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Have you been stuck in a cycle of eating more sweets than you intended to? Have you ever eaten so much cake, cookies, or candy that you felt sick or even ashamed afterwards? Do you often feel guilty for not being able to control the impulse to overeat sugary foods, despite knowing that you will feel terrible for days after giving in? You are not alone. This post is for you.
Just knowing that refined sugar in excess is bad for your health is not enough to keep you from eating too much of it. You already know that sugar is associated with several negative health outcomes, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity. Nevertheless, it can be really hard to stop at just two cookies or just one doughnut. Gaining control of your sugar intake just might come down to treating sugar like an addictive drug.
Today, I will discuss what the data have to say about sugar addiction.
Sugar addiction – is it real?
Now, I’ve heard people say that sugar addiction is not real, and that claims that sugar is “like a drug” are overblown. However, we do have evidence to the contrary. Research shows that sugar does in fact check all the boxes for a substance to be considered addictive. This is in accordance with the criteria found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), which is basically a big book that summarizes all of the things that are known to go awry in our human brains.
In this paper by DiNicolantonio and colleagues published in 2017, it is noted that sugar is associated with:
“bingeing, craving, tolerance (gradual escalation in intake with repeated use), withdrawal, cross-sensitisation (increased response to drugs of abuse), cross-tolerance (developing a tolerance for one substance leads to tolerance of another), cross-dependence (suppression of withdrawal symptoms with certain drugs), reward and opioid effects.”
Studies show (here's one, and another one) that eating refined added sugars can shape our habits just as nicotine, cocaine, caffeine, and alcohol do. In animal studies, it has been observed that even cocaine-addicted rats would rather get high on sugar than cocaine.
Sugar dependence
Now, why is it that we can't get enough of this white crystal? Mainly, it's because sugar produces intense sensory pleasure. In simpler terms, it makes us feel good. Eating something sweet makes us feel like everything is okay, even when that may not objectively be the case.
Hate your job? Feeling isolated? Fighting with your partner? Nothing a sugar rush can't fix. (Image Credit: KC Green)
It is not uncommon for people who are addicted to drugs or alcohol to go between those substances and sugar to get the satisfaction that they are looking for. For example, if you are trying to reduce your sugar intake, you may find yourself drinking more to compensate. This is because sugar, similar to all of these substances, produces chemicals that fit the same brain receptors and thus, produce the same pleasurable effects.
A dependence on sugar is basically a dependence on the opioids that your own body makes. Here are some examples of opioid drugs, many of which I am sure you have heard of: heroin, fentanyl, oxycodone (trade name OxyContin), hydrocodone (trade name Vicodin), codeine, and morphine. Your body makes opioids too, like beta-endorphins. When you overindulge in sugar, you basically get high on your own supply of opioids.
While we all have the ability to become addicted to sugar, not all of us do. This is because of genetics, which causes each of us perceive sweetness differently and develop unique preferences.
Sugar withdrawal
Even the withdrawal effects from sugar addiction mirror those of drug addiction, specifically, opiate addiction. Naloxone is a life-saving drug that is used in people who have overdosed on opioids. It is an opiate antagonist, so it can produce symptoms of withdrawal. Animals who were given sugar, and then given naloxone, showed symptoms of withdrawal that are characteristic of drug withdrawal. Sugar withdrawal is not as easy to observe as withdrawal from known addictive drugs, but there are notable symptoms, some of which you may have even noticed in yourself. These include attention deficit, hyperactivity, and decreased performance. In the brain, a deficiency of dopamine can also be observed, and this can cause a person to feel depressed when trying to abstain from sugar.
If you have ever felt depressed when trying to quit sugar cold turkey, you shouldn't see that as weakness - that was likely your brain responding to the decrease in dopamine.
The fact that our brains reward us when we eat sugar is not something sinister – it’s actually a good thing. Sugar is the preferred source of energy for the brain, and it provides our bodies with quick energy. Humans evolved this reward system to make sure that we eat and stay alive. Back before we had constant access to sugary foods, this was a net positive. We would eat sweet things when they were available, and use the extra fat stored on our bodies to carry us through times of scarcity. Just like our ancestors, we are really good at storing fat to make it through hard times. For modern humans living in the developed world, this natural inclination towards sweets is something that we have to learn to not blindly follow, as we no longer have to forage to get some sugar on our tongues. Sugar is available to us everywhere: at the gas station, at the grocery store, at work, in the kitchen cabinet – and we are storing more fat than ever.
