by Joan Kent | Sep 22, 2020 | Instructor Training
Whenever I work with a new client who needs to get off the sugar roller coaster, I see some familiar patterns as the client struggles with her or his sugar addiction.
The pattern may include lapses, relapses, frustration, embarrassment, giving up, moving between compliant and noncompliant behaviors, getting past all of these, and finally moving forward decisively.
As the process goes on, mistakes may occur that could be labeled “predictable” because they’re things many clients have done before and conquered. Best of all, they can be modified so the end result is getting off sugar for good.
In this post is a list of mistakes that are common in trying to quit sugar. I made all of them and probably a bunch more. I discovered what I had been doing wrong mentally and emotionally that had kept me from becoming a successful quitter.
My Addiction Created This Sugar Quitting Mindset
I’m a good person to talk to about sugar addiction. I have a PhD in psychoactive nutrition (how foods affect brain chemistry), with a specialty in sugar addiction. Before that, I got a master’s degree in exercise physiology. I’m also certified by ACE (American Council on Exercise) as a Health Consultant.
I wrote a dissertation on using psychoactive nutrition in the treatment of women with binge-eating disorder. In it, to the very best of my knowledge, I was the first person to outline the neurochemical pathways of sugar addiction, and a neurochemical and hormonal explanation for the sugar/fat seesaw.
But there may be a more compelling reason to listen to me about sugar addiction. I’m arguably the world’s foremost recovered sugar addict.
I quit sugar more times than I can count. I tell this to all my clients because it’s helpful for sugar addicts when they know I’m not just preaching from an academic perspective.
In the process of making every mistake in the book — and inventing a few of my own — I discovered a formula that works.
Mindset Mistakes That Mess Up Quitting Sugar
Let’s look at the mistakes that kept me stuck for quite some time — and might be keeping some of your students stuck, as well.
Mistake 1: Expecting quitting to be easy
You’ll probably have good days and bad, easy moments and difficult ones. If you expect quitting to be easy, you might be unprepared for the bad times.
If you expect instead that it will take effort to quit, you’ll be ready to deal with whatever happens.
It’s not that quitting sugar won’t bother you at all, but you’ll be less reactive. Not only to external factors — like tempting foods around you — but also to internal factors, like sugar cravings.
Eventually, you’ll be non-reactive to sugary foods in general, whether you see them, smell them, or even taste a little. It’s definitely worth getting to that point!
As for cravings, liquid B-complex is the most effective short-term solution, as explained in a previous post.
Mistake 2: Not having a solid system
It’s easy to find questionable “wisdom” on websites, in magazines, in books, on podcasts. But it’s not a good idea to cobble your plan from a mishmash of unrelated bits of advice.
Instead, find one plan and stick with it.
Because I quit sugar before it was recognized as harmful, I had to piece my plan together from my research. Not every step was a clear one forward, and there was backsliding. My continued research eventually led to a solid system.
Part of that system is to focus on your sugar addiction first until you succeed in quitting and feel ready to move on to the next issue. This isn’t the time to focus on weight loss, become a vegan, go raw, or schedule your life makeover. Conquering sugar addiction gets top billing now.
Mistake 3: Looking for support … in all the wrong places
It’s only natural to want support. But telling the wrong people about your decision to quit sugar could lead to sabotage that undoes your efforts!
As detailed in a previous post, telling everyone at the dinner table that you’re turning down dessert because you’re addicted to sugar might trigger this:
“Have it; you can eat less tomorrow.”
“Just work out a little harder tomorrow.”
“A little bit can’t hurt.”
“But I made it myself.”
Not one of those comments shows an awareness of the issues a sugar addict faces. If they succeed in getting you to go against your plan, you’re the one who suffers and has to start over again.
Part 2 will cover the changes that are key in making quitting sugar possible — the Mindset Shifts I needed to stop resisting — and finally implement — so I could quit sugar successfully. Some of your students may need to know them, too.
Originally posted 2015-06-29 14:49:24.
by Joan Kent | Dec 20, 2018 | Instructor Training
Food cravings would be no problem if they were for broccoli and kale. How perfect would that be? But those aren’t the foods — or kinds of foods — we tend to crave, mainly because they don’t cause much (if any) change in brain chemistry.
Cravings tend to be for foods that feel like comfort foods: from Christmas cookies and other holidays treats to plain old mac and cheese. Foods with sugar, flour and fats are the go-to comfort foods — and the ones we crave — because they’re big brain chem changers.
