SUGAR: the detox
This post is my attempt to tell you everything you need to know to crush a sugar detox. It starts with a quick sales pitch; it lays out my suggestions for planning, prepping for, and doing a detox; and it concludes with a few notes on reintroducing sugar post detox.
PITCH
To do a sugar detox, you simply cut sugar out of your diet temporarily. The aim is not to cancel sugar for life. Even still, this notion raises a lot of hackles. People argue that such interventions are extreme and unnecessary if one just keeps “everything in moderation”. But the problem with sugar is that:
It's addictive. Like drugs of abuse (e.g., opioids, cocaine, nicotine), sugar triggers the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine in our brains. Dopamine produces a feeling of pleasure that encourages us to do whatever it is we are doing again (and again, and again). Comparing sugar to hard drugs may strike you as hyperbolic, but studies have found that cocaine-addicted rats will choose sugar water over intravenous cocaine when given the choice (Lenoir, 2007).
It’s everywhere. In the ancient world that we evolved to live in, sugar was a rare and precious source of calories. Early humans developed the ability to binge eat sugar to allow them to make the most of a chance encounter with a bounty of ripe fruit. Unfortunately, in our modern world (where sugar is unnaturally abundant and ubiquitous), this adaptation is severely maladaptive. It may have kept our caveman ancestors alive, but it’s killing us today.
Thus, when it comes to sugar, I think moderation is only possible via continuous exertion of self-control, which is a colossal waste of mental energy. The purpose of doing a sugar detox is to obviate the need for this self-control by eliminating sugar cravings.
PLANNING
Before you start a sugar detox, you need to decide what exactly it will entail. There are three key decisions to make:
How gradually to do it - Like ripping off a band-aid, going cold turkey (i.e., cutting out all sugar-laden foods at once) ensures that you’ll push past your sugar cravings in the most efficient manner possible. That being said, if you find the list of foods to cut overwhelming, you can certainly work through it stepwise. For example, you could cut one new category of food each week, gradually working up to the full-blown detox. Be warned though: A gradual approach will draw out your suffering. The longer you consume sugar in blood-glucose-spiking quantities, the longer you’ll have sugar cravings to contend with.
How long to do it - I recommend that you commit to doing the full-blown detox for at least two weeks, preferably for a month or two (that’s roughly how long it takes to change a habit). The first few days of the detox will be rough. But I promise you that at some point, likely within a week or two, it will suddenly become easy.
Which foods to cut - You won’t be completely avoiding sugar while you detox. To do so, you’d have to limit your diet to meat and fat, which would be sad and ultimately dangerous. Remember: grains, fruit, and veg all contain sugars. (There’s sugar in kale for fuck’s sake.) So where should you draw the line? Which sources of sugar are in/out while you detox? Many sugar detoxers only cut “added sugar” (i.e., sugar added during processing/cooking). While added sugar is certainly detox target #1, I’d argue that totally ignoring “natural sugar” is shortsighted. After all, the sugar molecules found in fruit, honey, and starches are identical to those found in table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, and the fact that a sugar is “natural” has no bearing on how it affects your body. To power past sugar cravings, you’ll want to eliminate all major blood-glucose-spikers. Thus, I recommend that you also cut refined carbs and fruit while you detox. (Yes, fruit. But I know that this cut is bound to ruffle feathers, so I’ve given you some flexibility here.) Finally, though they contain no sugar, I also recommend that you cut artificial sweeteners. I’ll explain below.
Below is a list of sugar-laden foods to cut while you detox, listed roughly in order of highest to lowest impact. If you are taking a gradual approach, I recommend that you start at the top and work your way downward.
Sweetened beverages. When sugar is delivered in liquid form, our bodies absorb it SUPERFAST because very little break-down is needed. Thus, sweetened bevs (e.g., soda, juice, sport/energy/hydration dranks, cocktails, mocha lattes) notoriously produce massive blood-glucose-spikes and should be the first thing to go.
Desserts. By “desserts” I mean flagrant sugar bombs, like cookies, cakes, pie, ice cream, and candy. Find other ways to end your meal (e.g., cheese, tea, teeth brushing) and to reward/soothe yourself (e.g., go outside, dance, take a bath, snuggle your pet, call a loved one, masturbate).
Processed foods with hidden sugar. Food scientists engineer processed foods to be addictive, and sneaking in sweeteners is one of the oldest tricks in their book. As a result, our grocery stores are loaded with “savory” products that contain fiendish amounts of sugar. Flagrant offenders include: cereals, granola, protein bars, flavored yogurts, flavored oatmeal, ketchup, pasta sauce, BBQ sauce, and salad dressings.
Refined carbs. Refined carbs (aka simple carbs) are foods made with white flour, like bread, pastries, and pasta. These carbs have had all the fiber stripped out of them, so they’re digested quickly and produce big-bad-blood-glucose-spikes. They’re also nutritionally useless.
