Sugar makes up a third of our caloric intake and leads to a variety of health conditions — all of which are bad, in case you’re wondering. Sweet cravings prevent us from sticking to the fruits and vegetables we know are good for us.
While many of us want to lose weight and cut back on our sugar intake, we often don’t succeed. Take it from Walt Disney: “the way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” Whether you’re going cold turkey or you aim to slowly reduce your sugar intake, here’s how to defeat that pesky sweet craving that gets in your way.
So, why do we get sugar cravings?
One reason could be simple — dehydration. Other reasons include not eating enough — eating sweet foods can give your body the temporary relief it thinks it needs. You also may have eaten too much starch and not enough fat or protein. Another possible option is that you’ve eaten too much salt. As you can see, one craving usually triggers another. For anyone looking to quit their cravings for sugar, here are 10 tips.
Sweet Defeat
Arianne Perry is the co-founder of Sweet Defeat, a tablet that renders sweet cravings null and void. She is also a cravings coach and writes about nutrition.
The tablet uses an extract from Gymnema, zinc, and mint for taste. The Gymnema Sylvestre leaf is an ancient plant that is used to block sweet receptors. These receptors actually cause sugar cravings — once they latch on to a sweet molecule, they want more. By blocking these sugar-receiving taste buds, sweet cravings are essentially blocked. The zinc helps with the blocking process.
Just one bite of sugar can activate your taste buds for up to 30 minutes. This means that even after a meal is completed, you will still likely have a craving for sugar. Once this craving is recognized by the brain, it sends signals for more cravings, which is the opposite of what you want. This discourages you from eating too many donuts, which you can thank your waistline and insulin levels for later.
Eliminating too much sugar from your diet is made easier by going about it in the right way. Eliminate the sweetness option from your refrigerator by stocking up on vegetables. Natural sugar, such as those found in fruits, is a much better alternative to artificial sweets with high fructose corn syrup. These artificial sweeteners are also difficult for your body to digest. The body has a difficult time breaking these molecules down, and over time they can clog your arteries and lead to unintended health consequences.
Takeaway
There are many more negative effects of too much sugar that justify decreasing the amount you intake. When you eat sugar, you feel good temporarily. However, the tendency to overindulge is too great to bear sometimes. It is necessary to abstain or at least cut back on sugar from time to time to give your body a break from it. However, this does not mean you must go without entirely all of the time. However, it is a fact that if you eliminate most sugar from your diet, your body will most likely thank you for it.
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