Why Diets Fail (Because You're Addicted to Sugar) (15 page)

You may be wondering, why not quit sugars and other carbohydrates cold turkey? Isn’t that what you ultimately have to do to quit other addictions (like alcohol or smoking)? First, as mentioned earlier, although we can draw similarities between drug addiction and food addiction, they are not the same. Quitting drugs cold turkey is not an easy thing to do. (That is why many people need to be admitted to inpatient rehabilitation centers, and even then, they are sometimes given drug-like pharmacological therapies to transition them off of drugs.) Cold turkey might work for some people, but it isn’t for everyone.

Second, our food environment is such that sugar-rich foods and their cues are abundant, so trying to quit cold turkey would be extremely difficult. You would be constantly bombarded with cues and reminders of the foods that you used to overeat. Also, unlike many drug addictions, it isn’t necessary to eliminate
all
sugars from your diet. Later in this book, you will see how certain sugar-containing foods, like whole fruits, can be sensible choices.

Recall from Step 1 that gradual changes are effective when trying to lose weight and establish a way of eating that can be sustainable. The Sugar Freedom Plan has been structured so that you can begin to slowly reduce the amount of excess sugars you consume, reduce your intake of other carbohydrates, and eventually come to maintain a way of eating that eliminates foods with added sugars (and empty calories) completely. The goal of this plan is to provide you with a realistic way of eating. Once you see that you can live without some of the foods that you have been overeating that you know are bad for you (for example, sodas), you will see that
you
, not your addiction, has control over what you eat. Also, you will begin to replace whatever foods you give up with healthier alternatives. We will discuss these alternatives in greater detail in Step 5, but for now, don’t view the fact that you will be phasing out certain foods as though you are depriving yourself of something; instead, try to keep in mind that by reducing or eliminating unhealthy options, you are setting yourself up to make better choices.

Each of the five phases has a corresponding time frame. Note that these are meant as guides only, as some people will need more time to work through each individual stage, and some may need less. For example, in the first phase, which is geared toward eliminating your intake of sugar-sweetened beverages, if you don’t really drink these already, then you probably will have no problem moving on to the next phase. But if you are one of the many people who drink sodas or other high-calorie sugary drinks (many store-bought iced teas, juices, and so on) in excess, this will likely be an adjustment for you and might require an additional week or two. However, it is advised that you stay in each phase for
at least
as long as suggested. If you rush through them, you won’t be giving your brain and body enough time to adapt to the behavioral changes that you’re making, and you psychologically might not have kicked the need for these foods yet. Remember, this isn’t a race.

How will you know when you are ready to move to the next stage? If you get to the end of the suggested time frame and you still feel compelled to eat the foods you are restricting, stay within that phase for a little longer. You may still be experiencing withdrawal and acute cravings for these foods (we offer some strategies to overcome these two challenges in Steps 6 and 7).

Before You Start

There is some preparatory work that you should do before you start cutting out the sugar to make sure that you are ready to incorporate this new way of eating into your everyday diet. Remember that by coming this far, you have
already
taken the first steps necessary to get started. In Steps 1 and 2, you took stock of your past and present dieting habits so that you can begin to recognize where you are making mistakes and understand why your past diet attempts have failed, and in Step 3, you began to consider how some of your habits related to food intake might be promoting your addiction to food. These first steps are critical, as when you are making a life change it is crucial that you recognize
what
you are changing, and
why
you need to. If you just wake up one day and blindly decide to cut out excess sugars and other carbohydrates but don’t have the background on
why
you need to do it or
what
it is doing to your brain and body, you are less likely to be able to see the value in your behavioral changes, and as a result, you will probably be less likely to stick to them in the long run.

There are a few key preparatory steps that you will need to take to make this plan work: understand sugar equivalency, learn which sugars to avoid, and assess your food stock and restock, if necessary. Let’s take a closer look at each of these preparatory steps now.

UNDERSTAND SUGAR EQUIVALENCY

In order to lessen your dependence, it is not sufficient to just eliminate added sugars from your diet (although this is certainly an important step in the process). As you now know, “sugar” is not just the sugar you add to your coffee. Lots of foods that we eat are high in sugars and other carbohydrates, and even though they may not taste sweet, they can still be a problem. The first two phases of the Sugar Freedom Plan—eliminate sugary beverages and eliminate junk foods—are pretty straightforward in that most (but not all) of the foods you should avoid are pretty obvious (that is, sodas, cakes, cookies, chips, and so on). However, once you enter the next two phases—reduce carbs and, especially, reduce hidden sugars—you will need to more carefully assess the foods you eat, as it will not be so obvious whether a particular food is good or bad for you.

There are many meal-planning techniques that people implement to monitor how much sugar they eat. One popular method is to count the number of carbohydrates being consumed by looking at the grams of carbohydrates per serving. The American Diabetes Association recommends this method for people who are diabetic and trying to maintain a low-carbohydrate diet. A range of 45 to 60 grams of carbohydrates per meal is suggested (27 to 36 percent carbohydrate diet in a 2,000-calorie diet), but this can vary. Other low-carbohydrate diets require that you only eat 10 percent of your total daily calories from carbohydrates, and a low-glycemic-index diet recommends that 40 percent of your daily calories be from carbohydrates.
¹
As you can see, there is a fairly large range as to what constitutes a reduced-carbohydrate diet, and it can be difficult to ascertain just how many carbohydrates you should be eating when trying to reduce them. Also, if you eat 40 percent of your daily calories from carbohydrates in the form of ice cream, is that okay? You are still sticking to the low-carbohydrates diet, right? Probably not.

