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4. How to Deal with Cravings
Getting over sugar cravings is not easy, but then getting over any addiction requires a lot of willpower on your part. Know that the efforts you make are well worth it, as your long-term health requires you to tame the sugar beast.
Try these tips to stop your sugar cravings:
- Eat often: This not only helps balance your blood sugar, but it also lessens the cravings you will have. While you may feel silly eating lunch at ten o’clock in the morning and having another lunch around noon, and yet another meal at two o’clock, having many small is a great way to balance your blood sugar and keep the cravings-monster asleep.
- Eat dried fruit: Many people crave sweet foods after they eat. Eating something like fruit, or a dried fruit, following a meal can help. Don’t overdo it, though because fruits do contain sugars and dried fruit is generally higher on the glycemic index than fresh fruit.
- Go Nuts: Try eating nuts or nut butters (like peanut butter, almond butter…). Nuts can often fill that need for something salty and satisfying.
- Salad greens: Many grocery stores stock mixed salad greens. Eating greens before a meal tends to fill people up; they are also loaded with vitamins and other nutrients (which is what your body is really craving) so it’s a great two-for-one filler-upper!
- Up the Fiber: Eat some form of fiber before every meal. There are pills for this (the best is called PGX) and these fibers swell and help you to feel full.
- Exercise: If you feel those cravings beginning to creep up on you, go for a walk. Exercise not only gets you out of the kitchen, away from the snack machine, and away from your temptations, but exercise has also been shown to reduce cravings.
- Brush your teeth: Brushing gives you a bit of that sweet taste you are looking for and many people don’t feel like eating once their mouths are clean.
- Drink water: Sometimes cravings get mixed up in your brain and what your body really needs is water and not sugar. Try drinking a glass of water when your cravings begin and see if that stops them.
- Remember, it is just a craving: You are not a slave to your cravings. When you start to feel that you really need something sweet, stop and think about it. You have probably eaten recently so you are not going to starve – even though your brain is trying to convince you that you are. You will be surprised how craving disappear after a while.
Today’s Task: Be prepared. If you are going to make it through the whole 30 days, then you are going to need to have something ready for those times when you feel the temptation to cheat. Don’t let yourself get too hungry because that is when the temptation to grab whatever is close and easy is the strongest. Plan ahead and have your snacks ready for when you are running late and need to grab something quick.
Tomorrow: We turn our focus to supplements to help with cravings.
<— Go to Day 3 Go to Day 5 —>
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