Breaking your sugar addiction - Part 4

Most things in cars are pretty standard. The accelerator is always on the right, the brake on the left. The headlights tend to be at the front and the brake lights at the rear. But the one place that car designers have been let off the leash is in the ‘let’s put the indicator lever somewhere exciting’ department.

I drive an old, old car. The engineers had very cleverly combined all possible controls into just one lever located on the right of the steering column (I’m sure their mother’s are very proud). And I’ve gotten quite used to indicating a turn with a flick of the right hand. The trouble is when I climb into Lizzie’s car, the indicator is on the left and I usually end up putting the windscreen wipers on to turn a corner.

I’ve gotten in the habit of indicating with my right hand. It’s a habit that’s easy to break, but the first few times, my brain runs on auto-pilot and does the wrong thing. I’m not addicted to using my right hand but at first it might look like an addiction rather than a habit.

Before I became sugar free, I was in the habit of rewarding myself with a square or two of chocolate in front of the Telly at the end of a long (or even a short) day. I was addicted to the sugar in the chocolate. The habit of eating it in front of the Telly was not part of the addiction but it did reinforce it.

Relaxing in front of the telly is pleasurable - much like gardening is (for some people). But neither of them is addictive in the chemical sense I explained in Part 2. Habits are easily broken using aversion therapy.  

I’m averse to people thinking I’m a nutcase, so I very quickly get out of the habit of turning on the wipers to turn a corner. If you received an electric shock every time you relaxed in front of the telly, you’d break that habit pretty swiftly too. But all the electric shocks in the world won’t break a chemical addiction. Sure you’d stop eating chocolate, but then you’d want it even more because you felt deprived.

The trouble with addictions is that they frequently attach themselves (like pleasure sucking parasites) to otherwise pleasurable (but not addictive) experiences and it becomes impossible to distinguish the two. You relax in front of the Telly and eat chocolate. The ‘relaxing’ bit is actually the pleasurable experience but I’ll be the chocolate gets the credit because it delivers the ‘just took off the tight pants’ experience I mentioned in Part 3.

Because the habit and the addiction so tightly reinforce each other, the habit becomes a nasty trigger when you are trying to break the addiction. The time you will most want sugar is when you habitually had it before. You will feel you cant relax in front of the Telly without chocolate. You will feel you cant celebrate Easter without it either.

Those habits will really test your resolve because of the association. The only rational way to deal with the problem is to avoid the habitual events associated with consuming sugar until you break the addiction. It’s not too hard an ask for the 3-5 weeks that will take surely? You won’t give up pleasurable habits forever, just until the chemical addiction is removed.  If you need some aversion therapy, flick open your copy of Sweet Poison to the bit about all the nasty diseases sugar inflicts.

So if you are in the habit of relaxing in front of the Telly with a choccy at the end of the day. Stop. Find some other way to relax in the evening for the next month. Make it something that has no association with sugar. Go for a nice walk around the neighbourhood? Read a good book (I think I can suggest an excellent book about fructose)?

You will need to do this for all pleasurable habits associated with sugar consumption. When you break the addiction you can resume the habits safe in the knowledge that you will not even consider sugar to be part of the pleasure. In fact you will look back at yourself and wonder what possessed you to shove poison down your throat while having an otherwise enjoyable time.

Next Week - Substitutes - Do they work?

Breaking your sugar addiction - Part 3

This is a Necker Cube. It’s interesting because almost all of us can see it two different ways. When I first look at it, I see a cube whose front face is bottom left. But if I stare at it long enough, it flips to the top right. You might see it the other way round. Either way, you will be able to see it in either orientation, given enough time.

The Necker Cube is often used to show that our brains are capable of coming to two different conclusions based on the information presented. Each conclusion is equally valid and we can switch between each conclusion without the underlying data changing at all.

