Do this to stop sugar cravings

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If you feel like sugar’s controlling your life and you can’t resist cookies, cakes, chocolates, and ice cream, no matter how hard you try, I know how you feel, but it’s not your fault. This has nothing to do with willpower or self-control, and you shouldn’t feel bad about yourself because of it. I’m going to give you some safe and effective strategies to help you turn off these sugar cravings for good. And don’t worry, I’ll make everything really simple and easy to understand.

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So, why is sugar so hard to resist? Imagine living thousands of years ago. You’re out hunting for food and you find some honey or berries. The sweet taste of these foods tells your brain one that the food is safe to eat. You know that it won’t poison you and two that the food contains a lot of energy that your body can store and use when there’s nothing to eat. So your brain in that situation will be telling you to eat as much as possible. Fast forward to today and it’s a very different story. Now there’s sugar

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everywhere. So each time you see cookies or donuts, your brain still tells you, “Eat, eat, eat.” We don’t know when we’ll get more. But unfortunately, there’s lots more where that came from. So you keep eating more and more sugar. Another problem is that sugar makes you high. Literally, there’s a chemical that’s made in our brain called dopamine. Some people call dopamine the happy hormone. The moment something sweet touches your tongue, a message goes to your brain to

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release dopamine and you feel amazing. And then um in your gut you have these special cells called neuropod cells. When these cells sense even the tiniest amount of sugar in your food, even though it’s so small that you can’t even taste it yourself, they become excited and they send messages to your brain, which makes your brain release dopamine. Imagine it’s a quiet evening and you look up at the night sky and you see a single firework. It’s beautiful. It’s exciting. But if you were to see that same single

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firework every day, after a while you wouldn’t even notice it. But then say you look out one night and you see 30 fireworks exploding and all the color and everything and you’re like, “Wow, that’s beautiful.” And you’d be excited again. So that’s the problem. When you eat lots of sugar all the time, your brain starts to change and you need more and more sugar to get the same level of happiness and excitement that you got before and this makes your cravings even stronger.

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The good news is that you can retrain your brain to feel satisfied without sugar. But before we talk about that, let’s look at another major reason why your cravings can feel so strong. When you eat a sugary snack, your blood glucose, that’s your blood sugar, shoots up. When this happens, your body releases insulin. And insulin is a messenger that goes around telling your cells that there’s too much sugar in the blood and that they need to open up and remove the sugar. Having lots of sugar in your blood is

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actually poisonous. And because your body is so desperate to remove the sugar from your blood, it produces more insulin than what you actually need at that time. The result of this is that your blood sugar drops back to normal, but it keeps going down until it’s too low. This is called a blood sugar crash and you start feeling shaky and irritable and hungry. When this happens, your body panics. It thinks that you’re running out of energy. Basically, you’re going to die. So, your brain immediately sends signals

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saying, “We need sugar and we need it now.” So, you reach for something sugary again so you can get some quick energy. And this leads to another blood sugar spike, more insulin release and another blood sugar crash. So this is what we call the blood sugar roller coaster because your blood sugar is going through a cycle of spiking and crashing throughout the day. This makes you want to eat sugary foods all the time. So, if you’ve had a long day and you come home and you open the fridge and

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you see a bowl of salad next to a slice of chocolate cake, let’s be honest, which one do you think you’d pick? When you’re under stress, your body produces another hormone called cortisol. In ancient times, stress meant danger and having more sugar in your blood would have given you some quick energy to run for your life, you know, to survive. Nowadays, most of us aren’t trying to physically run away from danger or from something that’s trying to eat us. What we have now is more

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mental stress. you know, dealing with your boss and your colleagues at work. Um, worrying about losing your job, about having enough money to take care of yourself and your family, the stress of taking care of sick parents or a sick spouse. All this raises your cortisol levels, which pushes you to look for sweet foods so you can feel better. So, how do we stop our life from being controlled by sugar? First of all, we’ll look at some hacks that you can use so you won’t even feel like eating sugar.

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And then we’ll look at some supplements that you can use to um help reduce some of the cravings. So, we know that eating lots of sugar puts us on uh into this cycle of spiking and crashing blood sugar, which makes us want to eat more sugar, right? So, you need to make sure that you start your day properly. I’m not going to tell you that breakfast is the most important meal of the day because it’s not. You don’t have to eat breakfast. What is more important is what you eat for your first meal of the

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day, no matter when you eat it. I personally do intermittent fasting most days, so I usually eat after 12:00 noon. Okay? But if you eat in the morning, some of the worst things you could possibly eat for breakfast would be breakfast cereal with skimmed milk, toast, and orange juice. That’s a sugar bomb that’s going to send your blood sugar sky high. Even if you’re not diabetic, make sure that you eat a high protein breakfast. This will stop your blood sugar from spiking and crashing

