How To Quit Sugar Cravings: What Actually Worked For Me

How to quit sugar cravings: the short answer

I did not beat sugar with willpower. I have none where cake is concerned. What changed it was getting quiet enough to see what I was actually doing, and then changing it in stages over several years. Yoga is what made the seeing possible.

Iyengar yoga is the style developed by Mr BKS Iyengar. In the 20th century he did more than anyone to set down traditional Indian yoga, through his books and his teaching, and he pioneered the use of props. It is sometimes called modern classical yoga, and it’s the style we teach at Flametree. Mr Iyengar also taught that healthy eating is a fundamental part of wellness. This page sits in our food and habits notes.

How to quit sugar cravings in short form

• Cutting sugar “a bit” did not work. Sooner or later the cravings came back and so did I.
• The pantry had to go. Three garbage bags of food with added sugar. Practically every item was stacked with it.
• Sugar works on your brain, not your character. The brain has sweet receptors, and the more sugar you eat, the more you crave.
• Read the label and look for about 3% sugar. That single habit changes what goes in the trolley.
• Fructose is the one to watch, but the amount matters more than the sweetener. It is weaker than other sugars at telling you that you are full, and the newer research says total sugar and liquid sugar matter more than which sweetener it came from.
• Mindful eating is the skill, and yoga is how you get it. You cannot eat mindfully while your mind is racing.
• Change is possible, but it takes stages. Cut the added-sugar products first.
• Next step: your first class is free if you are new to Flametree.

This is my own story, and this page is drawn from a talk I gave at our Bali retreat. Chris Lalor, Flametree Yoga Studio. It is one person’s experience, not medical advice.

It started at a retreat, by accident

When I came to our 2014 retreat, my normal food simply was not available. I loved the retreat food, and I did not miss bread, cheese and sugar at all.

When I came home I noticed something I had not expected. My stomach upsets were gone.

Then the cravings arrived, for bread and cheese and the rest, and I began eating the same way again. The stomach upsets came back with the food.

That is the experiment, really, and I ran it on myself without meaning to.

Changing slowly, over years

So I began to change my diet, very slowly. It took another retreat to move to being vegan. I was already vegetarian.

The yoga practice is what allowed the insight: the ability to take an emotional step backwards and change a habit. Bread with everything was a lifelong habit, and lifelong habits do not respond to being told off.

I made those changes and I was still addicted to sugar.

What did shift was that I became more interested in what I was eating. More mindful. The retreat food helped, because it was low in sugar and I could feel the difference without having to believe anything.

I started researching the effects of high sugar. I watched documentaries and read books and articles. I became more mindful about the impact of diet on me and on the planet.

Although it was not my focus, I lost weight along the way, and kept it off.

The thing I had to admit

Eventually I had to face two things at once.

The first was that sugar, for me, was an addiction. And that it was delusional to think cutting it just a little was going to hold. Sooner or later the cravings would return and win.

The second was the contradiction in having a holistic yoga practice designed to promote health while eating a great deal of sugar.

So I cleaned out three garbage bags of food that contained large amounts of added sugar. It turned out practically every item in my pantry was stacked with it, which is true of a huge percentage of supermarket food.

My own reading, and what I noticed in myself, convinced me that too much sugar was working against how I wanted to feel: my weight, my mood, my sleep and my clarity of mind. Your experience may differ, and this is not medical advice.

Why sugar is so hard to resist

It is worth knowing that this is not a failure of willpower.

Sugar works via chemicals in your brain. Your brain has sweet receptors, and the more sugar you eat, the more you crave it. That is the loop, and it is doing exactly what it evolved to do.

Your brain also needs energy. It is the most energy-demanding organ in the body, which is the argument people reach for when they say they need the sugar to think.

But you can get that energy without sugar. I now know I can get all the energy I need, and that I generate my own, through what I eat and through my yoga and pranayama practice.

What can you do in the moment a craving hits?

Pause, breathe out slowly, and see if you still want it. Years ago I kept a “just in case” block of chocolate in a handy place in the kitchen. Funny how “just in case” turned out to mean “every single stressful afternoon”.

If you are wondering how to curb sugar cravings in the moment, the weak link is the gap between feeling the craving and acting on it. You cannot grit your teeth through that gap, but you can train it. Breath is the one part of your nervous system you can take hold of on purpose. Try one slow breath in, then a longer breath out, three times, and see whether the craving has lost its grip.

