The One Thing That Curbs Sugar Cravings — From a Lifelong Addict

I’ve tried so many things — willpower never did it, support didn’t help — but here’s what made it oddly easy to quit.

When I say lifelong sugar addict, I mean it.

I grew up poor, which I feel was actually quite fortunate because we couldn’t afford all the expensive junk food that came out in the 90s that all the other kids were eating in their lunches (think Gushers, Lunchables, and Dunkaroos). My mom made nearly everything from scratch, it was cheap, hearty, and healthier than the other kids (tuna sandwiches, carrot sticks, celery, and peanut butter, apples…).

I wasn’t popular. Especially when I was the only one eating a tuna sandwich in the room and everyone could smell it.

Dinner was always big pots of stew, pasta, chili, roasts with potatoes, or basmati rice, on repeat. Whatever they could win at the meat draw, we would make it into a feast. She also always made a salad with dinner in the big wooden salad bowl.

Dessert was apple sauce or Jello if we were lucky — sometimes those 99-cent wafer cookies…when they were on sale.

It was rare that we got treats and so when we did? It was like a drug for me. I would legitimately pick out all the sugar-coated raisins from the raisin bran, I would spoon a thick layer of no-name brand sugar over my plain shredded wheat cereal, and loved the crunch of the…