Hi Dennise - Welcome to the forum. I thought I'd reply to give you a bit of hope re: the chocolate addiction. I was hopeless. I thought it was impossible to live without eating at least a little chocolate most days. I am 50 and I thought that hormones were playing havock with my cravings for sweets  - cravings that had grown out of all proportion and reason over the last several years. I'd tried to work chocolate into every type of diet I adopted but a little bit always lead to a little bit more and in the end, I always ate too much. When I heard David on Ockham's Razor, I knew that this was my problem and stopped eating all sugar the next day (or at least kept it under 10gm). It's been about 3 1/2 months of avoiding or greatly reducing fructose and, as it's Christmas, I thought I'd eat just one piece of chocolate. I never thought I'd hear myself say it but I actually had to think twice about eating it at all. It wasn't very nice and I didn't want any more and that in itself was was something I never thought I'd experience.

I've recently been making ice cream for myself and my husband (who has not given up fructose but loves the ice cream) using glucose. For some recipes I melt down Lindt's 85% dark chocolate, spread it thin and crumble it up when cold to add 50gm (3.5gm fructose) to about 800ml ice cream. The low fructose content of this chocolate adds so little to a serve of ice cream, I can enjoy it without getting cravings (a sign that never fails to tell me if I've eaten something with too much sugar). My husband likes the dark mint chocolate in vanilla but I can resist this (with the much higher sugar/fructose content) and don't so much as lick the spoon or my fingers when dealing with the process of melting the stuff. David has said many times that the cravings will go - and he is right. While I eat 'my' ice cream when I feel like it, it wouldn't occur to me to put a whole piece of chocolate in my mouth. 

This is the first time I've honestly been able to say I can eat like this for the rest of my life. High protein, low carb diets were ok for a while but I couldn't envisage staying on it forever - I think it made me crave chocolate all the more. I keep telling everyone I was the worst chocaholic (and just plain sugar-holic) I knew and if I can do it, there is hope for them. Stay with it Dennise - there will be no regrets at the end of the day - just a great feeling of liberation when you can look at something you use to crave and say 'no thank you' - and mean it!

Cheers - Janet

Janet Barwick wrote:

 

Hi Dennise - Welcome to the forum. I thought I'd reply to give you a bit of hope re: the chocolate addiction. I was hopeless. I thought it was impossible to live without eating at least a little chocolate most days. I am 50 and I thought that hormones were playing havock with my cravings for sweets  - cravings that had grown out of all proportion and reason over the last several years. I'd tried to work chocolate into every type of diet I adopted but a little bit always lead to a little bit more and in the end, I always ate too much. When I heard David on Ockham's Razor, I knew that this was my problem and stopped eating all sugar the next day (or at least kept it under 10gm). It's been about 3 1/2 months of avoiding or greatly reducing fructose and, as it's Christmas, I thought I'd eat just one piece of chocolate. I never thought I'd hear myself say it but I actually had to think twice about eating it at all. It wasn't very nice and I didn't want any more and that in itself was was something I never thought I'd experience.

I've recently been making ice cream for myself and my husband (who has not given up fructose but loves the ice cream) using glucose. For some recipes I melt down Lindt's 85% dark chocolate, spread it thin and crumble it up when cold to add 50gm (3.5gm fructose) to about 800ml ice cream. The low fructose content of this chocolate adds so little to a serve of ice cream, I can enjoy it without getting cravings (a sign that never fails to tell me if I've eaten something with too much sugar). My husband likes the dark mint chocolate in vanilla but I can resist this (with the much higher sugar/fructose content) and don't so much as lick the spoon or my fingers when dealing with the process of melting the stuff. David has said many times that the cravings will go - and he is right. While I eat 'my' ice cream when I feel like it, it wouldn't occur to me to put a whole piece of chocolate in my mouth. 

This is the first time I've honestly been able to say I can eat like this for the rest of my life. High protein, low carb diets were ok for a while but I couldn't envisage staying on it forever - I think it made me crave chocolate all the more. I keep telling everyone I was the worst chocaholic (and just plain sugar-holic) I knew and if I can do it, there is hope for them. Stay with it Dennise - there will be no regrets at the end of the day - just a great feeling of liberation when you can look at something you use to crave and say 'no thank you' - and mean it!

Cheers - Janet

 

Janet, the ice-cream sounds nice - I probably couldn't risk it (I've found I have fairly low tolerance for re-addiction - it doesn't take much fructose to give me the cravings again) - but if you can do it without generating the cravings, then so much the better (as as you say you are eating very very little fructose).  I like your point at the end - this is something you can do for the rest of your life (and not feel deprived) and I think that's why it works!

Cheers

David.

Dennise Freestone wrote:

Janet and David,

Thankyou for your thoughts. All the ideas really helped.

Janet, I found your idea of substitutes helpful. At the moment I like frozen plain yogurt with fruit, so it's like icecream.

David, Thank you for that important point- that a certain amount of fructose can trigger off your cravings. I thought it was just me!

At the moment, I'm doing well if I compare myself to my previous amount of sugar consumption. I haven't got past the cravings stage yet, but I need to work on:

1. finding substitutes for all the different times I crave sugar- e.g. when stressed, to celebrate something.

2. Drinking lots of water. Oddly, this is helping. I once tried to analyse why I had to eat chocolate daily, and one reason came up with was that I was thirsty, but I'd left it so long that I was tired too, and only sugar could jump start me! If that seems weird, I say cravings are weird. Anyway, I found some evidence to back it up in a book on water by a Dr. Batmanghelidj which I found at the library.

Dennise

 

The craving imitating thirst is interesting, Dennise - for me it was more like (what I thought was) hunger.  Now that I am fructose-free, I know real hunger is much stronger than the craving induced feeling ...

How's it going now?

Cheers

David.