Go cold turkey. Your body doesn't need sugar, it used to be a luxury food in the Eighteenth Century,something the wealthy kept in locked cabinets. We've been brainwashed by ads into believing that sugar is a normal part of the human diet.

But don't restrict calories until you adapt. If you combine this with a bunch of fad dieting, you could really get sick...no "lo carb", "gluten-free", etc. If you're like most people on the "Western diet" you're getting half or more of your calories from simple sugars like glucose and fructose. Replace those calories with breads, pasta, rice, etc. and you'll be fine.

And if you start eating a lot of bananas, carrots, and other high-sugar foods, you're accomplishing nothing. Weeding sugar out of the modern diet is not easy, they put the darn stuff in everything and veggies are bred for "sweetness" by growers. Some of the new varieties of carrots have higher sugar content than strawberries.

I wish you good traveling on your journey to better eating habits. I never use sugar in anything, and it's saved me from losing my teeth.

When I moved to the South in my youth, I was horrified to learn that it's customary to use sugar and honey in meat dishes and gravies. I couldn't stand the taste of it.

I meant to say "sucrose and fructose", not glucose. Sucrose is the sugar you find in bags in the markets, fructose is used commonly as a food additive...they extract it from GMO corn.

I have cut down on sugar greatly. I haven't gone cold turkey like Richie, but I think every little bit helps. Our diet may not be causing the CFS, but it certainly can contribute to it. So, anything that you can do to eat more vegetables and less sugar can only be helpful. Best of luck to you. When you feel your willpower flagging, remember that you are worth fighting for. You deserve to be nourished well. Much love.

I commend RichieD, I cannot say I am totally sugar free, but I work at keeping "white" out of my diet. That includes white potatoes, wheat (going gluten free was really not hard at all, there are many many nice gluten free flours now), I do eat apples - usually with a cheese (no - not dairy free yet) but the cheese combined with the apple does not jack me up.
I also make a "bark" with dark chocolate and walnuts(or whatever nut you like) and allow myself a piece of that per day.
Personally, I am trying for balance. I will admit that I do feel better when I am gluten and low sugar. And at the same time - when I go out for a nice dinner, having a nice dessert or a glass of wine is something I allow myself. But that's me ;-) Good luck!

Low sugar is definitely helpful, but not (for me anyway) if the substitute is well, sugar substitute. Those chemicals are just awful.
As far as cutting back, I've tried both, cold turkey and easing off and personally have found that easing off is better. Cold turkey is rough on your endocrine system, so you crash and are hangry at the same time...ugh.
I've found I can do without sugar all day...until I taste it. Then I'm a goner. So I really work on avoiding it until after my evening meal. Then I have some every day. Strawberries, 70% chocolate bar, a couple cups of popcorn (starchy carbs turn into sugar, if you eat bread you might as well eat candy), a few spoons of fruit flavored cream cheese. This is my last thing before bed. A nice treat and importantly for me anyway, eating a sweat or starchy carb last thing helps trigger the chemicals that keep serotonin steady, helping things like depression and anxiety. (the concept is explained in the book "potatoes not prozac".
After years of working on it, I know that I need 30-40 carbs a day, with 3/4 of them being veggies and that last 10 carbs my sweet bedtime treat.
If you go cold turkey, you just may manage it for a while, even months if you have will of steel...but it's likely that at some point, sugar will cross your lips and the more you have denied yourself, the harder your brain will kick into gear and want it and not be denied later. So, I say go slow, over a week or so... then have some every day to keep your sugar monster happy.... but hey, your results may vary :)

I wanted to add that my endocrinologist and naturopath both suggested chromium picolinate to help sugar cravings. 100 mg twice a day to start. I have found I have just as much help from taking 500mg cinnamon capsules in the morning and at about 1 pm...

I went off sugar 1.5 yrs ago. I went cold turkey, I could not have done it by cutting down. Not enough self-discipline. If I have it in the house, I WILL eat it. Since then my health has improved greatly: no more pain, more energy, little malaise. Unfortunately, my brain has worsened; not connected to the sugar. I disagree with Richie: white potatoes, pasta, bread all turn into simple carbohydrates and do the same thing as sugar. I occasionally eat fruit, try to stick w low sugar fruit. Strawberries are great, also melons, then citrus. I never eat bananas. I eat mostly protein and vegetables. And I feel much better.