I know it looks like a party trick, but it’s actually an easily understood example of something we do all the time. Our perception of the facts can change our worldview dramatically. If I told you were to be paid $300,000 per annum, your perception of whether was a good thing or a bad thing would depend a lot on what everybody else was being paid.

If you believe that you are missing out on something that everybody else is getting then you feel hard done by. And you will be driven extra hard to get a piece of that action. But you have to believe that you are being deprived of a benefit associated with what they are getting.

What would be your attitude to a substance that, if ingested, would immediately double your waist size, and your risk of heart disease and type II diabetes and make you a candidate for Alzheimer’s and a range of cancers? Is there any potential benefit that would make that worthwhile? I’m struggling to think of one but if you can, don’t be shy, fill in the comment at the bottom of the post.

Sugar won’t do that to you immediately, you have to stay addicted to it for 20 years. So does the 20 year delay make it more worthwhile? Does it lower the price? Is there a pleasure you’d be prepared to swap for that, if you get to live 20 years before it happens? Still no from me. How about you?

Like all addictive substances, there is a benefit to having sugar the second and subsequent time. It scratches the addiction itch created by the last time you consumed it. But other than scratching that itch, is there really any significant benefit to be derived from eating it? Think about it. Exactly how is your life improved by having it?  

Some people might say it makes them feel better. But harking back to Part 2, all that’s really going on is brief relief from the mild depression caused by the last time you ate sugar (rather like the pleasure you get from taking off pants that are too tight – but do you really want to keep wearing tight pants just to get that moment of pleasure). Other than that, can you name a single benefit from a sugar hit?

The only people envious of heroin addicts are other heroin addicts. Everyone else can see plainly that the downsides outweigh any small possibility of an upside. The only people envious of sugar addicts are other sugar addicts. Unfortunately, in our society, that’s most of us from the age of our first word onwards. Once you are no longer an addict it’s very hard to see a benefit at all.

So there’s lots of downside and the only tiny upside will go away as soon as you beat the addiction. Do you really have cause to feel deprived? No, but willpower diets demand that you feel deprived. They ask you to ‘go without’ and to ‘give up a treat’. Feeling deprived will simply drive you back into the arms of the addiction. The only way to break the addiction is to perform a Necker Cube flip and see the so called, deprivation as a desire not to be poisoned.

If you want to succeed you mustn’t feel you are being deprived of anything. You need to take pity on the poor hopeless addicts that are all around you ingesting poison. You need to view any offering of sugar not as a temptation to be overcome but as an attempt to poison you (perhaps a little extreme but you get the idea).

So don’t feel deprived. You are not giving up anything. You are simply stopping a dangerous and harmful addiction.

It really is that simple to break an addiction. Have the right attitude and staying sugar free becomes a lot easier than you could possibly imagine.

As Thomas Jefferson once said (before political correctness): “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

Next Week: Overcoming temptation

How to stop eating Sugar – Part 2

Chemical addiction is something that is still not completely understood by medical researchers.  What they do know is that certain stimulants such as amphetamine, caffeine, cocaine, nicotine and now fructose stimulate the release of dopamine in our brains. 

But anything you do from which you gain pleasure will stimulate a dopamine response.  I enjoy gardening (not really, but I was looking for a vertical activity so as to keep my G rating), but I’m not addicted to it.  A lack of exposure to garden beds doesn’t cause me to become depressed or moody.  I don’t feel the urge to break into parked cars to steal change so I can buy compost.  I don’t carry a shovel in case I come across an unloved garden.

No, addiction is not about enjoyment.  Ask any smoker whether their first cigarette was enjoyable.  They’ll tell you they almost choked.  Ask any alcoholic if their first drink was enjoyable.  They’ll tell you it was repellent (unless they learnt to drink using wine sprizzers at Schoolies week).

Very recent research on the mechanics of addiction suggests that addictive substances do more than stimulate dopamine response.  They actually change your brain.  These drugs take over our brain’s learning function.  When we learn or practice something we strengthen the links between neurons.  These strengthened links help us remember and apply knowledge.

