This video is my reaction about Sugar Addiction, which came as up as topic during our Mindful Eating Event last Saturday.
There seemed to be two issues that stood out:
- People felt powerless about sugar
- People really liked self-compassion
Sugar addiction is a complex topic.
In this breakdown I talk about the relationship between self-compassion and sugar addiction.
First of all, you have to have physical balance before you attempt to reduce sugar cravings. You need to be taking care of yourself and be in tune with hunger, including exploring supplements for sugar cravings.
But taking physical care of yourself is not enough, you also need a compassionate mindset to learn from your sugar eating experiences.
Normally sugar is associated with judgment, and judgment is the killer of learning and progress.
So to make a complex phenomena simple – we need to embrace compassion and learn from sugar.
Sugar Addiction Commentary:
For more details on sugar addiction, you can watch my video here titled “3 Scientific Studies Show Food Addiction Not Valid Concept But Public Thinks Sugar Is Addictive”.
It’s really important that before going ahead with some of the sugar experiments, that you get a lot of education about the topic of sugar eating.
This is one of the things that could go wrong if we don’t take precautionary steps.
For example, if you expect to feel good after eating sugar you are in for a world of hurt.
But if you are educated and expect that eating sugar won’t make you feel good then you will be okay?
How does eating sugar until I feel bad good for me?
Won’t I gain weight?
Yes. Temporarily you may gain weight.
You may.
Honestly most people don’t.
But you may.
The key thing is education.
Education by realizing …
You won’t eat sugar forever if it doesn’t feel good.
Now does this statement make you scratch your head?
For example, you might think …
“Okay, that makes sense, but why am I eating sugar now? If it didn’t feel good, wouldn’t I have stopped years ago?”
And this is where Sugar Addiction education comes.
There are 3 factors:
- Deprivation
- Scarcity
- Moral judgments
Essentially you have all these thoughts and judgments and associations around eating sugar.
So when you actually eat sugar, you aren’t present.
You are disconnecting.
You are using sugar to manage emotions.
Side note – this is where education is important too. A foundation of self-care and sleep is necessary. Otherwise the powerful emotional forces drawing you to sugar won’t be able to be conquered.
However, if you are taking well enough care of yourself, which many people are …
Then you can start to appreciate the education of deprivation.
Of moral judgments.
Moral judgments mean you stay away from sugar 90% of the time … because you can’t trust yourself around sugar.
However, this is a losing battle.
You not having sugar is causing you to be deprived of sugar.
It’s hard to wrap your head around.
You think sugar is bad. You can’t trust yourself around sugar. So you avoid sugar.
But then avoiding sugar causes you become deprived of sugar.
Sugar is scarce and therefore valuable.
So the key to break this whole sugar addiction cycle is to mindfully eat sugar when you want …
This way you get over deprivation.
So this way sugar is no longer scarce.
This way sugar is normal.
And when sugar is normal, when there aren’t all these judgments and associations around sugar …
You stop craving sugar.
You regain your sanity around sugar.
This is Eating Enlightenment.
And yes … it sounds crazy.
But you can try for yourself, safely, and risk free.
And this is where compassion comes in!
Because if you are going to try …
You can’t beat yourself up for trying!!!!
Does this make sense?
Compassion is what enables you to fall and get back up!
Because you are going to eat too much sugar when you start out.
You are going to eat too much.
You are going to listen to your body and refrain from judgment.
To listen to your body, you must have compassion.
To eat sugar and get too full …
Normally you are judging yourself …
But with compassion you are now saying …
“I’m making up for years of deprivation. For years I’ve deprived myself of sugar so my body is now thinking sugar is incredibly valuable. But now I am letting my body have sugar so that my body can stop craving sugar.”
Does this make sense?
Compassion goes hand in hand with sugar addiction because it’s the key to getting over sugar addiction.
Otherwise you will beat yourself up because of your default perfectionist standards and you will feel like crap!
You won’t be able to listen to the signals from your body because you will be judging them.
Instead of absorbing energetically the experience of feeling too full …
You will judge yourself and avoid this feeling of being too full.
But then this judgment takes you away from the experience!
Please note this contrasting view on sugar addiction in this post here by Addiction Center. It’s important that you develop your own perspectives on this issue!
