How to Break Free from Your Sugar Addiction
By Team Reboot
Have you read about sugar addiction? There’s a reason it’s so frequently in news — studies reveal that sugar’s impact on the brain closely mimics the effect of taking illegal drugs. We spoke with Rachel Gargano, a nutritionist on the Reboot with Joe team, about sugar’s impact on your health and how to break free from this addiction.
Q: What are 3 things people should know about sugar addiction?
Sugar addiction is much more prevalent than assumed, and part of this has to do with the amount of sweet stuff the food industry pumps into our food. Amazingly, almost seventy-five percent of all packaged products found in a grocery store have added sugar.
So what would I want people to know?
- Sugar is hiding in most of the foods we eat. So sugar addiction can sneak up on us, changing our brain chemistry before we even have a chance to stop it.
- Sugar addiction is exactly the same as drug addiction. It can be as debilitating to overcome and have intense withdrawal symptoms.
- You CAN get over it, but it takes commitment, patience, healthy eating, self-love, and forgiveness.
Q: What happens when people take in too much sugar?
Studies are starting to find that taking in too much sugar can be as bad for our heart health as certain fats are! It can increase our weight and triglycerides; our risk for diabetes and heart disease; and can even change our behavior and cause nutrient deficiencies. Who would think that sweet, delicious, innocent sugar could wreak such extensive havoc on our health?
Q: What about the sugars present in fruit — should juicers be concerned about those?
Poor fruit, always getting a bad rap. While fruit is higher in sugar than vegetables, it is natural sugar and comes packed with tons of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. In fact, while ‘fructose’ (sugar from fruit) may cause health problems when processed and added to packaged foods, when eaten in the whole food form the phytonutrients in fruit negate the poor health outcomes.
While we shouldn’t vilify fruit, it is still important to eat more vegetables than fruit. Aiming for about 80 percent vegetables and 20 percent fruit during your day helps to keep your nutrient intake high and concentration of natural sweetness lower.
Q: A 15-Day Guided Reboot is a great way to affect change.
During a 15-day Reboot Program you will start with five-days of juicing along with plant-based meals, followed by ten days of juicing only. Over the 15 days you will literally retrain your brain to crave healthier foods – produce! The journey will help weaken your cravings and reset your taste buds.
Juicing floods your body with an amazing amount of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients, which may help to reverse many of the nutrient deficiencies that sugar addiction can cause.
But sugar addiction can be pretty severe, so we can’t always just go cold-turkey without some slip-ups. This is okay. The Guided Reboot providea strategies to help get through the cravings, as well as how to get back on track if you’ve fallen prey to the addiction again.
Your journey is not about being perfect – it’s about taking control. We want to be in control of food rather than food controlling us. Learn more here.
Q: If there was one thing you could say to someone interested in this program, what would it be?
By the end of this Reboot you will have tackled both the mental and physical aspects of sugar addiction. Rebooters can expect weight loss, which is not only motivating, but interestingly also helps change the chemicals in the brain so that natural flavors taste good to us again. This means needing less added sugar, less added salt, and less added unhealthy fats – which is key to being successful once out of the Reboot and into ‘real life eating’ again.
Q: What would you say to someone concerned about juicing?
What I love about the Reboot is that there is only one primary guideline: Taking in only vegetables and fruit. Doesn’t matter if they are juiced, raw, cooked, or blended; the Reboot is about produce. About immersing out bodies in nutrients. So while we encourage you to stick with only juices, if you need to have a little salad one day or munch on some raw veggies – you CAN! This is the beauty of our program. It helps teach flexibility within a healthy eating pattern.