When you repeatedly feed rats cocaine, it appears to hijack this function.  Links are created and thickened which reinforce the behaviour of taking the drug.  They become hard-wired to seek out that behaviour.  This may be the crucial difference between merely enjoying something (like gardening) and being addicted to it.  Even worse, the research suggests that as the addiction links in our brain strengthen, we no longer even get the dopamine response.  So we keep doing it but can’t even pretend its fun.  I guess crack addicts don’t really look much like they’re having fun and come to think of it neither do smokers nor people who’ve pigged out on sugar.

I don’t remember my first taste of sugar and neither do you.  It is the only highly addictive drug that we feed to babies way before they’re capable of remembering anything.  By the time any of us are conscious of sugar, we are already well and truly addicted.  Our brains have been hard-coded to seek out sugar as surely as the cocaine addict is wired to seek out things to sniff (preferably in nice neat lines).

An addicted person is wired to think that the only way they can feel normal is when they have access to the addictive substance.  When it’s not available, they feel as though something is missing.  Their brain reacts by going into mild depression or even severe depression if the abstinence is prolonged.

Any sugar addict (that is anybody) will tell you that sugar makes them feel better.  The reality is that they are suffering a mild downer caused by the time since the last hit of sugar.  Taking more sugar simply lifts them back to how an unaddicted person feels all the time.  This vicious cycle of mild pleasure followed by mild withdrawal which in turn is relieved by mild pleasure is the simple mechanism of addiction.  It is the same no matter which is the poison of choice, from cocaine to sugar.  Just because it’s sold in supermarkets rather than back alleys doesn’t make it any less addictive or dangerous.

Anyone who’s read Sweet Poison fully understands the downside of their sugar addiction.  There is no upside and there is downside by the truckload, from obesity to cancer and everything in between.  But simply telling an addict that ugly things will happen to them will have no effect whatsoever.  It’s why people still merrily buy cigarette packets plastered with photos of diseased lungs and amputated limbs.  They know they will eventually pay the price, but right here right now all that matters is the gnawing neuron driven need to push back the downer and feel good again.

Sugar addicts are in exactly the same position except that (for now) they can get their fix without having to see the gangrenous outcome of Type II Diabetes.  Most diets ask us to exercise willpower, and just like willpower based methods of quitting smoking, they don’t work.  If they did, there wouldn’t be a diet industry.  You cannot overcome an addiction by feeling like you are depriving yourself of something.  That’s how the addiction works.  It makes you feel deprived.  If you add to that by consciously feeling deprived then you are in fact feeding the addiction.  Asking you to exercise willpower is a recipe for disaster because it tells you to feel deprived every minute that you do not have access to sugar.  It is doomed to failure.

Believe it or not, the power to stopping addiction is to firstly understand what it is, secondly know that it will end and thirdly think about it the right way.

Thinking about it in the right way is the key to successfully stopping an addiction ... and that dear reader is the subject of next week’s post.

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Coke gets busted by ACCC

Persistent imbibers of this blog will dimly remember me making a bit of a fuss about an ad that Kerry Armstrong did for Coke late last year. In the ad, Kerry was concerned that we might believe that Coke:

• Makes you fat;
  
• Rots your teeth; and
  
• Is packed with Caffeine.
  

So she got busy busting these outrageous myths. In response I suggested that I couldn’t swallow the line that a food whose only constituent (besides water) is sugar is entirely good for you. I even went so far as to suggest that (gasp) Coke might be sugar-coating the truth somewhat.

It seems the folks over at the ACCC were just as worried, saying yesterday “After seeing the Myth Busting campaign the ACCC was immediately concerned about the misleading messages it was likely to send to consumers”.

The ACCC flew into action, and a mere 6 months later have given Coke a good strong talking to. They said "Coke's messages were totally unacceptable, creating an impression which is likely to mislead that Coca-Cola cannot contribute to weight gain, obesity and tooth decay. They also had the potential to mislead parents about the potential consequences of consuming Coca Cola."