Another problem is that counting carbohydrates can be tedious (you may now have a sense of this from the exercise on counting carbohydrate intake in Step 2). Keeping track of how much you consume each day and at each meal is a good idea, but, often, doing this becomes just one extra thing you need to do to stay on track with eating well, and the more you have to do to stay on track, the less likely you are to stay on track at all.

Instead of counting, it would be easier if the choice were dichotomous, or black-and-white: you simply decide to eat, or not eat, certain foods. Of course, there are disadvantages to this approach, too. First, this limits your choices. However, if sugars are causing or maintaining your addiction to food, then limiting choices is a good move; if you can’t control your intake of certain foods, then maybe it is best to just stay away from them. That is part of the beauty of this approach. Once you are free of your addiction to sugars and other carbohydrates, you will end up eating less because you will be able to listen to your satiety signals and eat based on true hunger, not just pleasure. You won’t
want
to overeat.

To make all of this evaluating and decision making quick and easy, John designed a new concept called sugar equivalency to help you determine which foods you should choose, or avoid, on this diet. In the Sugar Equivalency Table (see
the appendix
), each food is given a number based on its carbohydrate and sugar content. This simple guide tells you which foods are good choices in keeping with this diet and which are not. It should be noted that this type of analysis is not perfect. There are a variety of different factors that would have to be taken into account to develop a perfect equation, including factors that affect the rate of digestion and absorption of carbohydrates. Plus, these factors can vary depending on a person’s lifestyle, behaviors, and even other foods that are consumed with the carbohydrates. Given these variables, it may be that creating a perfect formula is not even possible. But perfection or a precise
calculation is probably not necessary for your purposes. Our goal here was to make this whole process less complicated, and easy to implement and use.

This table was compiled with a specific focus on identifying the sugar and carbohydrate contents of foods, but it isn’t meant to replace common sense. Just because a certain food contains little to no sugar does not necessarily mean it’s a healthy alternative. For example, cooking oil has a sugar equivalence of 0, but we don’t recommend consuming this in excess. And when you compare chicken fat and broccoli based on their sugar equivalence (0 for the fat versus 3 for the veg), you might conclude that chicken fat is a healthier option. However, you also have to take into account factors such as the nutrients and fiber provided by the broccoli.

To calculate sugar equivalence, we took the percent of sugar that a food contains by weight (per 100 grams of food) and added 75 percent of its nonfiber, nonsugar carbohydrate weight. The idea is that starches very quickly turn to glucose (sugar) in the bloodstream, and it is this speedy sugar and carbohydrate overload that we want to avoid. Sugar equivalence is a novel, simple concept because it takes lots of data and analysis and reduces it down to one easily understood number. You can see from the table on
this page
(as well as the more expanded table that starts on
this page
) that foods vary enormously in their sugar equivalency. If you are eating crackers instead of celery for a snack, for example, you are getting more than twenty times the amount of sugar equivalents for the same amount (weight) of food consumed.

Although you can modify the cutoff points based on your personal goals, as a general rule you should try to eat things under 5. Foods scoring between 5 and 10 can be consumed but in very limited quantities (and on a case-by-case basis, as some of these foods may be problematic for certain people to control). Anything over 10 should be avoided in your diet. Even if you limit your food choices to those with sugar equivalencies of 5 or less, you must still be mindful of your total consumption. That’s because these foods still contain sugars and carbs albeit in lower amounts than many other foods. The beauty of this plan is that if you stick to eating low-sugar-equivalence foods, you won’t want to overeat.

SAMPLE SUGAR EQUIVALENCY CALCULATIONS

FOOD ITEM (100G)

Sugar (granulated)

CARBS (G)

99.98

SUGAR (G)

99.80

FIBER (G)

0.00

NONFIBER STARCH (G)

0.18

= SUGAR EQUIVALENT OF STARCH

0.135

TOTAL SUGAR EQUIVALENCY

99.94

FOOD ITEM (100G)

Honey

CARBS (G)

82.40

SUGAR (G)

82.12

FIBER (G)

0.20

NONFIBER STARCH (G)

0.08

= SUGAR EQUIVALENT OF STARCH

0.06

TOTAL SUGAR EQUIVALENCY

82.18

FOOD ITEM (100G)

Raisins (seedless)

CARBS (G)

79.18

SUGAR (G)

59.19

FIBER (G)

3.70

NONFIBER STARCH (G)

16.29

= SUGAR EQUIVALENT OF STARCH

12.2175

TOTAL SUGAR EQUIVALENCY

71.41

FOOD ITEM (100G)

Kellogg’s corn flakes cereal

CARBS (G)

87.11

SUGAR (G)

10.50

FIBER (G)

2.50

NONFIBER STARCH (G)

74.11

= SUGAR EQUIVALENT OF STARCH

55.5825

TOTAL SUGAR EQUIVALENCY

66.08

FOOD ITEM (100G)

Jams and preserves

CARBS (G)

68.86

SUGAR (G)

48.50

FIBER (G)

1.10