret that is keeping us.” He invited readers to share their secret in the comment section, anonymously if necessary, and only a few did.

We keep our problems as secret, bearing the weight of guilt and shame all alone. Or we work on the problem, either sporadically or frantically, with hate and disgust to get rid of it. Love the problem? Hello?

I understand. I am no different. My spirit guides convinced me to write that post, but I myself fully know the challenge. But I also know it’s doable — because I have applied it to my own life.

How my sugar addiction started

When I graduated from high school and started attending college, I was deeply disappointed. It was one of the best national universities in Japan, but I found it uninspiring, or even hypocritical. But leaving college halfway was extremely unusual in Japan. I didn’t know what to do with my life. At the same time, the empty feeling I tolerated at home was reaching the limit. I had no one to talk to, and I started to reach out to sugary foods for comfort and distraction.

Sugar is an easily accessible drug. It’s certainly legal, and few people will raise their brows seeing you eating sweets. In fact, I think the seed of my sugar addiction was planted earlier at home by my parents, who wanted me to eat more of anything. (I’m petite even by Japanese standard.) They looked happy when I ate cakes. By the way, food was practically the only topic that brought some smiles at my home.

By the time I was twenty years old, I was binge eating chocolates and candies and using laxatives regularly. Aaaah, just writing these words hurts me — it feels like I am stabbed in the stomach — even though I am writing this voluntarily. . .

How I temporarily recovered from my sugar addiction

I left the college after all. My mental and emotional conflict was literally driving me crazy and my health was failing. My parents were disappointed beyond words and I was treated as family shame. (To be clear, because I quit college, not because I had eating disorder.)

Leaving college did relieve some of my stress and I started to recover. I also learned to appreciate foods more by spending time cooking and even baking. Yes, I overcame sugar addiction — at least temporarily — by baking cakes from scratch.

Baking takes time and care. And because I am an inquisitive person, I also read quite many books on baking and food history. I learned sweets were considered special treat for the majority of human history, something ordinary people could seldom have. Sugar cane is a tropical plant, so until the global transportation system was established in the 19th century, people in other areas never tasted sugar. Or it was super expensive.

How about honey? Well, you know how much trouble it takes to collect honey? This also made honey quite expensive. Plus honey doesn’t work well with heat, so you cannot make so many kinds of sweets with honey. The mesmerizing variety of cakes, cookies, pastries, and candies are invented using sugar. You’ll be bored licking plain honey pretty soon.

Same thing with other ingredients such as butter, eggs, and flour. These were once treasured foods before big agribusinesses started to abuse the animals, the land and the farmers. Read books like Little House on the Praire. Making a cake was like bringing together rare gems, again for special celebrations. And that’s just a little more than 100 years ago.

First lesson I learned with my sugar addiction

So, more than 20 years ago before I consciously learned the spiritual laws, I bumped into one of the most important lesson in dealing with addiction: Appreciation. Or even respect.

Before, I was hating the sugary foods I binged on. I quickly grabbed a bag of candy at supermarket and swallowed it. I didn’t want to face myself eating sweets. It may sound strange, but I didn’t want to face the sweets I was eating, either — I just craved it and wanted to satisfy my craving.

Once I understood how all the foods were grown and gathered, and how much work baking itself took, I started to eat more mindfully. I made peace with sweets. Back then, I didn’t know the principle to love my problem, but I was coming close. My health improved, my life improved.

How my sugar addiction returned

I thought I overcame my sugar addiction. Isn’t it completely normal and healthy to enjoy, say a biscotti or a scoop of ice cream, now and then? Or even one or two a day as long as I stayed healthy and in good shape?

This “taming the sugar addiction” phase of my life lasted until about a year ago.

Something changed last year. I don’t know exactly what. Perhaps my age. Some scientists argue female hormone change affects the way we crave foods. (Which explains cravings during PMS, pregnancy, and yes, perimenopause. I am 48 years old and my period became irregular about a year ago.)

Or maybe the overall dietary change I made last year — I became mostly vegetarian, largely raw. I’ve heard some raw foodists having severe cravings. Or it could be because I became increasingly aware of the health problems sugar can cause and attempted to eliminate sugar from my diet altogether, which in effect fed the dynamics of eating sweets.

In January last year, I weighed 113 pounds. During the spring and summer, I naturally lost weight, down to about 106 pounds. Then, from around October, I started to eat sweets a lot, a lot more than I felt comfortable myself. Of course, the holiday season escalated the situation with all the pretty-looking sweets. My weight got back to 113, or occasionally a few pounds more, by this January. I got panicked.

What is addiction?

You may think this is no big deal. Don’t many people gain weight in winter? Why am I calling it sugar addiction?

