Absolutely the same for me as Justjen and Gidget. When you're heavily, and I mean heavily addicted to sugar and grains, as in "sneak-out-at-2AM-to-get-your-fix" addicted, the only way I can see out of this is to go cold turkey. Otherwise you're almost doomed to failure. Do alcoholics and drug addicts cut down gradually?--that's almost funny to think about. If you can't comprehend that, then you've never been addicted.

On the other hand you, runnr, only needing to lose 15 lbs., don't appear to have terribly dysfunctional eating habits, or at least if you do, they aren't causing you to gain hundreds of pounds, so maybe a gradual shift would work for you.