In spite of my discouragement, I continued on with my experiments. Next I tried to trade bad sugar for good sugar (a fruit or fruits for a cookie); the results showed that I was not quite ready for that trade. 
Then another idea came about: combine good and bad sugar by having a cookie and handful of fruit at the same time. Genius, it seemed to be the best of both worlds! I gave up the bad half of the empty nutrition item and ate a portion of the good half. I felt full faster and nutritionally grateful. For the first few days, my combination approach went well. Most days it did not go so well because I did not meet my own expectation. I initially thought I would leave something on the plate but instead I ate everything. I ate the half of a cookie that I should have thrown away which meant I was dipping the good and the bad, which proved this to be a twisted strategy.
Shortly after, I tried having sweets only one time a day, either in the morning or in the late afternoons. I tried to eliminate the habit of having sweets at night. I reminded myself that it did not meant that I could not have more than one cookie. All I was trying to do was reduce the frequency from eating added sugar 3 different times with in 24 hours to one time of added sugar sweets per day. I also had a conversation with myself, where I told myself that I could not cheat or go overboard by having 10 cookies at one setting. Having one designated time, allowed me to see what I was consuming and how much of the added sugar I was taking.
Because the one time per day sweet was working better than any of my other strategies, I decided to have sweets in the morning. I had one pumpkin scone (sweet pastry) and skipped any cookies or cake for the rest of the day (unless I was having a bad day). Moving the sweet time to daytime only made me feel like I was making some progress. I I felt I worked out a few of those calories in between all my chores so it felt like guilty free sugar. That did not last too long; I liked my desserts later at night far more than just occasionally.
Did you know that it is imperative to control urges when you are trying to stop an addictive habit? How the heck do you know what controls your urges? What triggers your urges? A few good replacements along the way to curb my urges were found through trial and error. Temporarily replacing the chocolate chip cookies with roasted nuts for snacks resulted in some success even if it meant enduring this switch only one day during the seven-day week. Doubtful that this incremental change would last long, an inspirational quote bestowed itself with this saying: “The journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step.” While the quote gave me some boost, I can’t resist asking, what does inspiration know about hard work? In any case, I want to be in a position where I could say, the journey of no added or refined sugar a day started with eliminating one teaspoon a day. At this minute, that is quite an ambitious feat! One day without sugar for me at this time feels like 1000 days without sleep. Another way to curb the sugar urge: eat morning proteins. The Internet sugar recovery sites advised to start with a protein at the beginning of the day, as this would help you feel full and lessen the sugar crave. Sometimes this worked, but all it took was a long, stressful day to, say, please somebody pass me the sugar! Guess what, I know where they keep the best desserts in the city. I will walk a mile to get there and wait in line for 30 minutes to get that. Might I remind you, stress is a powerful motivator; so is sugar. Proteins will have to work a little harder to beat sweets for me. “You little backslider!” said the sugar baby.
Eat more fruits, eat more fruits and eat more fruits. That advice helped reduced my tiny craves but not my strong ones.
Read the labels on the back of the box, on the individual bar, the can however the food is packaged or dressed up in. Read the numbers if you bought them yourself or even it was given to you for free. The numbers I read on the label were stored in my head and popped up unexpectedly which helped me build awareness and surprisingly re-think my choices. Learning the numbers associated with sugar, sodium, and fat nutrition labels on some of the products provided a rude awakening. Reading it over and over, I had a chance to process and decide what I wanted to bring home. I have had to put back many items on the shelves because I was surprised to see the content of sugar in the product, even when front of the package was labeled as pure or natural. Some examples of these type of products were and are are “healthy snacks” that are loaded with sugar were like the granola snacks and “healthy” cereals, and frozen foods.