The sugar lobby says welcome to 30 years ago.
I’ve said for years, the one thing I envy of people quitting alcohol or other drugs, is the simplicity of the rules.
In their case the rule is just “No”. At every time, place, or circumstance, no matter what, it’s just “No”.
It would be so nice if food was that simple.
Seriously. Quitting cigarettes is childs play compared to eating healthy. I’ve managed to not smoke for years after quitting cold turkey. I’ve been trying to lose weight for a decade or more with varying degrees of success and failure. If I could just never have food and be fine, I would have been healthy a long time ago. But your body requires food, often multiple times a day. And life doesn’t always give you the time or options you need to keep healthy. And not even getting into the horrible nutrition education I’ve had my entire life, it’s like everything was set up for me to fail, and then everyone’s mad at me for failing, like it wasn’t the expected outcome.
I have found that severe dental issues are a great way to lose weight. It’s hard to gain weight if you have no molars
It’s serious medicine and not right for everyone but if you’re seriously obese then consider discussing Semaglutide or similar medications with your doctor. For some people it had been a game changer. It can make it easier to eat a small portion and then stop and it can quiet the persistent food thoughts. The side effects can be too much for some folks and it’s definitely something that shouldn’t be started without doing research and discussing with a physician. But it can make dietary changes much more attainable.
Sunday meal prep for the week. In 2023, it’s not only necessary, it’s imperative if you don’t want to eat FF. Welcome to capitalism.
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Be kind to yourself. A weakness for baked goods is a significant upgrade from those other vices. If the baked goods have helped you at all from abstaining from them, it’s a small price
I made a kind of deal with myself that if I wanted baked goods and sweets I had to make them myself. Since then I’ve learned to make brownies, cookies, ice cream, sorbet, chocolate ganache tarts, pancakes, and more. It’s fun, allows you to be creative, and the extra work of having to make if yourself keeps you in check.
Making it yourself also lets you make it healthier. It’s super easy to choose recipes with less sugar and put fruit, veg, healthy fats, etc into baked goods. It’s not going to make it a health food, but it’s better than Little Debbie.
I did the same thing with my meth addiction.
@Steve @shish_mish There is one rule I follow: no packaged snacks. Any snacks I want, I make at home. I got into it for environmental reasons, but after I went vegan, it was the main principle stopping me from going for all of those vegan junk food options. Instead, I make bliss balls and, occasionally, cookies or other treats. Those combined with fruit make great snacks while not destroying my health.
Oh, I also pretty much always go for WFPB recipes, even for snacks.
WFPB?
@gowan Whole Foods Plant Based. So basically, not using any refined foods (think dates instead of sugar for sweetening something, for example).
The nice thing about just saying no to food is that you don’t have to do it for as long as those guys with a drug addiction. So that’s a good point.
Careful there. Breatharians might like a word with you.
It sort of is that simple. There are no addictive ingredients in whole foods. Fruit, vegetables, whole grains, non-processed proteins. People just have to make better decisions at the grocery store.
You’re still eating food right?
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I don’t stop eating when I am full. I stop eating when I hate myself. And then some.
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I switched to sparkling water. Satisfies the “cold fizzy thing” itch without extra sugar. Though, apparently finding plain seltzer is hard in some parts.
Would a sodastream type solution satisfy your needs? Things like that have gotten super cheap. My dad also just uses unsweetened drink flavoring in his like bubly. Can also use natural flavours instead of buying artificial ones. Concentrated lemon juice is easy enough to find, I’m sure other concentrated flavours are possible to find or make too. But yeah, by default it just makes carbonated water, adding flavour or sweetening it is an optional second step.
Devices that carbonate water have been around for decades, the upside of the new ones is just that they hit a critical mass in enough markets now that the co2 cartridge replacements are everywhere and cheap now. I live in a small town of 2000 people up in Canada, and we have a sodastream canister exchange program in our local hardware store, lol. And a canister is 20$cad and lasts me about 100 drinks, the water I use is filtered tap water, so the price there is pretty negligible per drink. Totals up to about 25 cents per drink. The price of the machine itself was 80$cad, so if I only add that to the first batch, those first hundred liters were more like a dollar each. Pretty easy to swallow. Though it’s carbonated, so best to sip anyway.
