Sugar Substitutes You Need To Try
For a sugar detox, you need to find some alternatives to satisfy your sugar cravings. This can be a fruit smoothie or a frozen yogurt bark recipe. Whatever you try, stay away from refined sugar. Refined sugar is far more harmful than natural sugars found in raw honey and fruits, and it can be as addicting as drugs.
Honey has a plethora of benefits including being antibacterial and anti-inflammatory. It also reduces the risk of cancer and helps fight infections. Whether you have a sore throat or digestive problems, honey can fix seemingly everything. Replace refined sugar with honey in your recipes and feel the difference. Not only will it satisfy your sugar craving but also improve your immune system in the process.
When you feel the sugar rush coming, dont reach for chocolates or brownies. Fruits like berries, mangoes, bananas, and apples have plenty of natural sugar in them and will satisfy your sweet tooth easily without causing any damage to your body. Snack bars made from oats, dates, peanut butter, dark chocolate, and honey are also a good option for a quick dose of sugar.
Sweet potatoes are a rich source of vitamin A and vitamin C. They taste sweet and are pretty filling too. Besides containing a variety of minerals, theyre also high in fiber which promotes gut health and digestion. People trying to lose weight often eat sweet potatoes to control their hunger.
Clean Out Your Fridge And Pantry
Im sure that if youre someone who has a sweet tooth, your kitchen is full of products with sugar. Well, that just makes it super easy for you to give in to those cravings.
Just throw out all of those unhealthy products. I know, it may seem like a waste of money. But what money can be more important than your health and happiness?
And once youve thrown out those unhealthy products, it will be easier to begin your sugar cleanse and not to give in to those cravings because they wont be within the reach of your hand!
Reset Your Insulin Levels
Refined carbs and sugar spike your insulin levels as your body tries to convert the glucose into useful energy.
Unfortunately, too much sugar can lead to insulin resistance. This is where your body stops listening to the right signals and, in effect, stops converting the glucose in your blood stream.
This leads to all types of health issues, such as type 2 diabetes, but can also lead to increased sugar cravings.
To reset your insulin sensitivity and cut cravings, youre going to need to detox from all major sources of sugar in your diet.
Try a week long detox, and then reintroduce healthy complex carbs back into your diet, making sure to stick to the points mentioned before.
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Pair Fruit With Protein
Pairing fruit with a protein will calm your craving and the protein-packed ingredients will keep you feeling satisfied longer. Kathy Siegel, MS, RDN, CDN New York-based registered dietitian and nutrition consultant for Triad to Wellness suggests trying a banana dipped in natural peanut butter, mandarin oranges, toasted almonds and cottage cheese or a smoothie made with berries, a banana, milk and ice.
Keep Your Meals Diverse
Make sure you incorporate all food groups when you prepare a meal. According to Nutrition Stripped founder, McKel Hill, MS, RDN, LDN, people don’t realize they’re what they’re missing in their meals and it could be detrimental. “I’ve found in my practice that often people crave sugar because of generally imbalanced diet as a whole,” she says. “At mealtimes, they might be missing out on enough fiber to keep them physically full or can be lacking enough protein to keep them satiated, or enough healthy fats. All the macronutrients work together to keep our blood sugars stabilized and keep us satiated so we need them all.”
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What Foods Stop Sugar Cravings
19 Foods That Can Fight Sugar Cravings
- Fruit. When most people feel sugar cravings, they reach for high-fat, high-sugar foods like chocolate . …
- Berries. Berries are an excellent, nutritious choice for stopping sugar cravings. …
- Dark Chocolate. …
- Sugar-Free Chewing Gum or Mints. …
- Legumes. …
- 7) Baked Pears or Apples. …
- 8) Chocolate Dipped Banana Bites.
How To Stop Sugar Cravings In 5 Simple Steps
Excess of anything is typically unhealthy and thats particularly true for sugar addiction. A sweet tooth is harmless until you begin to overindulge. Intake of more than the standard amount of sugar every day causes many negative effects and diabetes is the most common one. Besides heart diseases, dental issues, and cancer, sugar addiction can also damage your brain. If you have irresistible urges to consume sugary foods, thats a sure sign you need to learn how to stop sugar cravings. The more sugar you eat, the stronger your cravings will get. So here are a few tips to counter the sugar addiction cycle.