Right. I don’t think the weight itself is the problem (although I think I gained them in such a short time.) It’s the way I was eating and gaining weight.

My definition of any addiction is: when you know the negative consequences of your actions and still cannot stop or modify it, that is addiction, whether the target of the addiction is legal (sugar, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, etc.) or illegal (drugs), or whether the target is stuffs or behaviors (such as sex, shopping, gambling, self-cutting, or even work, exercise).

I knew sugar was no good to my health, I was seeing its negative effect such as the weight gain and the difficulty in focusing, and yet I could not stop picking up Ben & Jerry’s ice cream or a package of cheese cake. (And a piece of cake is huge in America.) And once I started eating one sweet, it often led to more, even though on the conscious level, I didn’t want any more. So this is sugar addiction, at least by my definition.

Let’s see, Wikipedia says addiction is

“persistent behavioral pattern marked by physical and/or psychological dependency that causes significant disruption and negatively impacts the quality of life of an organism.”

According to Wikipedia, non-substance addictions are compulsive behavior.

Okay, compulsive it is. However, I want to point out the possibility that many compulsive behaviors might have biochemical reasons behind it, even if it doesn’t involve psychotic substances.

For example, when you eat chocolate, your body produces opiate. Chocolate itself does not contain opiate, but your own body creates it, causing mild high, essentially the same kind of high you would get with morphine. Keep doing it enough times and your body become dependent on having opiate constantly — you are hooked on chocolate. I think this is a type of addiction, not just compulsive behavior caused by your mind.

I guess a lot of businesses are at risk if we expand the use of “addiction” my way, therefore authorities want to avoid it. If you are eating chocolate compulsively, you are solely responsible for it. But if we admit chocolate may cause addiction, the chocolate industry has a role in it.

Addiction is not about lack of will power

The important thing to remember is addiction is not about the lack of will power. It has physiological conditions behind it. Trying to control addiction without addressing the physiological reasons is cruel to the addicts. In other words, addiction needs to be addressed at all levels of our existence, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

Most people, including the addicts themselves, don’t understand this. So they try to control it by strict prohibitive rules / plans and mind manipulation. That doesn’t work. It only adds more guilt and shame and aggravates the situation.

I’m not a doctor nor nutritionist and don’t know everything about the effects of sugar on our body. My guess is once a person becomes addicted to sugar, they metabolize sugar differently from normal person. Normal metabolism simply burns sugar, converting it to carbon gas and water, or stores sugar as fat. In sugar addicts’ body, sugar produces something that disrupts the body. The irony is this causes the addict to reach for more sugar, in the same way people with hangover reaches for more drinks.

Here is another way to explain the physiological working of sugar addiction, regarding the brain’s neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. Sugar exhausts the brain’s reward pathway in the same way alcohol and drugs do, forcing the body to secret excessive amount of serotonin and dopamine and consequently making the body desensitize the receptors of these neurotransmitters.  She also mentions the food allergy / intolerance as cause of food craving, which is basically what I’m trying to say.

How strong my sugar cravings were

Let me share another story to help you understand how strong my sugar cravings were and how little my will power helped.

Two years after I came to the US, I got married. I knew he had drug and alcohol problem before and I also knew he went to rehab. So I thought he was recovered. Pretty soon things got weird, however. He never used it in front of me, but somehow money was disappearing, and then he himself was absent often, sometimes until very late at night.

A year later, he checked himself in to a rehab again. This time, I was involved, too, as his spouse. To be supportive, I quit drinking myself. I was a social drinker — I had one or two drinks when I went out just to add some fun. I didn’t mind giving up alcohol at all. I loved him and that was the least I could do as his spouse.

He recovered to some extent, and then relapsed. Eventually, I had to leave him. I didn’t understand why it was so hard for him to stay away from drugs and drinks. What the heck? It was easy for me to quit.

Had I been asked to quit sweets to be supportive of him, however, I honestly don’t know how things went. I would definitely have tried SO hard. I desperately wanted our marriage to last. But the way I have cheated myself with overeating . . . Gee, I don’t know. To the best of my knowledge, he stayed clean for a few months. I haven’t been sugar free more than a week.

Addiction is strong beyond understanding. And it’s tricky and baffling. If you are a non-addict, like I am to alcohol, please don’t judge addiction by your standard. And if you addicted to something, my deep feeling goes to you.

The negative effects of sugar

Now, in case you may be unfamiliar with the problems of consuming sugar, here is a list of effects sugar can have on your health:

1. Sugar high followed by sugar low
When you eat sugar and other high GI (glycemic index) foods such as refined carbs, they are quickly absorbed to your blood stream, raising your blood sugar level fast and furious. Our body responds to this change by secreting insulin from pancreas. The trouble is our body is designed to over react to sudden changes. Because homeostasis (to stay in the same range of biological conditions, be it body temperature, blood pressure, or blood sugar level) is critical for our survival, our body reacts big time to control sudden changes.