This short post will cover two ways that cravings can sabotage us: 1) by derailing a weight-loss plan, and 2) by derailing our work productivity.
Cravings and Weight Loss
Cravings prompt many of us to eat the foods we crave. Before you say, “Duh”, that’s not as obvious as it seems. It’s definitely possible to eliminate cravings so they don’t make us eat those foods.
But let’s say you haven’t eliminated the cravings and you do eat what you’ve been craving. The foods you eat will often make you eat more — yes, more of the craved stuff, but also more food in general.
The endorphins (beta-endorphin) triggered by sugary foods, for example, can inhibit the part of the brain responsible for satiety — the feeling that we’ve had enough food and don’t need any more for a while. And the meal can just keep going.
Those endorphins can also make us eat different foods than we typically would. They might lead us to eat more sugar, more fat, or both. Even if you’re just looking for something sweet, that sweet treat will often also contain fat and provide far more calories than you expected.
Obviously, weight-loss plans end up suffering as a result. An effective short-term fix for any craving is a teaspoon of liquid B-complex. (Please check with your doctor to be sure this is a strategy you can safely use.) If your doctor gives you the okay, the craving will be gone in a matter of minutes.
Cravings and Work Productivity
If you eat sweet or starchy foods when you crave them, both trigger a high release of insulin. That can cause sleepiness or “fogginess” that call out for a caffeine fix. It’s especially true for those who are carb-sensitive — who produce more insulin after eating sugar, for example.
Who is carb sensitive? Typically, anyone with a family history of hypertension, alcoholism, diabetes, hypoglycemia, or obesity.
Extra caffeine may work, but may lose some of its effectiveness if you’ve had lots of coffee during the day already. Staying alert and productive is far easier when you balance out any high insulin-triggering foods with protein and lots of vegetables.
Plant sources of protein have commanded much attention lately, but may not provide enough protein to balance out the insulin effects in someone who’s carb-sensitive. If you’d rather not eat animal proteins, make a point of mixing some vegetable protein powder with water.
Have that mixture anytime you’ve been giving in to comfort food cravings. It won’t reverse all the effects of sugars and flour, but it can help.
by Joan Kent | Sep 10, 2018 | Health and Wellness, Master Instructor Blog
I’d like to ask for your help with an extremely important campaign. The campaign is to raise money for pregnant women with metabolic disorders: diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, low “good” cholesterol, obesity, insulin resistance, and more. These metabolic conditions make it more likely that the moms-to-be will give birth to babies that develop autism.
I specialize in reversing these metabolic disorders through nutrition. I want to help get these pregnant women healthy, so they can give birth to healthy babies that stay healthy. This is significant and worthwhile — and I definitely need your help.
The research linking metabolic disorders in pregnant women and babies that develop autism is new. Researchers are worried that autism will increase due to rising obesity rates nationally, which, of course, impacts pregnant women. No one to my knowledge, however, is targeting the cause of these metabolic conditions at the root level — specifically, the nutrition of the pregnant women.
These metabolic conditions can be completely reversed; I've been helping people reverse metabolic syndrome for 20 years. I would now like to target pregnant women and try to reduce the incidence of autism.
Please help by donating if you can and/or by spreading the word and letting your friends, family and coworkers know about this campaign. Any support they can offer would be greatly appreciated.
I truly believe we can make a difference by reversing a problem that looks as if it will only get worse — unless people like you help to stop it! Thank you for your support and your willingness to help.
Here’s a link that will take you to the Indiegogo site, where you can get more information on this important campaign: ‪http://goo.gl/ouS9NR ‬
by Joan Kent | Aug 28, 2018 | Engage Your Students, Health and Wellness
A previous post covered ways that sugar can increase fat consumption. One way is that fat makes sugary foods taste sweeter. That may mean a sugar/fat combination tastes preferable to a sugar-only food, such as hard candy.
Clients have told me that, when they eliminate sugar from their diets, they can actually enjoy snacking on a brown rice cake topped with a slice of tomato or sprouts.
When they’ve been eating sugary foods, though, such a snack seems unappealing and unpalatable. At those sugar-laden times, they find themselves wanting different things: bologna or salami sandwiches, for example, or other heavy foods.
Those heavier foods have more fat in them than the first snack, so the clients are consuming extra fat — even though they weren’t necessarily seeking high-fat foods in the first place.
In my dissertation, I named this “secondary fat consumption.”
