Can You Be Addicted to Sugar?

Symptoms of Sugar Addiction

You may recognize a sugar addiction in yourself or a loved one when you keep an eye out for these critical signs.

Physical Symptoms

Overeating sugary foods can lead to headaches⁴, cravings for more sugary foods, weight gain, and acne. It can also cause sugar crashes, where you feel pronouncedly fatigued after an initial jump in energy.

Behavioral Symptoms

Too much sugar can cause mood swings⁴ and contribute to conditions like anxiety and depression. As you consume more sugary foods, these mood swings can become more constant or severe. 

Signs regular consumption has shifted to an addiction include:

• Inability to control how much sugar you eat.
• Eating sugary foods even when they make you feel sick.
• Overspending on sugary foods.
• Eating sugary foods in secret. 
• Hiding your supply of sugary foods so loved ones or friends don’t know how much you’re eating (and so they don’t eat it).
• Constant cravings for sugary foods.
• Using sugary foods to cope with negative emotions.

Emotional Symptoms

Eating too much sugar can make you irritable and tired⁴. You may feel like you have a short fuse, suddenly feel sad, or act grouchy for no apparent reason.

Causes of Sugar Addiction

A sugar addiction is ultimately caused by sugar’s effects on your reward system. Some people are more sensitive to its effects there; others can consume sugary food regularly without more than the occasional itch for something sweet.

Biological Factors

You can be genetically predisposed to sugar addiction⁵, meaning the way your body responds to sugar could make addiction more likely. Genetic predisposition passes through families and can alter how your brain and body perceive sugar. These variations can make the feel-good effects of sugar more pronounced, as is the risk for addiction. 

Psychological Factors

Food offers a unique comfort, so much so there’s a whole class of meals designated as comfort foods. Ice cream and sweets certainly make the list. Little indulgences are the norm, but regularly using sugary foods to cope with emotions and symptoms of mental health conditions can lead to a sugar addiction.

Conditions like depression and anxiety can fuel emotional overeating and make you crave sugary foods to activate your reward system. This provides momentary pleasure and relief from negative emotions, but it’s not a long-lasting solution. Conditions like binge eating and bulimia can develop from emotional overeating.

Environmental Factors

We use sugar to celebrate and offer comfort. In a world with much to celebrate and much to mourn, we can end up eating a lot of sugary foods. The vast availability of sugary foods leans into this ideology with bright packaging, fun advertisements, and marketing efforts meant to encourage more consumption.      

Think of how easy it is to get a candy bar pretty much anywhere with provisions—gas stations, grocery stores, pharmacies, smoke shops, auto parts stores, and hardware stores, just to name a few. You’re much more likely to run into sugar and sugar additives than whole foods like fruits and veggies. With sugary foods so readily available (and cheap), they’re often what we reach for first. And if no one’s telling you otherwise, this might not seem like a problem. 

The Impact of Sugar Addiction on Health

Physical Health Consequences

Too much sugary food can lead to health conditions⁶ like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, tooth decay, and obesity. These can occur over time, often beginning with more minor consequences like cavities and fatigue. Then, this overconsumption can overwhelm the body and cause long-lasting damage.

Weight gain can lead to musculoskeletal strain as your muscles and bones try to adapt to more weight. As weight increases, people can experience knee and back pain or even injuries.

Mental Health Consequences

Sugar causes an initial flush of energy but a crash soon after. It can make you irritable and prone to mood swings⁴, which can contribute to or worsen a mental health condition. 

Diagnosing Sugar Addiction

Having a sweet tooth isn’t the same thing as a sugar addiction. Assess your sugar-eating habits in yourself or a loved one to help tell the two apart.

Self-Assessment Tools

You can self-assess the possibility of a sugar addiction by answering a few key questions as honestly as possible.

1. Can you go a full day without eating sugar or bread?
2. Do you feel anxious and irritable when you don’t have sugar for more than a few hours?
3. Do you have something sweet with every meal?
4. Have you ever bought candy or sweet foods and hidden them to eat later?
5. Are you able to stop eating something sweet or not eat it at all if it’s available?
6. Have you started gaining weight or noticing other health concerns, like fatigue, cavities, or generally feeling unwell?
7. Do you notice yourself eating sweet foods more often and in higher quantities than your family and friends?

