sugar overload

…are you high? Our irresistible desire for sweets may be our biggest diet downfall

Sweet treats are bad news because they typically deliver a load of calories with little to no nutrition

On average, each of us scarfs 25 pounds more sugar annually than women did back when American Bandstand started airing in color. There's no dancing around it: Sugar is a huge part of what's making us fat.

Now brace yourself for two more nasty news flashes: (1) Eating sugar can stoke your appetite rather than satisfy it, and (2) it can even become addictive--no surprise to those of us who have a daily 3 p.m. Snickers jones so strong we might be tempted to hurl an office chair at the vending machine if we ever ran out of change.

But don't despair, gummy-bear lovers: There's light at the end of this frosted, candy-coated tunnel. With a little determination, you can train yourself to stop craving sugar. And when you do, you'll experience something truly sweet: weight-loss success

By constantly eating sugar, you also force your pancreas to work overtime. As you eat more, it pumps out massive amounts of insulin; eventually, your body may become less sensitive to sugar and, essentially, build up a resistance to it. Just as a frequent drinker needs to knock back more beers in order to feel their effects, you can begin to need more sugar to feel satisfied.

And if getting too many calories is what worries you, reaching for a Sprite Zero isn't the solution: Artificial sweeteners may be almost as bad for you as HFCS. In 2004, a study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that rats ate more after consuming an artificially sweetened drink than they did after sipping sugar water. Researchers speculate that calorie-free artificial sweeteners act like stomach teasers: As you swallow diet soda, your body anticipates the arrival of calories. When they don't show up, your body sends you looking elsewhere for them, often in a snack bowl.

Here comes the hard-to-swallow truth: The only way to curb a sugar habit is to cut back drastically. It will be rough in the beginning, but your body will crave sugar less as it regains its insulin sensitivity. In order to extract your sweet tooth, you first need to know how much sugar you're actually eating