Beeminder to quit sugar?

Newbee
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I was wondering if anyone has used Beeminder to quit sugar.

That’s one of my challenges that I am facing right now.

And as far as I can think of, it will involve me inputting the goal, and having to not lie to myself. The reason I ask is that I’ve just broken my commitment to myself, so feeling guilty. I guess I could ask my wife to do the data input, but was wondering if there are other ways?

Thanks

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I think what might be useful is a do less goal that that says you can x amount of items over a certain sugar count a day. I think the important point would be to start the goal with a super reasonable slope per day so you can track how often you eat something super sugary and then adjust from there.

If I was making this goal it would look something like:

Step 1: Make a list of some of the sugary things I eat in a day (e.g. ice cream, soda).
Step 2: Look at their labels and see the average amount of sugar per serving (lets say 40 grams)
Step 3: For 2 weeks track often per day I eat something that goes over the 40 gram threshold (e.g. 5 times a day)
Step 4: Create a do less that takes away 40% of the number from Step 3. So I would be able to eat sugary things over the threshold 3 times a day
Step 5: If the rate seems to aggressive adjust in about 2 weeks
Step 6: After a couple of months drop it down to 2 times a day.

I think the most important part of the steps above is the tracking and slowly easing off the sugar. In the current food environment it is very difficult to cut sugar out completely so a more iterative approach will be both more long lasting and effective than quitting cold turkey immediately.

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Oof, yeah, been there. Here would be my suggestions:

  1. I agree with @cgamer1–keep your commitment conservative to start with and slowly ramp up the difficulty as it feels sustainable and helpful.
  2. Keep your stakes low enough that you’re willing to pay them on occasion.
  3. Consider paying the stakes as proof you sufficiently considered the cost of not meeting your goal. Derailing isn’t punishment, it’s bringing a sliver of the long-term consequence into the present so you can account for that in your in-the-moment decision making.
  4. If this is an area where you deal with shame or guilt routinely (I certainly have my areas), then consider making use of additional resources to address that, such as finding a therapist.
  5. If you find the guilt around derailing is debilitating, consider putting the goal on pause for a period of time while you focus on addressing the underlying emotions, or consider finding a goal that will help you improve your diet without it being so triggering.
  6. If you have a history of disordered eating, be very careful with Beeminder! And make sure you have the support you need (therapy, medical, etc) to make sure you’re on a path that is healthy for you.

Apologies if some of this doesn’t apply to you. These are just my thoughts on the general topic, not knowing the specifics of your situation.

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Thank you very much.

yes, when I had tried to do no sugar recently, I went cold turkey no sugar. While thinking of how to implement within beeminder, I relapsed and binged on sugar, which led me to the practicality with beeminder + no sugar.

really good suggestions, and I’ll try out the “low barrier” as a goal (opposed to cold turkey).

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