Flavored seltzer has come a long way
I’m pretty fond of Hal’s. They even have a fruit punch flavor that transports me to my childhood, ha.
I used to drink a shitload of soda.
Then after college I was living at home with my folks, two hours away from my fiancee. I had nothing better to do so I decided to focus on my health. Took 6 months, did a lot of p90x, went almost entirely cold turkey on processed foods, added sugars, and alcohol.
I ended up losing over 60lbs, almost all of which I have gained back for various reasons. But one thing that stuck is I cannot handle non-diet soda anymore. It makes me feel physically sick to drink more than a couple ounces. I will occasionally drink a diet soda, but even those are few and far between.
It’s like I rewired something inside of me and I just can’t deal with those sugar bombs anymore. I’m sure part of it may also just be me getting older.
Anyway the point of the story is, there is hope! It takes some willpower, but if I could do it, you can too!
You can do it!
Getting soda by the can really helps me- It’s hard not to finish whatever I open and at least the can is an ok size for the day. A bit more expensive per volume and a bit worse for the environment, but at least it’s one part of my diet under control
Yeah, it’s a serious problem for me. I’m largely channeling those feelings of hatred into reminding myself not to do that. Perhaps not the healthiest approach, but it’s been working so far.
I’ve got syrup in my veins for blood
The way I behave around Takis is not a reflection of who I am as a person.
I’m the same way with Dot’s Original pretzels
My sister bought me a bunch of pastries for my birthday, and just left them in my refrigerator. Like seriously a problematic amount of pastries, that I had to schedule my days around. I work from home, and after a while, I just got used to deking into the fridge for a quick pastry. It was ridiculous, but also a lot of fun.
Anyway, when those pastries finally ended, man… the jonesing I felt when I realised I couldn’t just reach for a pastry all of a sudden…
Sugar baby. You developed a sugar dependency.
Note that no actual sugar is required to develop a dependency, because flour, and almost all sources of carbohydrates are effectively sources of sugar.
Once for my birthday my aunt baked me not one but two cakes! She couldn’t remember if I prefer chocolate or vanilla so she just made both. That was a week of indulgence I vividly remember, and my god at the end there I was so relieved those damn cakes were eaten omg XD
Chocolate can definitely be cloying after a while, I find. But a St. Honoré… foof, it’s like eating a rich, refreshing cloud. I could have kept eating it every day.
I tried to go cold turkey but only lasted a few weeks before the doctors put me on a forced feeding tube.
Was it at least on a sandwich?
Too big to fit in the tube. Only mashed potatoes for him.
from personal experience, I don’t think it’s something I can be weened off of.
I bet you’re hooked on water also, degenerate.
I’ve heard the withdrawal for that is lethal
Didn’t read the article did you?
Don’t worry mate I’m just making a joke.
Old news but happy to see it repeated until it sticks. I always shake my head when I see sugar addicts complaining about people addicted to cocaine, nicotine, etc., oblivious to the fact that they have the strongest addiction. Oblivious to the fact that they are an addict, at all. Of course being an addict doesn’t make you a bad person, but they’ll also disagree with you on that in my experience.
Yeah, just about everyone is addicted to caffeine, but no one bats an eye. It’s only the drugs that were made illegal that people usually have issues with people being addicted to. All addiction is bad and we should try to have better resources and understanding to help anyone with any addiction.
Ehhh as an addict, I can say that there are some pretty big material differences between quitting smoking, sugar, alcohol, etc. Legality and how the substance is socialised are for sure huge factors in its perception, and how addiction is internalised, but yeah… there are real physical differences.
Not that you were necessarily making that point, but close enough, and I’ve seen it made before. No offense.
strongest addiction
That sounds like a big stretch…
The interesting thing here is we literally NEED food for survival. We do not need cocaine to survive…although I thought I needed it when I was addicted to it a long time ago.
Food consists of more than just processed foods full of refined sugars. We can survive on foods that don’t trigger addiction pathways - should we want to. On the other hand excess sugar intake is related to massive social and public health costs - including diabetes, mental illness, and early mortality - so it is reasonable to put it in its own category.