How you answer these questions can clue you into the potential of having a sugar addiction. For a more robust and accurate diagnosis, bring your concerns to a medical professional.

Professional Diagnosis

Your primary care physician can ask more clarifying questions and run tests to determine your reliance on sugar. They may test you for diabetes, heart conditions, and check your blood glucose levels. Depending on their results, they may officially diagnose you with a sugar addiction.

Strategies to Overcome Sugar Addiction

Dietary Changes

Dietary changes are one of the quickest and most effective ways to stop a sugar addiction or prevent sugar-eating habits from becoming an addiction. Cutting out sugar and carbs will likely offer the best benefits, but so can smaller changes.

For example, you could cut out pop and other sugary drinks. You can also start reading food labels at the store, looking for added sugars and the number of carbs in each item. See how healthier snacks compare and if you can swap products for ones with unrefined sugars or no sugar at all. Put more vegetables and protein in your cart and reserve items like ice cream and cake strictly for birthday parties.

Behavioral Strategies

Promising to quit sugar is often the easiest step—doing it, then sticking with it, proves much harder. That’s where behavioral strategies like these make their assist. 

• Practice urge surfing to navigate cravings. Urge surfing uses mindfulness to help you understand what triggered the craving, then notice and accept it without acting on it.
• Identify other stress-management strategies other than eating, like journaling, working out, reading, or talking with a friend. Use them for the big and small stresses.
• Forgive yourself and set your sights on the future. Slip-ups and relapses may happen, but they don’t equate to personal failure.
• Connect with others trying to cut out sugar or stop it completely. You can find groups online or maybe recruit a friend or family member to embark on the journey with you.

Seeking Professional Help

A professional can help you get to the bottom of a sugar addiction and develop strategies to overcome it. They can also begin treating physical symptoms like heart conditions and diabetes. 

Your first stop will likely be your primary doctor’s office. They’ll form a personalized treatment plan and identify where the recovery efforts start. You may focus first on becoming physically healthier and losing weight; then, they’ll address urgent health needs and refer you to a specialist if needed. A dietician, for example, could create a new diet for you to follow and suggest tips for removing sugar from your diet. Nutritionists can help you understand more about food and how it interacts with your body, illuminating myths and mysteries to help you truly fuel your body.

Your doctor can also refer you to a therapist. A mental health professional can help you heal the underlying causes of sugar addiction, like stress or anxiety, and develop new coping mechanisms. 

Long-Term Management and Prevention

Can you really avoid sugar…forever? Some people do; they commit to going sugar-free and adopt the diet changes as their new normal. Even if you don’t go completely sugar-free, you can still benefit from watching what you eat and managing stress, which can prevent a sugar addiction from resurfacing.

Maintaining a Balanced Diet

Staying satiated can help you overcome or not feel sugar cravings at all. Eat whole foods rich in protein to stay full longer, since hunger could trigger the desire for a quick sugary bite. Add plenty of vegetables and water to your daily diet, too.

Ongoing Support and Resources

Many people worldwide want to eat less sugar or recover from a sugar addiction. Online communities can connect you to their support and advice, providing both accountability and encouragement. You can also attend peer recovery groups for sugar addiction. Check out these sites to find the best fit for you:

• Food Addicts meetings occur globally, online or in-person.
• Sugar and Carbs Addicts Anonymous meets online and uses 12-Step principles.
• Recoveries Anonymous also offers online meetings with 12-Step guidance.

You can connect to groups on social media, too. Search platforms like Facebook for sugar addiction groups, or learn more about sugar addiction on places like YouTube. Some platforms, like Instagram, also allow you to find posts by searching hashtags like #sugaraddictionrecovery. 

With peer and professional support, you can learn new coping tools and recover from an addiction to sugar. You may even find life becomes even sweeter.