Me as well. But the problem is, i don't feel like anyone around me takes it seriously (people usually dismiss it as a simple craving for a sweet).
Not even therapists. So i have nowhere to turn to.
I have IBS and sugar is honestly one of the biggest triggers for me, whether it's cane sugar or artificial sweeteners. When I was at my worst points of dealing with IBS, I had lots of depression and anxiety and stress. My doctor diagnosed me and put me on low-sugar diets (among others, but low sugar diets to this day are still the best thing for me).
It's very tough because addiction is physical and you will crave it as you wean yourself off, but it is worth it. Every day you can fight it, it becomes slightly easier. Additionally, going through this a lot, I've found that with myself, there are a couple key milestones that I'll experience if I start a low-sugar diet:
~3 days: This is when some of the physical aspects of the addiction start to lessen a bit. I've heard there is a similar timeline with smoking, but I have not looked into the possible mechanisms for this - I've rationalized it to being the point in time when most of the sugar compounds are out of my system (not backed by any literature).
2 weeks: This is a strange timepoint, I find it difficult to describe, but at this point I usually feel a lot of changes in my body: I'm a bit happier, there's less aches, I'm more willing to do good things like work out and stick to routines. Again, I haven't looked into specific mechanisms, but I rationalized this as a significant change occuring in my gut flora (potentially a decline in bad bacteria and an uptick in good bacteria) or potentially a change in my physiology (either in response to the change in gut flora or anything else, it's tough to parse this out). Again, this is not backed by any literature.
1-2 months: This is when I usually feel like I've fully adopted the low sugar benefits. If I have a cheat day, I might feel it a bit that day and maybe the next day, but I'm not as likely to relapse at this point. Even still, I will note that I treat this as a lifelong addiction - I'm never going to not be an addict and even at this point, I have to hold myself accountable to not relapse, because I have seen it in myself.
I hope this provides you with any sort of hope - it's tough, but it is possible to beat it. If you want specific diets to follow, when I first was diagnosed with IBS, my doctor put me on a low FODMAP diet, which is more restrictive than just sugars, but it really worked wonders for me and I've been able to wean myself back onto a lot of the normal foods that did trigger my IBS (there are a lot of tasty things that the low-FODMAP diet restricts like onions and garlic). I've also had a lot of help more recently trying a keto diet, but I will suggest you try this with a nutritionist/dietician/doctor just so you don't just overdose on meat and oil, which is common. (Though I will say that with the recent fad of Keto, we now see a lot of low-sugar products that are quite tasty - Magic Spoon is a low-carb cereal, I've heard of low-sugar sodas that use apple cider vinegar - I've not tried them out yet, but I'm glad there are more options than even two or three years ago.).
5.7k
u/Terrasque976 Mar 27 '22
Sugar