Fruit. It’s true that fruit is packed with fiber and nutrients. When fruit’s fiber is left intact (i.e., not pulverized via blending or juicing), it slows digestion and limits the size of the resulting blood-glucose-spike. But the fact remains that some fruits are legit sugar bombs (e.g., bananas, mangoes, dates), and you can get the same nutrients from vegetables. So if you want to avoid gray areas and squash your sugar cravings as quickly as possible, suck it up and cut fruit while you detox. If that’s not going to work for you, opt for option B: (i) limit your fruit intake to 1-2 servings per day, (ii) stick to whole fruit (i.e., no juice, dried fruit, or pureed fruit), and (iii) chose low sugar varieties (e.g., citrus, berries, melons, kiwis, peaches).
Artificial sweeteners. While most artificial sweeteners aren’t absorbed by the body and don’t cause blood-glucose-spikes, these sugar subs do us more harm than good. They cause beastly sugar cravings because they are ludicrously sweet (i.e., 200-20,000x sweeter than sugar). They also fuck up the gut microbiome, cause GI issues (e.g., bloating, gas), and have been linked to deadly diseases (e.g., cancer, obesity).
PREPPING
Take time to set your kitchen up for success before you start your detox. Fill your fridge/freezer/pantry with sugar-free foods and drinks that you’re genuinely excited to consume. Meal prep a couple of your favorite dishes so that you have something ready to heat-and-eat when hunger strikes, and have appealing snacks (e.g., nuts, jerky, tinned fish) ready to grab-and-go. Stock up on unsweetened beverages (e.g., tea, coffee, fizzy water, hop water) and condiments (e.g., hot sauce, salsa, hummus, pesto, guac, kimchi, butter, tahini, nut butter, mustard, vinegar). Be ready to lavish yourself with sugar-free delights so that you don’t feel deprived. It may also be helpful to banish any particularly tempting sweets from your home.
To ensure that your detox provisions are truly sugar-free, you’ll need to get in the habit of reading nutrition labels. Before you buy any processed food product, check out how much total sugar (i.e., natural + added) it contains. Generally, you’ll want to stick to products with 0 total sugar while you detox, but the big exception to this rule is dairy. (Plain, full-fat dairy products contain the natural sugar lactose, but they also contain a lot of protein and fat, so they won’t spike your blood sugar.) You’ll also want to ditch any products that contain artificial sweeteners; check for those nasties in the ingredients list. [Note: Be wary of products labeled “sugar-free”: They often contain alternative sweeteners (e.g., agave, pureed fruit) or artificial sweeteners.] Like it or not, reading labels will make you more aware of what you’re consuming. I think you’ll find that, the more labels you read, the more inclined you’ll be to lean into whole foods and tell the processed food makers to go fuck themselves. A nice detox bonus!
DETOXING
Once you’ve got your plan sorted and your kitchen stocked, you’re ready to detox. Below I’ve listed out several strategies that you can use to make the experience less painful.
Keep yourself full. Sweets are less seductive when your belly is full. Pack in plenty of protein, fat, and fiber to keep it that way, and have extra snacks ready to eat when gnarly sugar cravings strike. Primo satiating foods include veggies, avocados, eggs, full-fat dairy, olive/coconut oil, fish, meat, nuts, and seeds.
Prioritize sleep. When your sleep is shit, your impulse control is shit, and it’s hard to be disciplined. Shit sleep also makes you feel hungrier (i.e., by decreasing the level of the satiety-signaling hormone leptin and increasing the level of the hunger-signaling hormone ghrelin in your body) and can make you crave sweets in particular. For suggestions for improving your sleep, check out these tips from sleep expert Matthew Walker.
Be kind to yourself. Sugar hides in unexpected places, and it’s not always easy to stop it from sneaking into your body. It’s ok if your detox is imperfect. It’s also ok to retrospectively designate a week a “practice week”.
Utilize the hacks. Use “blood glucose hacks” to blunt spikes caused by starchy foods and keep yourself off the blood glucose rollercoaster. See my next post for details.
REINTRODUCING SUGAR
After you’ve completed your detox, you’re free to bring all forms of sugar back into your life, but you may not be antsy to do so. It’s likely that you’ll have discovered how much better you feel without the stuff. And your tolerance will be much lower, so you may find that you feel nauseous or get a headache if you eat more than a few bites of dessert in one go. Hopefully, you’ll also find that you appreciate naturally sweet foods (e.g., berries) far more than you used to. If you let it, this shift in your tolerance will permanently change the way you eat.
The degree to which you reacclimate to sweetness is up to you. Several years post-detox, I eat (whole) fruit and will occasionally have a (novel/exceptional) dessert. You might want to be stricter or looser about it than I am, and it may take some trial and error to figure out where you want to be. But I’m confident that, no matter where you end up, it will be a freer/happier/more mindful place than where you started.