What does the research say? A 2023 randomised trial from Stanford University (Balban and colleagues, Cell Reports Medicine) compared three daily five-minute breathing exercises with mindfulness meditation over one month. Breathing practice, especially the exhale-focused “cyclic sighing”, improved mood and slowed the breathing rate more than mindfulness meditation did (Balban 2023). That study measured mood and body arousal, not cravings, so the link to cravings is my experience rather than a research finding. Pranayama (breath meditation) is the traditional way to build this skill: see what is pranayama.

The low-fat trick, and how sugar got everywhere

There was a debate in the 1950s about whether sugar or fat drives weight gain. Low fat won.

The problem is that for low-fat food to taste of anything, large amounts of sugar get added. So the victory of low fat is one of the reasons sugar is now in almost everything, and in large amounts.

How much sugar is safe, and where from

Two questions worth settling.

Look for around 3% sugar maximum on the label, per 100 grams. That is a blunt rule, and it works. Most of what you thought was fine will fail it.

Not all sugar is equal, but the differences are smaller than they sound. Table sugar is half glucose and half fructose, and most of the sweeteners sold as better alternatives sit very close to it.

Why fructose is the one to watch, and what has changed

Fructose is absorbed less easily than glucose, and in large amounts it can reach the liver.

Some researchers also link large amounts with inflammation, which is where the immune system works overtime for no good reason. That is still being studied.

And this is the part that matters most for cravings: in my reading, fructose is weaker than other sugars at telling you that you are full. That may be why you can eat an enormous amount of something sweet and still want more.

Since I first gave this talk the research has moved on, and it is worth saying plainly where.

The amount matters far more than which sweetener it came from. At ordinary amounts most fructose is dealt with in the small intestine and never reaches the liver as fructose at all. It is the excess that spills through to the liver. That is why a soft drink and an apple do not behave the same way, even though both contain fructose.

And the gaps between sweeteners are smaller than they sound. Table sugar is 50% fructose. High fructose corn syrup is about 55%. Honey is about 51% of its sugars. Palm sugar and coconut sugar are mostly ordinary sucrose, which puts them in much the same place as the white stuff. When researchers pooled the trials comparing high fructose corn syrup with table sugar across 767 people, weight, waist, body fat, cholesterol, triglycerides and blood pressure all came out the same. Only one inflammation marker was slightly higher.

So I have changed what I say here. Do not go hunting for one villain sweetener. Count the total, and watch the drinks.

Two practical things still hold. The one sweetener that really is high in fructose is agave syrup, at anywhere from 56% to 85%, and it is almost always sold as the healthy choice. And liquid sugar in any form arrives fastest and does the most damage, which is why sweet drinks are the first thing to go, along with packaged baked goods and confectionery.

Where yoga actually comes into it

This is the part people do not expect, and it is the reason the change finally held.

Mindful eating is the ability to move the emotion out of eating. Once the emotion is out of it, you can see the consequences of what you are eating, and gradually cut what you do not want.

The trouble is that mindful eating is a skill that needs a quiet mind, and most of us do not have one to hand. Asana and pranayama quieten the mind, so you are more able to be reflective and mindful about what you eat. You get the space to look at cause and effect.

You also come to understand that transformation is possible at all, which is not obvious when you are in the middle of a habit.

Your yogic practice gives you a detachment, and that detachment is what lets you make a conscious decision about a habit instead of running the habit.

Patanjali’s word for not seeing things as they are is avidya (misperception). I had a lifelong misperception of the role of sugar. It clouded my judgement and my actions around what I ate: plenty of sushi and white rice, too little protein, and an attachment to ice cream. Yoga does not hand you the answer. It quietens the mind enough for you to glimpse the misperception, and then you can act. There is more on this in our post on the eight limbs of yoga.

I used sugar as a reward and a pick-me-up. That is emotional eating, and you cannot argue your way out of emotional eating. You can only get far enough back from it to see it happening.

What I would actually tell you to do

• Cut the added-sugar products first. An addiction still requires determination, and you may need to work in stages.
• Read every label for a fortnight. You will be angry, and then you will shop differently.
• Be aware of the higher sugar content of some fruits. Limit dried fruit and mangoes, and white rice while you are at it. Try alternatives.
• Swap, do not just remove. One apple instead of a chocolate is a real strategy, not a consolation prize.
• Monitor how you handle stress and mood when you have less sugar. That is the information you need.
• Monitor cravings and when they arrive. Pre-menstrual and menopausal cravings are real, and knowing they are coming takes most of their power away.
• Build the quiet mind alongside it. Yoga and pranayama are what make the rest of this possible rather than exhausting.