Secondary fat consumption can occur in several different ways:[private PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|PRO-Studio|28 Day Challenge]
– We eat more of a fatty food (like peanut butter) when we have sugar (jelly) to eat with it and make it taste better.
– We eat sugar, which triggers endorphins, as explained above. That shifts our preferences to other foods that trigger endorphins — to more sugar or to high-fat foods, or both.
– We crave something sweet and want the sweetest taste we can get — so we instinctively choose a sugar/fat combination, instead of, say, a hard candy with sugar only.
Unfortunately, that’s not the worst of it. High-fat foods we eat trigger the hormone ghrelin. To me, it always seemed like a Monster Hormone.
For one thing, ghrelin slows metabolism. Who wants that?
At the same time, ghrelin stimulates the part of the brain that increases appetite (the lateral hypothalamus). That gives “secondary fat” a chance to increase calories — not only through the secondary fat calories themselves, but also through all the other foods we might suddenly want to eat simply because that secondary fat has triggered ghrelin and our appetite.
It’s obvious that there’s potential for a self-perpetuating cycle in this, and that it can toboggan its way down a slippery slope and pick up speed.
It also seems obvious that — bottom line — sugar is the culprit in this metabolic mess.
Avoiding sugar is one important factor in transforming your health, increasing your energy, and feeling great. Heart disease, the #1 cause of death in the U.S., has been linked with inflammation. So have diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and more.
Inflammation is strongly affected by nutrition, and sugar’s effect on insulin and hormones makes it a strong contributor to inflammation. Dare I advise, yet again, not to eat it?[/private]
by Joan Kent | Aug 11, 2018 | Health and Wellness
People often tell me stories about how they lost weight. The stories begin with, “All I did was…” and end with something like: become vegetarian (or vegan); eliminate gluten; “go raw”; or cut out sugar.
A couple of these make sense, but others don’t. Let’s look at each one.
Becoming Vegetarian or Vegan
The two are different, but I’ll cover them together because my observations are the same in both cases.
Depending on which animal products someone was eating before changing her/his diet — and how they were prepared — eliminating animal products might result in considerable weight loss.
But there may be more to this story. Maybe the new vegan/vegetarian has eliminated dairy products, for example — and given up that pint of Ben & Jerry’s every night. Getting rid of all the fat and sugar in the ice cream could very well have had a profound effect on weight loss.
That change might even have helped by itself. So maybe it wasn’t just about animal products.
Eliminating Gluten
My first question is always, “How much gluten was this person eating before?”
It’s logical to blame gluten if the now-lean person was eating a stack of pancakes for breakfast, a large submarine-type sandwich for lunch, and a mountain of pasta with his dinner.
Cutting moderate gluten intake — say, a standard sandwich on 2 ordinary slices of bread per day — might not yield the same dramatic results.
But again, is there more to the story? The butter and syrup on the pancakes, high-fat sauce on the pasta, mayo and who-knows-what-else on the sub sandwich? Those changes would factor in just as much as the gluten.
Giving Up Sugar or “Going Raw”
Okay, in this case, I can definitely believe we may have found the “one thing” that helps someone lose weight — especially if the switch covers all sugar.
Giving up sugar would include giving up pastries, cookies, cakes, brownies, candy bars, ice cream, and more. Those so-called foods often contain fat, white flour, and yes, gluten — plus other junk, along with the sugar.
Someone switching to a raw diet would also eliminate most foods on the list above.
The drawback with a raw diet is that there are two “tracks.” The healthful track emphasizes vegetables. The less healthful track emphasizes fruit, various concoctions that contain fruit or fruit juice, and even cookies that look like Oreos, with some sort of creamy fruit puree filling between 2 cookies made of crumbled nuts.
I recommend the veggie track, but that may be a topic for another post.
Of course I’m in favor of anything that helps someone make a change for better health. But it may take a few things, not just one. And that’s not a bad thing.
That being said, the decision to eliminate sugar can, and often does, have far-reaching benefits: cardiovascular health, blood pressure, mood, appetite, focus.
So if you are still looking for the One Thing that helps you lose weight … giving up sugar might be that thing.
And if you’re looking for help with eliminating sugar — for weight loss or other health issues — perfect! That’s what I do. Just visit www.FoodAddictionSolutions.com and grab your FREE copy of “3 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Trying To Quit Sugar.” Find out how you can make a big shift in your health with small changes that are easy and do-able.