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Eat A Substantial Amount Of Protein Every Day
Women need around 46 grams of protein every day, while men need 56 grams of protein depending on their weight and age. This means you should eat a meal with at least 20 grams of protein, 3 times a day. Proteins are essential for satisfying hunger for longer periods of time and help your body repair muscles for proper functioning.
Why Do People Get Addicted To Sugar
In a nutshell, people become addicted to sugar because their brain tells them it feels good. When its consumed, sugar turns into glucose, which is the fuel that powers the cells in your body. Glucose also helps your brain produce serotonin, the happy hormone that lifts your mood. Overcoming sugar addiction may mean youll have to find other ways to help elevate your emotions.
Addiction to sugar can form more easily in children than in adults. This is because the neural pathways in childrens developing brains respond more strongly to excess glucose. This means eating a lot of sugar early in life can result in a lifelong sugar addiction. Learning how to break a sugar addiction as an adult can be challenging, but overall, decreasing your sugar intake gives you a healthier body and mind.
Sugar works on the dopamine receptors in the brain, similarly to drugs and alcohol. The sugar you eat starts working on the reward centers of your brain, giving you artificial mood boosts. Excess sugar can dampen the bodys ability to produce dopamine and regulate your moods on its own, which can lead to a physical addiction. The physical component makes beating a sugar addiction challenging for many people.
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Include Complex Carbs In Your Meals
Sugar is a simple, harmful carbohydrate while fiber and starch are complex beneficial carbs. Incorporate complex carbs in every meal of the day and watch the sugar cravings run away. For breakfast, add oats and cereals to the table. Replace milky bread with whole wheat bread at lunch. Eat some rice with beans or peas for dinner, and youll be good to go.
Sugar Craving Cause: You Chowed Down On Salty Foods
When you dine out or eat highly processed, packaged foods, your food has more sodium in it than you probably even realize. This usually remains true even when youre eating something healthy, such as grilled salmon and sautéed or steamed spinach, from your fave healthy restaurant. Heres the kicker: Oftentimes, the saltier your food, the bigger your sweet craving.
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Healing A Sugar Addiction: What To Do First
Structures, routines, and rituals are like a riverbank: offering support during those times when you’re craving sugar.
So where do you begin? Its easy to get overwhelmed when youre trying to understand what drives a sugar addiction or understand how to eat less of it. I invite you to look at it as a journey and a process, not something you have to figure out all at once.
1. Start by observing yourself. Keep a food diary and track how much sugar youre eating. How do you feel after you eat sugar? What triggers a sugar binge? With this awareness, step back and examine your patterns. Does one bite lead to a desire for more and more?
2. Add self care. If you decide you want to transition into a low or no sugar diet, give yourself a supportive physical foundation. This includes adding regular, rhythmic self care to your life like:
- Eating breakfast every morning
- Including fat and protein in your meals
- Eating regular meals
- Drinking more water and less juice, sodas, and more
- Creating a nourishing bedtime routine where youre regularly getting 7 + hours of sleep a night
Where many people get stuck is they try to give up sugar without building this physiological foundation first.
3. Plan for where you get stuck. If you know that despite your best intentions, you eat 3 candy bars every afternoon, or you gorge on ice cream most weekends, plan for it. Be gently honest with yourself and accept that this is where you are right now.
Cut Out Sugar In Foods That Aren’t Sweet
If you can’t give up your ice cream and chocolate, try to eliminate ketchup and salsa. “Sugar is in many condiments and sauces, and one must be careful not to assume that because it’s not a dessert or a sweet food it must not have sugar,” says Ilene Ruhoy, MD, PhD, a doctor trained in both pediatric and adult neurology and a gut council member for Jetson. “Sugar is found in many kinds of ketchup, mustards, salsas, marinaras, and other sauces. It can also be found in some meals such as sushi rice and polenta.”
In fact, according to Dr. Drucker, manufacturers add sugar to 74 percent of packaged foods! “Sugar is the most popular ingredient added to packaged foods a breakfast bar made with ‘real fruit and whole grains’ may contain 15 grams or more of added sugarsugar is literally hidden everywhere in our food supply. Adults, children, toddlers and even babies are unknowingly conditioned to desire sugar.” Making a habit of checking ingredient labels will open your eyes to just how much sugar is added to some of the most unexpected foods.
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How To Stop Sugar Cravings: 8 Tips To Use Right Now
If you’re craving sugar, here are some ways to tame those cravings.