Oh Sugar...Oh honey honey. What was that old song? Candy girl? Anyway it's an old song.Guess that makes me a bit of an oldy too.lol!
It's all or nothing for me.I have to go cold turkey on sugar or the temptation overpowers me.Especially if it's CHOCOLATE !! Yum!!.Now I'm thinking about a nice little cadbury chockie.My brain has these little chocolate tentacles reaching out.lol!! Seriously though I just can't have sweets in my house and when I'm in the supermarket , very rarely, I turn my head right away from the sweeties aisle like a brave girl.
I don't know how many times I have been strictly off sugar and then fallen down in an emotional moment and wanted it just for comfort.
However it is not good for my body.It just makes me sicker. So... NO SUGAR !! Besides I'm just naturally sweet. Yeah baby !!

Gently put! I know that sugar is not good for us. I believe in moderation in everything.

However, if anyone tries to take my three little Dove Dark pieces of candy away from me on any day, someone will get hurt!

Chocolate makes me happy. I do not over-indulge. My sugar tests in the normal range. I don't eat anything with high fructose corn syrup or any other added sugar. I'm vigilant about this.

So, I would never tell anyone what to eat or drink to make themselves have a happy day. Just don't come to Jersey and try to take my Dove Dark. Eat healthy! Please. I just don't think you have to deprive yourself of a daily pleasure. We give up so much as it is.

Obviously, my name is Darla, and I'm a chocoholic!! xo

I'm going to expand on my dietary recommendations. I'm not interested in starting an argument or being difficult, it's just that I've always believed that it's important to debunk false information and help others learn the truth of things.

The gluten-free diet is a perfect example of a food fad. It has no scientific basis whatsoever...none, zero. There are people whith celiac disease who are genetically unable to digest gluten properly, but unless you have been tested for celiac disease and come back positive, you're just on a fad bandwagon.

For those who say that gluten makes them sick, I would say be careful about food sensitivities and self-diagnosis. I've found that it's very easy to get confused when it can take more than 24 hours for the effects of a suspect food to be felt. Most breads in the markets contain a long list of ingredients, any one of which can make people ill...and there are also all the contaminants like glyphosate, which is common in GMO wheat. Most of the wheat products in the supermarkets are now GMO wheat, which has a high content of glyphosate.

Try an artisan bread made from organic ingredients. Eat a bunch of it, wait about three days and see if it made you really sick. If it didn't, you don't have gluten sensitivity....period.

Another possibility is the yeast culture used in mass-produced breads. It comes from the brewing industry where the yeast is grown using hops...some people are allergic to hops.

If you drop or reduce sugar from your diet and eat very few carbs to replace it, of course you're going to feel rotten. You're simply hungry from drastically reducing your calories. Nobody needs sugar, it's not an essential part of human food.

It took me more than a couple of months to get past sugar cravings. i did it several times before eliminating the cravings. As I remember it took about three months to be free. But you won't make it if you go on a high protein diet at the same time by eliminating most of your carb intake. We get fuel from carbs, protein, or fat. There is nothing else...so if you drastically reduce carbs, you're on a high protein, high fat diet.

Please don't follow food fads, they can be very destructive. For example, the recent low-fat craze made some people very ill. The human body cannot survive without fat...people will die on a diet with zero fat. We don't need much of it, but it's an essential part of our food intake.

All the food fads are nonsense...low carb, gluten free, low fat, the paranoia about fried food, the fear of soy, the fear of yeast...all non-scientific garbage that sells books and pushes people to buy products like dairy and meat.

I have to agree with Rithie on alot of this. Too much attention being placed on gluten when a bigger problem is all the genetically modified foods that are being marketed to us without benefit of proper labeling. It's never as simple as saying "bread is bad", it's all about what the ingredients are and how were they farmed/raised/grown/processed/chemically modified/altered etc.

