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Lesson 1: Recognize if you are addicted to sugar and modify your diet accordingly.

At this advanced level, you need not be obsessive about sugar; if sugar is the fourth or fifth ingredient in your food, that's acceptable. Many people, however, will need to avoid sugar permanently for optimal health.

Refined sugar has been found to be far more addictive than cocaine-- one of the most addictive and harmful substances currently known. Similar to drug or alcohol addiction, if you are addicted to sugar then total abstinence is required.

One tool I find very useful to help curb sugar cravings is EFT. You can use EFT to successfully treat a wide variety of emotional stresses, including the food cravings and emotional responses related to sugar and grains.

Limiting sugar is critical to your optimal health. Eating refined sugar weakens your immune system and promotes yeast overgrowth, both of which are contributing factors to the number one killer: cancer. A weak immune system, in and of itself, is guaranteed to impair your health and promote virtually every disease known to man.

High sugar consumption can also lead to adrenal exhaustion, common symptoms of which include feeling mentally and emotionally stressed, sugar and salt cravings, moodiness, and feeling weak and lethargic.

All non-diet (regular) soft drinks have 8 teaspoons of sugar in each can. Most packaged cereals have sugar as their major ingredient. When in doubt about the sugar content of a food, look at the list of ingredients and see how many grams of carbohydrates are listed. Unless the carbohydrates are from aboveground vegetables you should be concerned that they represent sugars that could alter your insulin levels.

Lesson 2: If you really want sugar, stevia is the best substitute.

The safest sweetener to use would be a high quality stevia. It is a natural herb originating from South America that has been used for 1,500 years, and has been shown to be very safe. It is several hundred times sweeter than sugar, so you don’t need much.

Lesson 3: Avoid these natural sweeteners:

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