So it produces more insulin than it’s necessary to bring the blood sugar level down to normal range — the blood sugar level goes below it. This is the inevitable sugar low, leaving you tired, anxious, and miserable — and likely to crave even more sugar for the next high.

2. Insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes
When you repeat the sugar intake – excessive insulin production patten, your body cells become less sensitive to insulin. The cells start to ignore the insulin’s message to store excessive sugar into the cells, leaving the body with high level of blood sugar. Insulin resistance leads to metabolic syndrome and eventually to Type 2 diabetes.

3. Adrenal fatigue
Your adrenal glands produce cortisol, another hormone that controls blood sugar. When you consume excessive sugar, you are forcing your adrenal glads to work overtime. Because adrenals produce various hormones beside cortisol, the adrenal fatigue and eventual exhaustion can cause wide range of health problems such as lethargy, lightheadedness, depression — and even more sugar craving.

4. AGE, which leads to various health issues
Advanced Glycation End-Products (AGE) are present in sugary foods, especially cooked sugary foods, and our body can produce it, too, from our blood sugar. This substance affects the protein in our body and is the hidden cause of various health issues, including diabetes, Alzheimer’s decease, and cancer.

5. Cardiovascular disease
High blood sugar level affects cardiovascular system in several ways according to the American Heart Association.

6. Aging
Increased level of stress hormones such as insulin and cortisol inhibits body’s regeneration. So sugar indirectly contributes to early aging.

7. Inflammation
I am reading Ultra-Metabolism In the book, author Mark Hyman explains how certain foods, including sugar, can cause hidden inflammation in our body. This stresses out our system and also leads to weight gain.

8. Weakened immune system
Some researches show increased blood sugar interferes the activity of white blood cells.

9. Vitamin and mineral waste
In order to assimilate sugar, your body needs various vitamins such as vitamin Bs. Sugar is also acid-forming, so the body needs to neutralize the acidity by consuming minerals such as calcium and magnesium. These are valuable vitamins and minerals our body needs to maintain health.

10. Memory loss and other brain dysfunction
This article at WebMD maintains heightened blood sugar level affects the area of the brain for memory.

11. Candida overgrowth
Sugar feeds candida and other microorganisms in our body, which can cause a variety of ailments.

12. Tooth decay and periodontal disease

13. Weight gain

Plus the various mental health issues.  Any sugar addict knows it causes anxiety and depression.

If this isn’t enough, here is a longer list of sugar’s effects on health.

How I tried to control my sugar addiction to no avail

I started working on my sugar problem in January. Yes, in the way most people deal with problems — by loathing and working against the problem. I tried to control my sugar addiction.

I started food journals. I made healthy eating plans. I calculated my calorie intake carefully. Needless to say, I cleaned up my fridge and cupboard and rid of all sugary foods. I swore.

. . . The longest I could stay sugar free was a week. Sooner or later, something triggered my sugar cravings and I was back to overeating sweets. The trigger could be various things — sweets offered at social gatherings or as samples at the grocery store, work stress, or just the general sense of boredom. Once I picked up a sweet, it escalated quickly. Say, one day I had a cookie. Next day I found myself driving to cafe and ordering a cheesecake. Third day, I may be bingeing on chocolate . . .

Suggestions like having no sugary foods at home didn’t help at all because I would just drive to the store to get some if I had strong craving. And that’s what addicts do, to get the target of their addiction by all means.

And of course, addiction has its vicious cycle. Once I ate the sugary foods that I decided not to eat, I felt bad, and the miserable feeling caused even more craving. The intellectual understanding of the ill effects of sugar had no power in this vicious cycle. Although it never got as bad as it was when I was in my twenties, I was starting to feel helpless.

I also felt like a total fake. On the one hand, I have written passionate articles on healthy eating. I totally and honestly believe in everything I write. I want to eat well and I even want to help others do the same. On the other hand, I was overeating sweets. The sense of guilt and shame that tainted my younger days returned like a vengeance. Even now, as I write this, I am afraid you may judge me. . . It’s taking a huge courage to keep writing this article.

How I applied the “Love your problem” principle to my sugar addiction

So how can I apply the “Love your problem” principle to my sugar addiction?

For me, the most important thing is to remember there is a meaning to my sugar addiction. I don’t say this lightly. Sugar addiction, like any addiction, is painful and confusing. It has caused so much fear and self-loathing. I am so totally at a loss why I cannot do one simple thing, to stay away from sugary foods.

And this way, my sugar addiction has taught me so much.

It has taught me how confusing living in this physical world is.  We cannot just think things out in this world — we need to implement the idea and live it. For someone like myself who is very much in the ideas, this is important.