Our bodies are not biologically designed to consume sugar. Sugar is an addictive substance. You have little will power over it because it triggers a chemical reaction in the brain similar to that of drug addiction. In fact, sugar cane is processed using the same method used in processing heroine in order to produce pretty white table sugar. It's best to go cold turkey and accept that you are literally withdrawing from an addictive substance. It takes time to detox. That's also why you can go a long time with no sugar and once you eat a small amount your appetite for it comes back ten-fold. It is truly as bad as drug addiction and it's just not getting the attention it needs because sugar is such a huge industry. There's too much money to be made from it.

And yes, just like with any other addiction, some people are more susceptible to it than others, just depends on how you're put together.

Bottom line.....sugar has NO nutritional value and has nothing but negative effects to our bodies functions. Sugar is at the very root of so many of todays illnesses and diseases. Sugar causes inflammation in the body, and that interferes with so many of the bodies systems and functions.

I literally could go on and on so I'll stop here.

Good luck to you!

Perhaps we can agree to disagree on carbs. I am not talking about gluten. Some of the posters here seem to equate a low carb diet with gluten free diet. Not the same. As I said, I went off sugar and simple carbs about 1.5 yrs ago. I am doing sooo much better. If I slip and eat simple carbs (pasta, bread (which always has sugar in it), white potatoes, desserts, sugar, a few days later I always feel worse and it lasts for for several days. I did not think of this myself; my doctor suggested I eat this way. So I eat protein, fat and complex carbs.

I believe there are many variations between us, and sweeping statements of what is right and what is wrong does not take into account our variations. What is good for one person may be good for the next person. This disease makes us super sensitive to small things.
We each has to find what works for each of us.

Agreed Linda - everyone's tolerance is different. Not everyone needs to go gluten free and some need to go entirely grain free but some can handle some grains and not others. Also agreed that a carb is a carb and if one is sensitive to them (glucose intolerant or insulin resistant) then eating any carb at all is like eating a spoonful of sugar, except perhaps when you factor in glycemic index, which helps folks decide what sugars will absorb more slowly, etc.

Luna, you wanted to know how to go off sugar and while we each obviously have been working on which type of diet works for us, in general it looks like cold turkey with some protein to keep things level and avoiding pseudo sugars like bread/potatoes is a common thought....

I bought a book a few years ago called Protein Power. Basically, it recommends that with every meal, you eat a bit more protein than you do carbohydrates (be they simple or complex ones). I find that if I stick to that, I don't get sugar cravings. The problem is, when I'm not well, it can be just too hard to cook proper meals and I fall into bad eating habits, then after a while I start to crave sugar (usually in the form of sweet drinks).

I'm sure that anyone reading all these posts is going to wind up confused about simple carbs, complex carbs, etc. I strongly recommend a little online research into human metabolism and biochemistry to keep it all straight.

Just the very basics...the human body runs on sugar. It takes in food in three forms: carbohydrate, protein, and fat. These are broken down into their basic forms in digestion, then converted to simple carbohydrate...specifically glucose...to run the body's engine.

If you eliminate carbs, the body uses fat or protein...either from food or from its own tissue. Protein is digested into amino acids, which are then stripped of their ammonia radical and converted to glucose.

We need some amino acids that we can't synthesize, there are eight of those. Once the body has enough for its protein synthesis, the rest of the amino acids are stripped of their ammonia and burned as fuel. The ammonia, which is toxic, is converted to urea and excreted in urine. A very high protein diet can overwork the kidneys and stress them.

For a very long time, nutritional guidelines have called for a balance of carbohydrate, fat, and protein. Going to extremes in any direction can lead to health problems. I think any kind of extreme diet is a bad idea. If you want to lose weight...restrict calories, eat healthy food, and exercise.

If you know specifically that a certain food makes you ill due to an allergy or food sensitivity, avoid it. But going in a radical direction in your diet based on pure speculation or a dieting guru's advice is very foolish in my opinion. This is especially true if you don't know the basics of human metabolism.

There are people online promoting animal foods and saying that grains are bad to eat. Humans have been eating grains like wheat for hundreds of thousands of years. To say that they're suddenly harmful without a shred of evidence to back up these wild claims is not rational.