Oh, but it wasn’t just a tongue lashing. Coke also received sound beating with a feather. They must also:

• publish a corrective advertisement in; The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Courier Mail, Adelaide Advertiser, The West Australian, and the Hobart Mercury
  
• publish a corrective advertisement for a period of 28 days on http://www.makeeverydropmatter.com.au
  
• publish for six months on http://www.makeeverydropmatter.com.au the correct levels of caffeine for Coca-Cola, Diet Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola Zero and compare this with the levels of caffeine in the same amounts of tea brewed from leaf or teabag and instant coffee, and
  
• implement a trade practices law compliance review.
  

I’m sure you’d agree that a pounding like that will make Coke (and the rest of Big Sugar) quake at the mere thought of trying that sort of thing on again. Coke have just been found to have run ads patently stating that ‘black was white’ and the best our regulators can come up with it that they run an ad along the lines ‘actually we got that a bit wrong and it turns out black is, after all, black’.

Six months after the fact, I’d be surprised if anyone (well, except me) even remembers the ad, let alone takes in the fact that some porky pies might have been told. No the damage was well and truly done in October. The public was told that Coke is not bad for you after all and for a fair number of them, I’ll wager the message stuck.

Some will suggest that I’m being less than kind to the ACCC. At least they did something. But it all looks too much like a win-win outcome to me. Coke wins by getting the ad through in the first place and achieving all the impact it planned for. And the ACCC wins by looking like a regulator of misleading advertising. The only loser is the punter who came away believing there was nothing wrong with drinking Coke or feeding it to his kids (at least till he sees the ‘corrective advertisement’, I’m sure).

An interesting postscript to this little saga is that the industry funded Advertising Standards Bureau had no problems at all with the ads when it determined complaints about them last year.  I guess that's the difference between a regulator and a self-regulator.

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How to Give Up Sugar (Part 1)

Giving up smoking is dead easy.  I bet that got some ex-smokers’ attention. 

A smoker is addicted to nicotine.  Nicotine is found in cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, nicorettes and insecticide.  It’s not the kind of thing you’re likely to come across by accident.  In fact anyone consuming it, is doing so very much on purpose. 

If you decide that you no longer wish to be addicted to nicotine, there is a very short list of things you should stop doing:

1. Do not put cigarette in mouth.
2. If you discover a cigarette in your mouth do not light it.
3. Do not drink insecticide.
   

There.  Done.  Now you just need to wait about three weeks for the addiction to pass. Easy.

A Sugarer (the collective noun for people addicted to Sugar – and yes I did just make that up) has a much more daunting task ahead of them.

The active ingredient (from an addiction point of view) in sugar is fructose.  Thanks to the marvels of modern food production, fructose is now embedded in almost every single food item on the supermarket shelf.  Imagine how hard it would be stop smoking if everything you ate or drank contained the addictive ingredient.

Giving up fructose is far harder than giving up nicotine.  You still have an addiction to fight but before you even get that far you’ve got to pick your way through a minefield of fructose filled foods.  But there are some big food groups that anyone giving up fructose should absolutely avoid.  They are:

1. Confectionary and Bikkies (I know you knew that already but just in case you forgot)
   
2. Flavoured drinks (Not just softdrinks.  This includes juice and flavoured milk)
   
3. Breakfast cereals
   
4. Condiments (For example BBQ sauce has more sugar than chocolate sauce)
   
5. Muesli Bars
   
6. Yoghurts
   

Avoid those foods and you will have skipped 90% of the fructose you are likely to encounter in a day. Obviously there are exceptions.  For example you can eat natural yoghurt (but you’d better get used to the sour taste) and you can eat porridge and most other unflavoured oat cereals.  But it’s better to avoid the whole category to start with and then fine tune your selections once you become a little more experienced as a fructophobe (yep, another made up word).

Next Week (Part 2 - Why Willpower is not required)

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