No Control Over Sugar Cravings? Try These to Keep your Sweet Tooth In Check

The moment we decide to follow a diet, cravings start following us in shadows. More often than we’d like, thoughts of chocolate, doughnuts, muffins, and sweets start taking over all the resolutions of following a healthy diet, and all we want to do is sink our teeth right into the sin of sweetness. The road to observing a diet becomes thornier if you have a sweet tooth. But have you ever thought why we crave sugar?

What Causes Sugar Cravings?

Sugar can be as addictive as some street drugs and can have similar effects on the brain. We can’t agree enough that sugar cravings do take over all your senses, making you dig into a tub of ice cream or a plateful of dessert.

Sugar is an essential element for our body and it is imperative for our body to keep sugar levels stable to function normally. If the blood sugar levels fluctuate, chances are you may feel dizzy or nauseous. This happens because our body desperately needs and attempts to provide more fuel to stabilise the sugar levels. When you eat something, which is responsible to bring that blood sugar back down by transporting, it produces a lot of insulin. After the insulin is produced, it brings up the sugar levels again. So once you eat up, the same cycle begins again. If there’s already an underlying condition, low sugar levels can affect the body in a worse way. However, to balance the sugar content and to help our body process naturally, we need to intake fibre and protein rich foods in our diet. There could be other reasons like not drinking enough water or not having a balanced meal. It could also happen if you have gulped down on more salt than your body needed.

When you have long hours of gaps in your meals, when you have starved for a more than three hours, or when you are on low carb or no carb diets, your blood sugar drops down significantly and you start craving all sorts of high sugar foods. It could be anything from craving sweets, pastries, breads, bakery products, or more. However, the sugar rush you get with these items is just a temporary fix to get you going. Hence, a balanced diet approach is the best way to combat with it.

Nutrient Deficiencies Could Cause Sugar Cravings

The reason why you crave a certain food is because of low levels of any particular nutrient in your body. It could be magnesium, protein, or iron. Magnesium is needed for more than 300 biochemical reactions in the body, whereas iron plays a major role in metabolism process. When our body feels low sugar levels, it tricks our brain into thinking that artificial sweeteners and carb-rich foods will give it the much-needed fuel to carry on. However, the body can’t withstand the deficit for much longer sans real energy, which it gets from nutrient-rich food.

Things To Do Help You Stable Blood Sugar Levels

• Improve Sleep cycle

Our sleep cycle affects our food habits a big time. If you notice most cravings happen during those late-night binge-watching sessions. To ensure your body is functioning at a steady pace, you need to give it the much-needed rest.

• Keep Yourself Well Hydrated

When you are dehydrated, you tend to feel hungry or have certain cravings. So make sure you monitor your water intake. Drink atleast 2.5 to 3.5 litres of water every day.

• Reduce Stress

Stress is a huge factor when it comes to balancing your blood sugar level. If you feel you’re stressed out, try to focus on good thoughts and don’t over think things in your head as it could cause anxiety, which leads to drop in sugar levels. Practice meditation, reading or just hang out with someone that you love.

• Get Enough Exercise

Making sure you’re getting enough physical exercise. It doesn’t mean that you have to go to the gym and do super hardcore workouts every day, but just move your body enough to burn the excess calories and to maintain a healthy function. Go out for walks or do jumping jacks at home and get your blood circulation going.

How To Deal With Cravings

When you crave anything, pay very close attention to what kind of foods you crave for and note the specific time or hours of the day that you crave a particular food. Our body is creature of habit and even the bad ones mostly run on a schedule. If you notice something wrong in your diet pattern, work on it and replace it with a healthier option. Replace sweets craving with healthy energy bars, naturally sweet foods like dates or figs, healthy treats like peanut or almond truffles, meat cravings with freshly homemade chicken or fish.

Do not keep long gaps between your meals. Our body needs a constant energy flow and it’s best if we give it the boost with healthy nutrient-rich food. Keep filling in with small snacks or green juices or smoothies instead of junk food and sugar-rich confectionaries.  

Make Note Of these foods That Beat Sugar Cravings 

• Nuts And Seeds: Sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, almonds are good combination and seeds help you stabilise blood sugar and thus get rid of the cravings.
• Fresh Fruits: Fruits are rich in natural sugar and a perfect choice to battle sugar cravings.
• Yogurt: The healthiest choice for yogurt is one that contains live cultures and is free of added sugar.

Over to you

No more getting scared or running away from cravings. You don’t even have to give in to them. With this approach you can get over your craving forever and be at peace too!