First Steps Out of Food Addiction: Leaving the Sugar Loop Slowly

Food addiction often works like a quiet "antidepressant": fast carbs and sugar briefly smooth out mood swings but lock in dependence. The first steps are not a heroic feat but a slow, gentle shift in which the body itself starts to feel better. This brochure is about where to actually begin.

Step one: slowly reduce fast sugar

The key rule is no abruptness. Fast sugar should be reduced "as slowly and slowly as possible," and the freed-up space is filled with proteins and fats. Little by little the body reaches a level where it feels good and you've moved roughly 90% onto proteins and fats. Only then does the next step make sense.

"The first step — then as slowly and slowly as possible fast sugar goes down, and you replace it not with sugar but with proteins and fats."

Why fasting is the finish line, not the start

The doctor warns: the fasting schemes popular with "gurus" (16, 20, 24 hours and more) are not a first step. Until you've fully switched to fats and proteins, such fasts are premature. You should turn to them only once you've caught a normal psyche, come out of depressive states, and spent at least three months on protein and fat. The slower you do everything, the better the result.

The danger of the "monkey brain"

If a person acts from a reactive, anxious state — "in the grip of the monkey" — no amount of thinking will help the body. When entering a new state, an ordinary person often feels anxiety: "what is happening to me, I feel no energy." It is new, and therefore frightening. But this is already the work of the cortex, a different state — and that is where the realization comes that you like this and feel better.

"The main thing is to get pleasure from your own body — so the little body says: yes, I like this, I feel better."

A common catastrophic mistake on the way out

A very widespread mistake: people first exhaust themselves with fasting, then come out onto juices, purées, vegetables and fruit — and relapse. If those carb percentages remain in the diet, on return they "explode at once": from ten they jump to fifty, sixty, seventy. The advice to start with fast carbs and juices the doctor calls a dead end.

Fat, peristalsis, and the fear of constipation

Many are frightened that without fruit, juices and vegetables "the gut won't move." In fact, says the doctor, fat is the very nutrient that moves the intestine in the right direction: fat triggers a release of bile, and bile gives peristalsis. Fruit and vegetables don't provide peristalsis. If there's constipation, the simplest step is to add a little more fat, a little more butter, and see how it goes.

"If you have constipation — try eating a bit more fat, a bit more butter, and see how much more easily you go to the toilet."

Practice: a checklist of first steps

1. Don't cut it cold. Reduce fast sugar as slowly as possible — the slower, the better the result.
2. Replace, don't just remove. Fill the space left by sugar with proteins and fats.
3. Reach the ~90% level. Move on only when the body feels good on protein and fat.
4. Don't rush into fasting. Any long intervals come only after a stable psyche and at least three months on protein and fat.
5. For constipation — more fat. Add a little butter rather than juices and fruit.