Are you sugar addicted? You are not alone!

I used to be intensely sugar addicted. I craved it all the time, and it seems like the more I ate, the more I wanted it. The fact that it made me feel terrible – feeling the high and then crashing and feeling spaced out – didn't faze me. I wanted my sugar. Just before I started to clean up my diet in my early 20s, I lived with my aunt, and I used to sneak frozen cake from her freezer – little pieces at a time, hoping she wouldn't notice!

Then I started to read about nutrition and realized how toxic sugar is for our bodies. I used a lot of willpower to stop eating sugar, and I mostly succeeded, but the craving didn't go away. One time many years ago, I went off sugar completely for two years. After a few months, the cravings lessened, but then after two years I made the mistake of thinking I was cured. A bite of sugar and all the craving returned.

Along with the sugar addiction, I struggled on and off with weight issues.

Everything changed when I discovered what the underlying emotional issue was and how to deal with it. Now I know that a sugar/carb addiction can be healed by taking care of both physical and emotional issues.

The Emotional Cause

The emotional cause of food and sugar addiction is SELF-ABANODNMENT.

When we abandon ourselves by being unloving to ourselves – with self-judgment, ignoring our feelings, numbing them out with various addictions, or making others responsible for us – we create a big empty hole inside. What this hole really wants is love – our love – but since we are abandoning ourselves, we are far from loving ourselves. The empty hole is very painful, and food, especially sugar and starches, works for the moment to fill the inner emptiness.

It is unrealistic to expect a sugar addiction to go away without learning how to fill that inner emptiness with love – the love that is always available to us from our spiritual source. So learning how to love yourself is vital to healing a sugar addiction and other addictions.

The Physical Cause

The physical cause of a sugar addiction is about what is going on in your gut. If you have more beneficial intestinal flora than harmful flora, then you have a healthy gut and likely don't crave sugar. Unfortunately, there are many things in our modern society that destroy the healthy bacteria, leaving us vulnerable to the proliferation of unhealthy bacteria, and this bacteria craves sugar and processed carbs.

Some of what feeds unhealthy bacteria:

• Processed foods

Processed foods are exactly what the term implies – they are not natural. Because they have been refined, many of the nutrients the body needs are destroyed, and unhealthy food-like products have been added, such as sugar, GMO-grown foods, heated oils which are extremely toxic for our bodies, preservatives, colors, and so on. All of these destroy beneficial flora.

• Sugared food-like products

Sugar destroys beneficial bacteria and feeds the toxic bacteria. This is why the more sugar we eat, the more we want it. As the toxic bacteria proliferate, they demand more and more sugar to flourish. The more they flourish, the more they create toxins that affect our organs and our brain, causing diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases, as well as contributing to autism, ADD, ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other mental disorders. (See "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" by Natasha Campbell-McBride, M.D. for a complete description of how all this happens).

• Antibiotics and other drugs

Antibiotics not only destroy the harmful bacteria – they kill all bacteria, which leaves the gut vulnerable to harmful bacteria unless the beneficial bacteria are replaced with probiotics. Many other drugs also destroy beneficial bacteria.

• Factory-farmed meats, poultry and dairy

Factory-farmed meats, poultry and dairy products contain the antibiotics and hormones that are given to the cows and chickens, and the pesticides that are in their food. All of this destroys beneficial bacteria.

• Chlorinated water
• Household cleaning products and cosmetics

Looking at this list, you can see why most people are suffering from a grave imbalance in their gut flora. If you want to heal a sugar addiction, you need to do healing work to restore the natural balance. 

The more you practice Inner Bonding and learn to love yourself, the more you are motivated to create a healthy body for your beautiful soul to live in. It's not about will power - it's about intention: the intention to be loving to yourself.

Join Dr. Margaret Paul for her 30-Day at-home Course: "Love Yourself: An Inner Bonding Experience to Heal Anxiety, Depression, Shame, Addictions and Relationships."

Image by The Loves Of Eirlys from Pixabay