Sugar Addiction - How To Control It

Life Coaching Holiday - Dealing With Unhealthy Food Patterns

It’s a familiar phrase on our Life Coaching Change Holidays…“I’m addicted to sugar” or “I can’t stop eating all the things that are bad for me”…..“I know I've got to stop, but just don’t know how”.

How cruel our own lies can be. Somehow the lies we tell ourselves are worse than the ones other people might say. The problem is that the longer we say these things to ourselves the more we believe them and the more entrenched they become. “But…”, I hear you cry… “it’s true, I am addicted to sugar, I can’t stop eating chocolate”. Well, let’s look carefully at what might be going on…..

We are designed to repeat pleasurable things, it’s hard wired into us from the dim and distant past. If something feels good…do it again, and again and again. It doesn't matter if it’s chocolate, alcohol, exercise, buying clothes…you name it. If it makes us feel good we’re going to have to work hard to control it.

On top of that tricky little dilemma we are designed to devour sweet energy giving foods and store as much fat as we can. It’s not a great recipe for modern day living is it. It’s hardly surprising that so many of us struggle to achieve a healthy balance. Further to this it is no surprise that addictions (or “repeating something that feels good” to give it its proper name) often fills the void left by unhappy relationships and unfulfilling careers.

There really is no mystery to addictions of any kind, the real mystery is why everybody isn't struggling with them. Or perhaps most people are?

So, how do we stop them?

3 Magic Steps

Step 1

The first step is taking responsibility. This is unanimous advice from all Counselors, Therapists and Life Coaches, no matter what therapeutic discipline they come from. Without taking responsibility it is almost impossible to change. If our behavior is someone else’s fault, or if we are cursed with an addiction that we can’t control (“I can’t help it, I’m addicted”) there is little hope that we will change. We have to see things for what they are.

Step 2

The second step to do is stop lying to yourself. Our beliefs are influenced greatly by what we say to ourselves. If we tell ourselves that we can’t stop, we probably wont, not because we can’t, but because we have learnt to believe that we can’t. So, for example, it’s not the case that you “don’t know how to stop eating chocolate” (which you probably do, it’s not rocket science), but that stopping maybe difficult. This is a small but extremely important difference. Cut out anything that you hear yourself saying that is not true.

Step 3

The third thing is to decide if you actually want to stop. Think carefully, if there are parts of your life that you are really not happy with, over eating chocolate maybe providing a very useful and perhaps much needed injection of happiness. Deciding that you really do want to stop is usually much more complicated than everyone thinks. We spend a lot of time helping people do this during their Life Coaching program here in Thailand. It’s far from straight forward.

And those 3 simple steps should get you moving in the right direction.

That’s it for this week. I hope you have found it useful.

If you would like any further information about our Counseling Retreat or Life Coaching Holidays pleased don’t hesitate to call.

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