It has also taught me, in a convoluted way, to love myself deeply regardless of what I am doing.  And I hope the love expands to compassion for all people.

Loving sugar addiction, my body, and foods

Loving the problem, like sugar addiction, doesn’t mean embracing it in the Hallmark greeting card way.  It means acknowledging it, facing it, and seeing the meanings of it.

When we are working against the problem, we hardly acknowledge the problem. We just want to get rid of it.  But true change comes only when we own the problem.

In addition, there are two more lessons I’m learning through loving my sugar addiction:

1. Loving the signals my body is sending out
Before, I felt my body was going crazy. I thought my body was rebelling against me with sugar cravings. But what if my body was doing its best to keep me in health? What if my body was right in wanting some nutrients but my mind was misinterpreting the signals?

I thought about this possibility. At first, it felt like a crazy proposition. What’s right about craving ice cream and cheesecakes? They are loaded with sugar and . . . fat.

Huh? Is it possible that my body was craving fat rather than sugar, but I kept feeding it with these sweets? I thought about this. I knew that, even though cookies and pastries can trigger my cravings, what I really craved for were these highly fatty foods.

So one day, I bought a jar of Artisana’s organic raw coconut butter when I felt the craving. It’s made of whole coconut, not just oil, and tastes mildly sweet. I decided to eat it rather than the cake. I licked like several tablespoons of that yummy fat that night. I was at the end of my wit and didn’t care about things like calorie.

Next morning, to my amusement, I woke up feeling a lot better. For one thing, my lower back pain was gone. My back was stiff and painful for a few months. And I felt warm. I’ve always been a cold person, the kind of person who need extra blanket and second layer of socks in winter. That morning, I noticed I was feeling much warmer than usual even though the weather was bad.

That was several days ago. My sugar cravings are about 80% gone because I feel full after eating. I simply don’t need snacks most of the time — I stay satiated until next meal time. (The last 20% is the tricky part. Feeling free of cravings can somehow allure me to try some sweets — so baffling. Certain situations and places also trigger sugar thoughts. Of course I know once I put in sugar in my body, my system can go haywire.)

2. Loving the foods and dropping judgments
Before, I was upset at all the sugary foods and even the manufactures of those foods. Sugar is known to be bad for health, so why do they flood the market with all these sweets? Why are these sweets marketed as if they are necessary part of holidays? Shouldn’t they be regulated like tobacco?

This resentment against sugary foods, along with my guilt and shame for eating such “bad” foods, fed my sugar cravings. I was so working against the problem, beating up myself and the idea of sugary foods.

Loving the problem in this aspect means to drop this harsh judgment and to understand no foods are intrinsically “bad”. Sweets are okay to exist. Perhaps they even offer true joy to some people. I just choose not to eat it today. That’s all. Not a big deal, just for today, I am choosing to eat other foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds that are flavored more simply. No fight against foods, it’s just a choice.

This way of thinking takes the edges of sugar craving. When the residual cravings hit me, I find it a lot easier to deflect it if I say, “Just for today, I am choosing health, and I am listening to my body.”

My sugar addiction: Conclusion

Am I “cured” of sugar addiction? No. I think I still have the physiology of the sugar sensitivity.  And addiction recovery usually involves relapses before the recover is finally solid.

There are still moments when I’m tempted to eat sugary snacks. But saying no to craving is much easier now. And the number of cravings are going down big time.  (And let’s knock the wood — because many relapses happen just when things seem to be working.  Addiction is really baffling.)

If you have problem with sugar, too, I hope this article encourages you. I am not saying healthy fat is the solution although it may help. Both healthy fat and protein stabilize blood sugar level. And there may be unknown link between fat and sugar cravings.

My main point is to love your problem and work with your problem, rather than against it. Drop your judgments, love and appreciate yourself and the foods, and listen to your body.

“Listening to the body” may be a new concept for some people. Even though the gut doesn’t speak English, it does communicate. I am learning more about this because I think the best foods for me change every day depending on my condition and the season. So rather than relying on dogmatic rules, I consult what and how much my body needs today.

If you have other addictions, please think how you can apply this approach in your case. Rather than prohibiting the target of your addiction, work with your body and think of ways to nurture it. Listen to the small voice of your body that is behind the loud scream of cravings. And see the deeper meaning of why you have this problem.

I think “loving the problem” can work in various other problems, too. What problem are bothering you and how can you “love” it?

And lastly — I hope you still love me.
(Photo credits: supermarket, staircase, cupcake, loneliness)

Related posts:

1. The Root Cause Of All Addictions And Compulsive Behaviors

Do you find this blog inspiring?

Please check About page to learn more about this blog and the author, Akemi Gaines.