Welcome to the group, Kat! It sounds like you made a good decision --
I'm a hardcore carb addict myself, and eating low-carb has made
amazing changes in the way I feel and in the way I eat. I think you'll
find that once you struggle through an initial adjustment period,
you'll find you crave sugar and pretzels and such far less -- at least
that's how it seems to work for most people.

Good luck!

Dawn

writes:

Kat, you and I have similar weight loss goals, I'm just a few weeks ahead of
you on this process, and I am totally addicted to sugar!  When my pants got too
tight and my blood pressure got borderline high, I got a few books on low-carb
eating, but I decided that while I was reading them, I could drop sugar.  So I
did.

I won't lie to you.  My second full day without sugar, I felt tremendous.  I
also slept poorly that whole week, was cranky, had no attention span, and at
one point would have happily killed anyone on the planet for a piece of
chocolate.  And putting myself through that rough week (it was a lot better
after Day 4) was absolutely the best thing I'd ever done for myself.  I have
felt healthier every single day since then -- each morning, I feel better than
I did the morning before.  Seriously.  I also lost 8 pounds *just* by dropping
sugar, which was a great confidence booster going into the full low-carb diet
plan.

If I can do it -- as Queen Sugar Addict of the Universe -- so can you.  (I will
confess, I ate down all the chocolate in my house before I started, but I don't
recommend that.)  Just pick a day, get the sweets out of your house, and do it.
Go for a walk whenever you get a sugar craving, or if it's late at night, eat
something else.  I love smoked salmon, for example, and I treated myself to a
piece every time I wanted sugar.  There's nothing wrong with tricking yourself.

For more reinforcement, there's a great article on how awful sugar in the April
edition of Real Simple magazine.  It's called Sugar Nation or something like
that, and it's a good discussion about why carbs, and specifically refined
sugar, are bad for your health.  I liked it because it focused more on health
than on weight loss.  After all, normal weight people often don't realize that
they're damaging their health by overloading on carbs.

Anyway, hang in there, hang out here, and drop the sugar.  After a few days
you'll think you were crazy ever to want it.  You can do this.

Daria
166/148/140
sugar-free since 2/1/04
low-carb since 2/17/04

Hi Kat, welcome to the group - you've come to the right place!

Hi, KatS. Welcome, welcome. You aren't alone. :-)