In time you may find your body becomes intolerant of too much sugar, or of gluten, and does some of the work for you.

Looking for something to cook? Our recipes page has lower sugar, plant-based meals, including a vegetarian laksa with quinoa noodles. The longer story of how a retreat started all this is in my sugar-holic recovery and how I cut sugar at a Bali retreat.

You can debate the science endlessly and find support for every view you want. You will know the truth when you do it and track your own results.

Questions people ask

How do you stop sugar cravings?

Get the added-sugar products out of the house first, because willpower loses to proximity every time.

Then work on the emotional side, because most cravings are not hunger. That is the part yoga helps with, and it is why cutting sugar without changing anything else tends not to last.

What can I do in the moment a sugar craving hits?

Pause. Take one slow breath in and a longer breath out, three times, and see whether you still want it. A 2023 Stanford trial found five minutes a day of breathing exercises, especially exhale-focused ones, improved mood more than mindfulness meditation, though it did not test cravings.

Why am I craving sugar?

Usually one of four things: you ate sugar recently and the loop is running, you are stressed and reaching for a reward, you are tired, or it is a hormonal point in the month.

Work out which one it is before you decide what to do about it.

How long do sugar cravings last when you quit?

The sharp ones ease within one to two weeks. The habitual ones, the biscuit with the cup of tea, take longer, because they are attached to a moment in your day rather than to sugar.

What is mindful eating?

The ability to take the emotion out of eating, so that you can see what you are actually doing and what it leads to.

It is not eating slowly with your eyes closed. It is eating with the same attention you would bring to a pose.

Do I have to give up sugar completely?

I had to, because for me a little always became a lot. Other people manage a middle path perfectly well.

You will find out which one you are quite quickly, and there is no virtue in pretending you are the second kind if you are the first.

Is honey better than sugar?

Not really. Honey is about 51% fructose as a share of its sugars, and table sugar is 50%, so on the fructose question they are almost the same thing.

Honey has other things going for it, but it is not a free pass, and neither are palm sugar, coconut sugar or rice malt syrup. Agave syrup is the one genuinely high in fructose.

Will quitting sugar make me lose weight?

It did for me, though that was not what I was aiming at and I would not promise it to you.

What I would say is that when stress comes down and awareness goes up, eating habits change on their own, and that is a much more comfortable way to arrive at it than dieting.

What if food feels genuinely out of control?

Then please talk to your GP or a dietitian, and do that alongside rather than instead of anything here. Disordered eating is common and it responds to proper help.

Yoga supports that work well. It is not a substitute for it.

Where do I start with the yoga part, in Darwin?

Flametree Yoga Studio teaches Iyengar yoga at Woolner and Coolalinga in Darwin, and LIVE online, with classes for beginners. Your first class is free if you are new to Flametree. See the class times on the timetable.

Our Bali retreats are also where a lot of this started for me, and the food there is still the best argument I know.

What I learned, in one list

• Yoga is quietening your mind so as to develop self-awareness
• Learning to live in the present, and not going back to the past
• Not looking back or forwards so much
• Through practice, you see yourself better
• You see that change is possible
• Habits become more obvious
• It translates into everyday life, including eating
• The change is much wider than just improving your postures

When it comes to sugar, you reap what you sow.

Practise this at Flametree

Flametree Yoga Studio teaches Iyengar yoga in the studio at Woolner and Coolalinga in Darwin, and LIVE online.

• New to Flametree? Your first class is free. In the studio, just come along. Online, go to our online class list, click the class time you want and we email you the link to join.
• Beginners: new students, and anyone who has been away three months or more, can get a half price 10 class pass with 2 extra classes free, to use online, in the studio, or both. See the beginner half price pass.
• Already practising yoga? The same half price 10 class pass with 2 extra classes free, for new students and for anyone away three months or more, is also available as the non-beginner half price pass.
• See every class time, including online classes, on the timetable.

Sources

• Balban MY et al. Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Rep Med 2023. doi:10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
• Li and others. The effect of high-fructose corn syrup vs. sucrose on anthropometric and metabolic parameters: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Nutrition 2022. doi:10.3389/fnut.2022.1013310
• Chris Lalor, sugar talk, Flametree Bali retreat.

Flametree Yoga Studio teaches Iyengar yoga in Darwin, at Woolner and Coolalinga, and LIVE online anywhere.

This article is one person’s story and general information, not medical advice. If food feels out of control, talk to your doctor or a dietitian. Last updated 14 October 2026: added the craving-moment section, the breathing research, and links to our recipes.