I can't tell you what to do that would work for you but I can tell you what my wife and I did. I also used to be a big bowl of cereal with milk in the morning guy. By the way, the cereal and milk are both high in sugar also.

Now I just don't eat breakfast. Have only about two cups of coffee (never was much of a coffee drinker before either). Tea would be another option. If I do have breakfast for some reason it will be eggs, bacon and sausage.

The trick to not eating breakfast is having enough protein and fat the supper meal before. I just don't get hungry any more before noon. But the meal before is the key to not being hungry. Eat a bunch of carbs and sugar at supper and I would definitely be "starving" by mid morning the next day. Carbohydrates are just long chains of sugar. As they get digested and broken down they break down into sugar. They are a fast form of energy and will make a person hungry a few hours after consumption.

We still love a "breakfast" meal of eggs, bacon and sausage, but now we have it for lunch or supper on occasion. Water is the best drink there is. I like soda water with a splash of lemon or lime (we have a soda machine with a 30# bottle of CO2). Anyone used to drinking sugary drinks will say "yuck" to it. I did. It was only after getting over the sweet taste and addiction to sugar that other foods started tasting good, including water.

Giving up sugar has been compared to giving up smoking. I never smoked so can not comment on that comparison but I know it took me several months to get over the sweet taste with diet sodas being my last addiction to fall.

Your liver and pancreas will thank you if you quit or drastically reduce your sugar consumption. If you have a bit of a belly and a waistline larger than when you were younger you likely have a fatty liver. The fructose in sugar is processed almost exclusively by the liver and turns into fat in the liver. NAFDL (non alcoholic fatty liver disease) is very common and is caused mostly by fructose which is processed by the liver through the same pathways as alcohol. Thus fructose causes the same disease as alcohol. Table sugar is half fructose. Fruit sugar is fructose.

Good old water. That is the best drink. It is what humans have drank up until the last few hundred years of human existence. With high level sugary concentrated drinks only the last few generations in our modern diet.

John

Edit: is fruit good for you?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6LL92Zs5L0