Sober livingRecovery Why Are Sugar Cravings Common in Addiction Recovery?

If relenting to sugar cravings has kept you from drinking, then look at it as a lifesaver and forgive yourself. Although it may be a slow process, there’s a way out of sugar dependence and beating yourself up isn’t going to help you gain redemption. Addiction is a chronic condition that alters your thinking and behavior.

Chrissy Teigen said she’s “very into sweets” since going sober. If you need to eat some ice cream every night for a while, that’s fine.

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When your blood sugar is low, it’s natural for your body to crave sweets to counteract it. Even if you indulge and give your body sugar to level out, it won’t solve the issue long term. Your blood sugar will drop again, landing you right back where you started. You expected discomfort and intense cravings when you quit alcohol, but not this. This type of craving is new, and you can’t get it out of your head. Almost like a shadow, it seems to follow you throughout your day. It would be easy to give in, but you’ve seen all the recent news about the negative effects it can have.

But, if you take a closer look at the side effects of sugar, you will realize that sugar is more than a sweet tasting soluble carbohydrate — both illicit drugs and sugar share semi-similar side-effects. With this in mind, we believe it’s essential for every newly sober person in early recovery to be aware of the relationship between sugar and drug relapse. Eating certain foods high in nutrients may help improve mood while foods low in nutritional value and high in sugar may be a hinderance to one’s mood. Eating a whole foods plant based diet can help https://ecosoberhouse.com/ stabilize blood sugar levels, resulting in a reduction of sugar cravings as well as alcohol cravings. Maintaining a healthy nutritional lifestyle is a form of self-care and is indicative of caring about your wellbeing, in which case you will be more inclined to care about your sobriety. Relying heavily on sweets, many persons in recovery can put their health at risk by swapping their drug and alcohol addiction for sugar addiction. However, it is often followed by a dreadful crash or “coming down,” leading to emotional disturbances and extremes.

Alcohol and Low Blood Sugar

At 1st Step Behavioral Health, we strive to make your addiction treatment experience as comfortable as possible. But if you’ve quit and are on the road to recovery, it’s important to be aware of the addiction shift from alcohol to sugar. Some may also benefit from working with a nutritionist, dietician, health coach, nutritional coach, nutritional therapist, or other such professionals in order to improve their relationship with food. And, this definitely applies to sugar and the actions we take to promote a healthy, honest, balanced, sober life. This guidance, although certainly well intentioned, implies that sugar should be our best friend in recovery. Unfortunately, this advice may be creating more obstacles for you to overcome while you develop and maintain an honest recovery program.

On top of the factors mentioned above, there are several other good reasons you may experience sugar cravings after quitting drinking. These include disruptions to your body’s blood sugar regulation, and mood swings due to a drop in serotonin. This is a big part of how people become addicted to alcohol. And it turns out that your brain on sugar isn’t so different. Sugar also triggers dopamine receptors in the brain, and over time a person can become desensitized to it, while experiencing strong cravings. In other words, sugar addiction is a real thing, and follows a similar formula in the brain to alcohol addiction. Replacing alcohol with sugar is common—in fact, one studysuggests up to 40 percent of people who stop drinking increase their sugar intake in the days after quitting.

dietitians confirmed what Teigen said: It’s common to gravitate towards sugar more when you’re going sober

So, in order to solve the craving issues, you need to learn to let the emotions come, recognize changes as your body recovers, and begin to care for yourself. A study shows the link between consumption of alcohol and a desire for sweets.

While sugar affects your brain’s reward system slightly differently, the effect is similar overall, and both can be very habit forming. You may have heard that alcohol breaks down into sugar in the body, but this do alcoholics crave sugar isn’t exactly true. While sugar is combined with yeast in alcohol production, the sugar content of most alcoholic beverages is zero, and alcohol never breaks down into sugar while your body is metabolizing it.

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A replacement addiction is when you quit one addictive behavior but feel like you need to replace it with something else. In this case, your mind and body are tempted to replace alcohol with sugar. Whenever you can make healthy choices about what you put into your body, do but don’t put yourself under pressure about it. Some people even find that getting sober kickstarts them straightaway into a much healthier lifestyle and they end up fitter and healthier than they’ve ever been. If you do find yourself reaching for the sugar initially, your clothes might get tighter and you might feel like you haven’t got things quite right yet and that’s okay – give yourself a break. Having a short love affair with sugar is still healthier for you than if you had carried on drinking.

• This is especially true if you are struggling with sugar cravings.
• Oh, and did we forget to mention that sugar is highly addictive?
• This type of craving is new, and you can’t get it out of your head.
• I seriously couldn’t figure it out but it’s definetly due to my sudden sugar cravings.

She has produced a multitude of integrated campaigns and events in the behavioral health and addictions field. Through strategic marketing campaign concepts, Alyssa has established Banyan as an industry leader and a national household name. Ria Health offers access to prescription anti-craving medications and regular coaching sessions to help you overcome the urge to drink alcohol. We support both abstinence and moderation, so you don’t need to quit all at once, or even completely. Best of all, the whole thing can be done from an app on your smartphone. Sugary foods activate the same receptors in the brain as opioids.