If you are compulsively eating sugar, bingeing on sweet and starchy foods, or finding it very difficult to make it through the day without your sugar “hit,” you are using sugar to meet your needs.
Sugar can give us comfort, security, a sense of order, routine and familiarity. It gives pleasure, joy, a way of connecting with others. Sugar can feed your self-esteem and creativity, such as when you make a fabulous dessert for your family and bask in their applause.
Sugar assuages loneliness – eating because you’re alone; baking your grandmother’s apple pie recipe because you miss her; eating at a party because you feel like the odd man out. When you get together with your girlfriends to swap cookies at Christmastime, sugar meets your need for connection and community. Sugar allows you to give to others, when you offer friends and neighbors baked goodies. Sugar meets your need for fun – candy at the movies; ice cream on the beach; cake at a birthday party.
We relax with sugar, coming down after a long or hard day. We soothe our anger with sugar. We honor our victories with sugar.
Look at all those needs that sugar is trying to fill: intimacy, connection, community, creativity, pleasure, joy, fun, self-esteem, comfort, security, routine, familiarity, relaxation, stress relief, and celebration. (For other ideas, look at this needs list from Marshall Rosenberg, the pioneer behind non-violent communication.)
It’s a life that’s out of balance. Sugar is your one-stop solution, your go-to comfort. Then, when you want to subtract sugar from these equations, it feels like a gaping hole is left in its place. Ideally, you want a variety of outlets, a variety of ways to meet your needs without relying on sugar or food.
The trick is to expand your thinking: how can you meet these needs without sugar? How can you get the essence of what you want – the deep need underneath the drive to eat – in a healthier manner?
This is where creative alternatives come into play. This is where you have to consciously separate the love from the sugar. Keep the love; omit the sugar. Here are a few concrete examples of how this might manifest in your life: Instead of trading cookies with your girlfriends, can you host a spa exchange, where you trade homemade bath salts and body oils? If cooking is one way that you show love for your family, can you channel that energy into cooking healthy foods that you enjoy, such as a fantastic soup, customized omelets, interesting salads, or a beautiful roast? Can you wear a piece of your grandmother’s jewelry or play a card game with your children that you used to play with her instead of connecting with her through baking?
There are many ways to meet our needs. One of the challenges we have as adults is to move from unhealthy habits to healthy habits; to find ways
to meet our needs that support our goals, not sabotage them. This is a good thing; something worth cultivating, even if you don’t abstain from sugar.
Check out the popular Kick Your Sugar Habit online course and see how you can overcome sugar binges for good. You can also download my ebook, Overcoming Sugar Addiction which is free to Sugar Addiction support program members.
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