What to do about it
So, it's fair to say that sugar can indeed be addictive. Now, what are you supposed to do about that?
Here are 8 tips for dealing with an addiction to refined sugars and getting yourself on a healthier path:
1. Be forgiving towards yourself.
Maybe you look in the mirror and feel unhappy with what you look like, or perhaps you feel ashamed for binging on sugar and feeling out of control. Leave all of those feelings where they belong, in the past, and forgive yourself. To be fair, your biology and years of evolution are partially to blame, so you really shouldn't burden yourself with that guilt.
2. Avoid dieting.
Any changes that you make to your diet should be sustainable, so try to avoid cutting out entire food groups, fasting, skipping meals, or doing anything that you know you will not be able to maintain for more than a week.
3. Practice eating balanced, satisfying meals.
Sometimes we overeat sugar because our meals are unbalanced on unsatisfying. If you aren’t eating enough protein, good fat, and fiber, and are instead filling up on carbs, the sugar cravings will only get worse. One simple trick for making sure that your portions are correct is to fill half of your plate with non-starchy vegetables, ¼ with starches, and ¼ with protein. Here are some examples of what a nutrient-dense, filling, and balanced plate should look like.
4. Practice mindful eating.
Mindfulness is all about slowing down and paying attention to what your body is communicating to you from moment to moment. This means eating slowly and noticing when you have had enough. You may be surprised to find that just one piece of candy eaten slowly can be enough to satisfy your desire for something sweet, as opposed to 10 eaten rapidly and mindlessly. Learn to enjoy your food and notice how your body responds to what you put into it.
5. Create a stress management routine.
Oftentimes, we use sugar to cope with difficult emotions. It is a band-aid that keeps falling off, yet we keep applying it over our emotional wounds, over and over. Ask yourself: "what else can I do to handle tough emotions?" Talking to a friend or a therapist, going for a walk, picking up yoga, or just doing whatever makes you happy that doesn’t involve sugar can help.
6. Don’t lie to yourself.
If you know that having cookies in the house will make it 1000% more likely that you will end up eating an entire family-sized container of cookies in a day, don’t bring the cookies into the house. This one can be hard, because if you live with other people who don’t have the same struggles with sugar that you do, you won’t be able to completely control what is brought into the home. If that is your situation, you may want to try talking to the people that you live with about what you are trying to accomplish, and seeing what compromises they are willing to make.
7. Make sure that you sleep well.
When you are tired, you are more likely to make poor food choices and use sugar as a pick me up. Eating something high in carbs will give you a short-term energy boost, but that will be followed by a crash - something that I'm sure you have experienced.
8. Track your intake.
You can use a pen and paper style journal, the notes app on your phone, or even an app that is just for tracking sugar. Having some way to track your habits can help you to notice what triggers you to eat sugar. Maybe you tend to eat more sugar while watching TV, or your intake trends up during a certain time of the month. Knowing what your triggers are can help you to get a clearer picture of what factors in your life you need to focus on in order to meet your goal of consuming less refined sugar.
Daily meal tracking is something that I ask all of my clients to do when they sign up for my 1-month or 3-month programs. If you are interested in working with me one-on-one, click here.
That's all for now!
Enjoy today.
References:
Ahmed SH, Guillem K, Vandaele Y. Sugar addiction: pushing the drug-sugar analogy to
the limit. Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care 2013;16:434–9.
Colantuoni C, Rada P, McCarthy J, Patten C, Avena NM, Chadeayne A, Hoebel BG. Evidence that intermittent, excessive sugar intake causes endogenous opioid dependence. Obes Res. 2002 Jun;10(6):478-88. doi: 10.1038/oby.2002.66. PMID: 12055324.
DiNicolantonio JJ, O'Keefe JH, Wilson WL. Sugar addiction: is it real? A narrative review. Br J Sports Med. 2018 Jul;52(14):910-913. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2017-097971. Epub 2017 Aug 23. PMID: 28835408.
Lustig RH. Fructose: metabolic, hedonic, and societal parallels with ethanol. J Am Diet
Assoc 2010;110:1307–21.
The Institute for Family Health. (2023). Healthy Plates Around the World. https://institute.org/health-care/services/diabetes-care/healthyplates/
Dog in burning room meme source:
Green K. Gunshow - On Fire. https://gunshowcomic.com/648
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