ExRx.net

I would point out there is no contradiction between sugar not filling you up and being able to consume lots of it, and the fact that sweetness obsession is unnatural. (Citing evolutionary ancestors that lived on sugar is completely irrelevant.) I'd encourage anyone to give it a try - cut out sugar/sweets entirely for at least a couple weeks. It's not purely theoretical, and it's certainly not wrong in that sense, as it was helpful in turning my health around.

I agree that when you stop consuming sugar you don't crave it. I used to love sweets as a kid but I couldn't care less about them now. The only time I crave something sweet now is when I'm hungover (which I put down to either my body craving nutrients in general or low blood sugar as I tend to not get hungry the day after drinking a lot) or sometimes after a workout (I'm no carbing it during the week).

After I eat carbs on weekends, Monday morning comes and I feel like carbs again, but by Tuesday I'm fine and could go on to never touch any sugar again.

Yeah I do a high carb meal every 10 days or so on average, and I have the same re-desire for more about 8-24 hours later or so, but after that it's gone. (When I initially cut out sodas completely though, that took longer to adjust, which I was I mentioned the 'couple weeks' time frame.)

generally speaking I would say a fair trial for cutting out sugar is closer to the 30 day mark.

i crave grease when I'm hungover. Seriously. All I can think about when i wake up is eating something fried.

Yeah I'm the same but it's always something greasy and high carb like a Chinese, or pizza. Thats why I love my carb sundays!

If this thread gets out of hand it will be locked.

You are all over the place with this one. If you would drop the whole natural thing, you would be right.

Sugar does not fill you up, it just provides a lot of energy and is easy to store as fat for later use. You can eat a lot of it.




That is a vary confused way to put it. Feeling a strong desire to eat sweets and suffering withdrawal symptoms when you don't have any is "unnatural" in a way. It's more accurate to say it's indicative of a medical problem.

However just having a taste for sweets and wanting to eat them is perfectly normal and natural. This goes all the way back to anaerobes a billion years ago. It has ALWAYS been a survival trait, except in carnivores far removed from any herbivorous ancestors.




That depends. To show eating sweets at all is normal, I think it is quite relevant. However it would be irrelevant in denying sugar dependency. Of course since nobody is doing that, your bringing it up was probably irrelevant.

As for the last part, you are completely right, but it has nothing to do with natural.


I think the problem lies in you needing to distinguish between a natural desire for sweets, and having actual physical cravings and withdrawal symptoms. That is a very very ginormously massive difference.


I don't want you to take this next thing as a personal attack. It's really more of a constructive FYI.

I notice that you tend to group similar things and treat them as being equal. for example, you have a category of things that is being discussed. There are 2 sub-categories. There are a few items that fit in each of the two subcategories. You will use any item in sub-category A interchangeably. You will do the same with B. I'm not sure if you put things in these categories to keep track of them and then no longer understand the meaning of each individual thing. or if your mind works only in broad categories and you don't understand any more granular differences. I just have to wonder if you write a sentence and think it means something very different than what it actually means.

I was gonna say this seems to be a continuation of a locked thread that was locked for a reason. Well, if my desire for sweets drives me to eat 3 or 4 helpings of fruit a day (which it does), I'm perfectly fine with that because it helps my health out tremendously. Sometimes I slack on fibrous veggies as opposed to starchy ones, and luckily if I eat 3 or 4 helpings of fruit I'm still getting pretty decent nutrition. So I don't really consider it a bad desire, or addiction, or craving, or whatever you want to call it, if I'm indulging on fruit instead of Twinkies (or twizzlers...).

The other thread had all sorts of boring conspiracy stuff and irrelevant references to the nature of life billions of years ago, but there was one important point being drowned out:

If you tell people that always craving sweets is normal, you risk setting up a choice of stuffing their face with cake and dieing, or not and living a life of deprivation and misery. It's dangerous to tell people that because it can make them more likely to give up before they get over the hump.

The reality is for me, and I suspect most people, if one avoids sweets entirely for a while the desire for those things diminishes to the point of insignificance. Then when you get hungry, you get hungry for better things.

(I do eat fruit, sure, but blackberries are just in a completely different league from Twinkies.)

You can overdue the fruit though. I bought a hand blender to mix up smoothies. I would add 1/4 cup of berries and a bannana to my protein shake. My wife thought I was nuts until she tasted it. Now, she's mixing up smoothies every day that contain about 2 cups of fruit along with some yogurt and and is so thick she needs to use a spoon. It's no use saying anything, she thinks it's healthy but she wonders why her weight loss has plateaued.

My fruit consumption comes by way of a hand blender as well - about a half cup of berries in a liter of water. I usually only do that during post-workout meal - rest of the time I just drink water.

So are you saying that based on your anecdotal evidence, liking, "sweet," things is unnatural? Or craving them to the extent of ridiculous proportions?

There is so much to consider here, the fact that WE know what is healthy, yet most people don't and i'm sure our ancestors didn't either. They ate what ever they wanted and/or could get. I'm sure they would risk getting bee stings by smoking (killing the bees), a beehive for the rich tasting honey.

It is natural for humans to like food, whether it be sweet, sour, meaty, w/e.

I just want to point out that, I don't have a craving for sugary foods. But that doesnt change the fact that I like the taste of sweet things. Which is probably natural to like, because I have tastebuds.

Now on this one you got it right. Craving sweets is not normal. It only became normal because people were eating to much of that sort of thing.


As long as you understand the difference between wanting to eat something sweet and actual cravings. Then I completely agree.

That's what he said, but I don't think that's what he meant. If you look at his last post, it's more clear and I think he is just saying having strong cravings for sweets isn't normal, rather than just wanting to eat sweets not being natural.

So I think it just didn't come out right the first time, but he's got the right idea.