commit 9bea3f426ca463220e19529abfc80cd2ace11e34 Author: maricruzbyles Date: Sat Oct 3 15:45:45 2026 +0000 Add How to stop Eating Sugar without Losing your Mind: 6 Strategies to Try diff --git a/How-to-stop-Eating-Sugar-without-Losing-your-Mind%3A-6-Strategies-to-Try.md b/How-to-stop-Eating-Sugar-without-Losing-your-Mind%3A-6-Strategies-to-Try.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..60e64b8 --- /dev/null +++ b/How-to-stop-Eating-Sugar-without-Losing-your-Mind%3A-6-Strategies-to-Try.md @@ -0,0 +1,7 @@ +
It happened last Halloween. The kids went out, collected the candy, and I ate it. Masses of it. (Don’t worry; they hoarded all the good stuff.) As my nerves went haywire and my stomach churned and the pounds of fat started massing on my middle, I realized that it was time for me to figure something out, before more damage could be done. I needed to figure out how to stop eating sugar. I’m a middle-aged woman, so I’ve had time to learn a few things about myself. One of those things is that I’m never going to be a skinny person. It’s not that I couldn’t develop the discipline to eat only steamed broccoli for the rest of my life. I just don’t care enough to do it. I’ve got short, dumpy Irish potato farmer written all over my genetic code, and I’m fine with it. Sugar threatens to make all of these horrors come true. If you’ve been following our sugar series, you know that sugar is added to a A LOT of products.
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Too much sugar can lead to weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dental problems and even brain disease. And sugar has similar [addictive properties](https://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=addictive%20properties) as drugs. Which is why (for me, at least) the more I eat, the more I crave. One little bit and I want more. To our bodies, sugar is sugar. Much of what we eat has a mix of naturally occurring and added sugars. The reason we care about added sugars these days with processed foods - crackers, breads, yogurts - isn’t about the type of sugar, but how much and how its delivered. The reason sugar from a chocolate bar gives me a sugar high and the same amount of sugar from an apple doesn’t has to do with the fact that the apple has fiber and other nutrients that help my body break the sugar down slowly. The chocolate bar, on the other hand, might as well be a needle in my vein.
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It’s a direct hit, and our bodies don’t always have the ability to process all that sugar at one time. My candy binge on Halloween night terrified me. Not only did I feel disgusting, but ahead of me loomed an even bigger sugar threat: Christmas fudge. My [mother-in-law](https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=mother-in-law) turns sugar into fat little flavored squares, hundreds of them, and then she leaves them, like weapons of mass destruction, lined up and ready on every counter in the kitchen. I spend the holiday trying not to look, circling around those delicious dangers, always aware that they’re there, wanting me to eat them. We stay with her a week. What was I going to do? What would I eat? I would exercise of course. Drink lots of water. But the easy-access fudge would still be staring me down. I’m not saying I managed to avoid added sugar completely through the holiday season.
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But I did come up with a few ways to not relive the Halloween binge. I checked in with UVA nutritionist Katherine Basbaum, RD, to get her feedback on the choices I’ve been making. Because, you know… Valentine’s Day is coming. And Easter… Mother-in-law or not, there’s a lot of opportunities for me to shove too much chocolate in my mouth coming up. "A lot of the things you’re doing are right on the money," Basbaum says. Lowering or limiting added sugars is a hard thing to do. Foods with added sugars "might have good things in them. Still, Basbaum applauds my effort. "Added sugars are one of the number one things I work with patients on," Basbaum says. "Heart disease, diabetes, inflammation - [GlucoLife blood sugar formula](http://crativ.co.kr/bbs/board.php?bo_table=info1&wr_id=105347) is a detriment to all chronic diseases. Not that I planned it this way, but the first item on my plan of attack to avoid added sugar was that binge. Eating all those fun-sized bars made me never want to have one again.
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