Although which activities we get addicted to isn’t really my concern here. It’s the ignorance and double standards that worry me most.
A person with a crippling addiction to sugar is going to look like a morbidly obese person. A person with a crippling addiction to heroin is going to look like that homeless person you’re picturing. But the obese person can have sugar delivered to their door on a daily basis, and the drug addict has to do some sketch shit to maintain their addiction.
Most people are far further down the scale than either of those two obvious examples, and may be indistinguishable from someone who isn’t actively addicted to something. Though, the 40% obesity rate night have something to do with that.
Next article: water is wet
Not only have we had proof of this for a very long time, the entire US industrial food industry is built around making processed foods as addictive as possible.
The last part is what the article is about
I’m a sugar addict. I went keto 2 years ago and lost 150lbs. I still need to lose around 30. 90% of our “food” isn’t real food. You need meat and veggies. Nothing else. It’s hard to stop though. I still gotta have a doughnut at least once a month.
You do not need meat. You do need protein.
You don’t need meat.
maybe you don’t but I do. I was a vegan and I was unhealthy and sick. Switched to mostly ketovore and I’m better in my 40s than I was in my 20s. I was able to stop every medication that I had been taking for 10+ years.
@letsgo2themall @Bipta I don’t know you and I won’t claim to know your exact experience and circumstance. All I will say is that it’s easier than ever to be an unhealthy vegan because there is so much processed unhealthy vegan crap in stores nowadays.
I’m WFPB vegan (whole foods plant based) and have never been better. FWIW, I was vegetarian before going vegan and never ate animal flesh as part of my diet. Dairy *was* part of my diet before I went vegan.
@letsgo2themall @Bipta I eat tons of legumes, fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and some grain. I don’t set limits on carbs or fat, but aim to get certain amounts of protein, calcium, and iron every day. I eat copious amounts of leafy greens and eat them every day. I opt for as much variety as possible in veggies and legumes, rotating through several options and trying not to use just one or two all the time.
@letsgo2themall @Bipta It’s honestly not particularly hard to be a healthy vegan if you stick to WFPB and don’t have any allergies. Allergies can make it harder, but they make *any* diet more complicated (think celiacs, for example). There is a *huge* variety of plants available to meet our nutritional requirements. Where there are gaps, it is because of modern sanitation practices (e.g. lack of B12) or other lifestyle factors (most people are deficient in D, for example).
@letsgo2themall @Bipta So no, it’s not at all *required* for the average human to eat meat. Veggies, on the other hand, are absolutely crucial due to tons of micronutrients and vitamins that are hard to get elsewhere.
I gave up alcohol a year ago but my soda habit is off the charts. 😔
Interesting. I didn’t have a hard time giving up food, I quit about three years ago, but I drink constantly
Wait… what do you mean by “giving up food” exactly? You got me worried dawg!
They’re saying food is addictive. I’m here to tell you otherwise. I went cold turkey years ago. Big Food wants you to believe you “need” food. Just like Big Tobacco wants you to “need” cigarettes. Phooey, I say
What helped me drink a lot less soda was to begin looking at the sugar content on everything. A can has 75% of your daily recommended max intake, a bottle has 125%. Combined with the amount of sugar in a lot of other things, I’m pretty sure many Americans consume like double the amount of sugar they should pretty often. Plus, the 50 grams they recommend is still a lot of sugar and you shouldn’t be even consuming that much
For me, getting soda on cans made a huge difference - the parent didn’t estimate the sugar content if a 2l bottle. Anyhow having cans both let’s me off the hook for having one, keeps me from rationalizing that I don’t want to waste it by letting it get flat, and I find it easier to limit myself to only one per day
(Plus it’s diet. I’m not sure that’s entirely better so still worth limiting, but it’s not sugar, or empty calories)
Artificial sweetener is actually worse for you than sugar. Just drink normal soda. If you’re drinking soda daily, try to reduce that to 3 or less a week
That’s okay bud, I’m proud of you! :)
Getting a seltzer maker satisfied a lot of the desire for soda for me. Mostly I want cold, wet fizz.
true, I find I can only go so long before I’m jonesing for food again
Edit: Oh Lemmy why can’t you get & right
The headline is misleading. This is about highly processed foods.
