Nutrition by Dawn - Blog

As a health and nutrition coach, I see clients with ALL KINDS of different health and wellness related goals. One of the most common over the past year? Ditching sugar.

Generally speaking, our modern, western diet has come to rely way too heavily on sugars, simple carbs, and unhealthy starches. While these things are all perfectly okay in limited doses, many of us truly have developed a chemical and psychological addiction to sugar. The result? Huge numbers of empty calories each day. Unstable blood sugar levels that leave us feeling moody, lethargic, and icky. Incredible difficulty losing or regulating weight. 

This year, more than ever it seems, modern women are fighting back—we’ve realized the danger of our sugar addiction, and we’re ready to face it head first. But it’s not quite as simple as that.

If you’re planning to ditch your sugar addiction this year, here are the four steps you’ll need to follow if you truly want to succeed.

1. Assess your situation.

On the sliding spectrum of sugar consumption struggles, where are you? Do you have a moderate sweet tooth that keeps your clothes from fitting the way you wish they did? Are you someone with a full-blown sugar addiction who’s trying to manage a disease like type 2 diabetes? And where are you trying to get to—are we cutting sugar entirely, or just decreasing our normal, everyday sugar consumption?
Depending on how dramatically you wish to change your eating habits, you’ll want to approach the choice to eliminate sugar a little differently. For most of us, a great place to start is looking at the sugary foods we eat most often and figure out what our mindset is around those snacks. 

In a lot of cases, we’ll find that there’s an emotional eating component to our sugar addiction. If that sounds like you, I recommend replacing your food reward with something else: for example, instead of having a bowl of ice cream after dinner, maybe you could spend 30 minutes on a favorite hobby, take a long, meditative walk, or even replace your sweet snack with a healthier option like fruit and yogurt. 

(Note: If your goal involves using sugar-elimination to manage a health issue, consult your doctor before taking my, or anyone else’s, health and nutrition advice!)

2. Figure out how to measure your progress.

How will you know when you’ve succeeded? Can you set benchmarks for yourself along your journey? Set weekly, monthly, and/or quarterly goals so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to check in with yourself throughout your journey. In the case of one of my recent clients, she made the decision to reduce from enjoying a sugary snack each evening, to snacking just one or two days per week. Small shifts can lead to big results over time.

3. Ask yourself: How will you keep enough variety in your diet so that you’ll actually stick to your plan?

It’s easy to say you’ll just go cold turkey and stop eating all your favorite sugary snacks . . . Reality though? Not so easy. Plan to give yourself enough nutritional variety that you won’t fall back into your old habits. Because my client knew it was okay to snack every now and then, she didn’t feel deprived, grumpy, or frustrated on the evenings when she was choosing not to indulge.

4. Turn your choice into a habit.

This takes time, of course—good habits don’t develop overnight. When you make intentional choices around sugar every day, though, you’ll find that you’ll move from having to actively choose non-sugary foods, to reaching for them out of habit. It might take a while to get here, but once you’ve turned this corner, you’re well on your way to breaking your sugar habit for good!

Are you in the midst of a sugar elimination journey? Are you struggling with a different health goal? I’d love to hear from you! 

Let me know what you’re struggling with below, and as always, feel free to email me directly at dawn@dawnmcgee.guru. Until next time, my hope for you is that you live a life you love - without being hungry, feeling deprived, or giving up your glass of wine with dinner.