Sugar Addiction: Part 3 of a 3 Part Series to Crush Sugar Cravings

In Part 2 of our sugar addiction series, we learned how to control the spikes in our blood sugar by eating our sugary treats with other food.

In Part 3 of our sugar addiction series we will discover why we want to get rid of the diet soda in our lives. Ouch! I know that one is difficult for some of you to swallow. You are saying: it satisfies my sweet tooth and doesnt’ have any calories and doesn’t add to my waistline. No way you believe that it is fueling your sugar cravings.

But it is. Dramatically. There have been oodles of studies done and the overall message is that diet soda can and does contribute to sugar cravings and to weight gain. As much as if you drank a regular soda!

Why you ask? The studies are showing that it will trigger you to eat more calories when you have a diet soda. Here is a typical scenario of what happens:

When I use to go through Burger King I would buy a Whopper, french fries, and to cut back on calories, a diet soda. Pretty typical of how we all start to drink the diet rather than the regular. Your body becomes conditioned to look for calories when it gets that sweet taste ( as it does when it gets regular soda or a sweet) . So now it triggers you to crave additional calories ( energy) when it has a diet beverage. And thus the vicious cycle begins.

Put another way: Your body needs energy to burn, so now it is suddenly not getting it when you drink the diet soda. So your body starts to crave more food, more energy and more calories. And that 0 calorie beverage is creating cravings that cost you more calories in the long run. It’s like a furniture store that charges you no interest for the first year but get you big time on the backend and you wind up paying more.

How to ease out of your diet soda addiction? I suggest weaning off gradually. To go cold turkey may shock you and your system. Start by limiting your intake to 1 a day. Make it a special treat and make sure to have it with a meal! ( Remember lesson two!) And substitute with water. The genuine water – not colored water, flavored water, energy water. They too are filled with food colorings and chemicals that your body has a hard time dealing with. Don’t trade one problem for another one. And of course they have the artificial sweeteners in them too that will create the same problem as the diet soda.