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throughout the day. You won’t be so hungry later on, so you won’t feel like snacking on sugary foods. Some good protein sources include eggs, chicken or turkey, other birds, fish, seafood, Greek yogurts, cheese, nuts, beef or lamb, other types of meat, beans, and other legumes. Apart from protein, make sure that you have lots of healthy fats in your diet and you can add some fiber as well. These won’t raise your blood sugar and they’ll slow down how quickly your body absorbs any

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carbs or sugar in your meal. So, that was step number one. Get off the blood sugar roller coaster. Replace the sugary foods that you usually eat with natural options. Um, put some fruit out where you can see it so that um whenever you feel like eating something sweet, you can eat the fruit. The sugar in the fruit comes with fiber and with water, and it won’t give you that sugar rush. It’s really, really hard to munch through five apples in one sitting, but it’s very easy to eat a big

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bag of cookies and still feel hungry. So, that was step number two. Replace some of those addictive fake sugary foods with natural alternatives. If you eat a lot of sugar, just cutting it off and stopping abruptly can make your cravings even stronger. Gradually reduce the amount of sugar that you add to your food so that your taste buds can adjust. So if you use three teaspoons of sugar in your tea, try going down to two and a half for one week and then going down to two the next week until you can

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drink your tea comfortably without any sugar or with just a little. If you have sugary snacks or desserts every day, try cutting back to every other day and then gradually to maybe certain days of the week, like maybe the weekend. Cook as much of your own food as possible. Then you’ll know exactly what you’re eating. Read labels of all the foods that you buy. Watch out for hidden sugars in everything. And um this can be really tricky because these food companies use lots of different names to hide the

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sugar they’re putting in your food. So that was number three. Watch out for hidden sugars. Sugar cravings are often linked to emotions and habits. Don’t ignore or push away these emotions. You just need to find different ways to handle them. And um here are some simple techniques that you can use. So a speed bump doesn’t stop you completely, it just slows you down. So, next time you feel an emotional craving for sweets, try creating your own little speed bump, you can set a 10-minute

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timer and see if you still feel like eating that sweet food afterwards. You can try drinking a big glass of water or some herbal tea or some coffee. You could uh take a short walk or stretch or do anything else that you know distracts you and takes your attention away from the sugar. Cravings tend to come in waves. So quite often just taking this no short pause is enough to let the craving just naturally subside. If you pay attention, you’ll find that your cravings are often triggered by um

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certain emotions or situations. Simply noticing when and why you crave sugar can help you break the pattern. So ask yourself, am I really hungry right now or am I just feeling stressed, lonely, or bored? You know, over time you’ll start to see patterns. Stress is one of the strongest emotional triggers for sugar cravings. To relieve stress and lower your cortisol levels, make um some of these activities part of your daily routine. Box breathing is very effective. You can try listening to calming music.

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A quick walk outside, even for a few minutes, can really help to de-stress. If you’re lonely, you know, call a um call a friend, text them. If you’re anxious, journaling or talking about it with someone and someone that you trust can help. And some people like to draw or play music or have a relaxing bath. So, that was step number four. Look for your triggers. There are two hormones that tell you when to eat and when to stop. Gorellin is the hunger hormone and leptin is the fullness hormone. When you don’t get

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enough sleep, your body makes more of the hunger hormone which makes you want to eat and eat more sugar for quick energy. So try to go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time every day, even on weekends. Um, you know, have a relaxing bedtime routine. Dim your lights. Reduce your screen time before bed. Read or do some gentle stretching. And then keep your bedroom cool, dark, and quiet for deep sleep. And don’t eat anything within 2 hours of your bedtime. Chromium is a mineral that you need in

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tiny amounts. Your body uses it to break down carbohydrates. Supplementing with chromium can help to reduce appetite. It um reduces hunger and help to reduce cravings. You can get chromium from nuts, broccoli, and meat. If you take the supplement form, you could take from 200 to 1,000 micrograms a day in divided doses. Magnesium regulates glucose and insulin as well as um chemicals in the brain that help to control mood and appetite. But when you don’t have enough magnesium, your cravings can become really intense and

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um you tend to want to eat lots of chocolates, which kind of makes sense because cocoa, which you find in chocolate, contains a lot of magnesium. You can also find magnesium in nuts, seeds, and leafy greens. Not having enough B vitamins can push you towards sugar. You know, looking for a quick energy source, especially B1, which helps your body to use carbohydrates. B6 and folates um affects your mood and B12 helps your body to produce energy. Foods are rich in vitamin and the B vitamins include meats, eggs, nuts and

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leafy greens. Zinc helps to regulate your appetite and you need it for insulin storage and release. Not having enough zinc can lead to sugar cravings and increased appetite. You find zinc naturally in um meats, in shellfish, in seeds and legumes. And for the supplements, up to 400 mg a day is generally thought to be safe.