But won’t eating more often mean overeating? Not if you follow Neville’s advice to break up your meals. For instance, have part of your breakfast — a slice of toast with peanut butter, perhaps — and save some yogurt for a mid-morning snack. “Break up lunch the same way to help avoid a mid-afternoon slump,” Neville says.
Continued
What Is Sugar Addiction
For starters, we should distinguish between sugar addiction and caffeine addiction. Most people are well aware of their caffeine addiction. After all, they know that if they dont have their coffee in the morning, they experience tremendous, debilitating migraines. These migraines are the bodys way of telling you that something is missing and are the direct result of withdrawal symptoms from not having caffeine. However, when it comes to sugar addiction, most individuals are not truly aware that they are addicted.
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Understanding Sugar’s Power Can Help To Set You Free
A friend and I were talking the other day about our addiction to sugar and fatty comfort foods .
We do so well for a while, and then somehow find ourselves back at it, eating large amounts of whatever the sweet food drug of the moment is. It’s a slippery slope we somehow find ourselves sliding down yet again.
I’ve written before about my challenges with emotional eating and have truly done so much better for many years. I get swept up by sugar cravings much more rarely and even now when I fall off the sugary treat wagon, I do it by eating large amounts of high fiber, all-natural, gluten-free, dairy-free treats.
The damage to my body is much less than in the days when my drug of choice was a cheap grocery store cake full of transfats and junk. But organic cane sugar is still sugar, and I simply can’t seem to use it in a healthy way. I end up on the same unhealthy, compulsive wagon again, albeit in a more nutritious form.
In whatever form, sugar has an unhealthy impact on my skin, my body, my moods, and my weight when I eat too much of it. I realized recently, while talking to my friend, that I need to take this issue more seriously than I ever have if I ever want to truly leave it behind.
Here are some strategies that we discussed that have been working for me:
1. Find rewards that really work.
Find ways to take care of yourself in place of sugar things that deeply nurture you without the side effects and addictions.
How An Emotional Bond With Sugar Develops
Seeking out sugar is an attempt to feel safe in the presence of discomfort or overwhelming emotional pain. The safety is found in the sugar itself the chocolate, brownies, or ice cream. Eating the sugar brings relief from pain and arouses feelings of warmth and connection, which is why you return it again and again.
There is often trauma, isolation, or some form of loss underneath this pull for sugar – either in the past, or in the present. I talk to many people who speak of painful times in their lives – a death of a parent, child or spouse, divorce, bankruptcy, financial loss, and more – as a time when their “love” for sugar began or developed.
In the face of loss and pain, the sugar becomes a “home,” a secure base.
Over time, you may become bonded to the sugar what you turn to repeatedly in order to feel safe, soothed, and secure. In psychological terms, the sugar is a secure attachment an emotional bond.
There is hope – the emotional bond with sugar can be healed.
You heal this emotional bond with sugar through connection, compassion, and imagination. The bond with sugar needs to be grieved so that it can be let go. And you replace the bond with sugar with other, deeper bonds, with true refuge loving relationship with yourself, with Life, and with others.
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Retrain Your Taste Buds To Accept Less Sweet Foods
Getting your taste buds onside can help make nutrition-packed choices a lot easier as you will be naturally drawn to better food options.
- Cut back then cut out sugar in hot drinks and at breakfast, and add less honey to your smoothies.
- Opt for water as your drink of choice. Try limiting all flavoured drinks, including sugar-free versions with sweeteners. They may not have sugar but they may still encourage you to like sweet-tasting things.
- Try low-fat unsweetened yoghurt rather than varieties with added sugar. It may taste odd to start with but you will get used to it. Add a little fresh or frozen fruit for sweetness if needed.
- Enjoy nut butters , avocado or hummus on your bread or crackers rather than jam or honey.
- Get into green juice, tomato juice or water rather than sweetened drinks diet or otherwise.
- If you are going to have chocolate, opt for a few squares of dark chocolate with a high percentage of cocoa. It is much less sweet but still a treat.
Fight Sweet Cravings With Bitters
Bitter taste receptors arent only on your tongue theyre found throughout your digestive system and on other organs. They largely go unused if you eat a traditional Western diet, but stimulating those receptors with bitter foods and herbs positively affects hormones involved in controlling hunger and appetite, which could help keep cravings in check.
Bitter herbs and aromatic bitters are also commonly used in traditional medicine to help stabilize and maintain healthy blood sugar levels. The pancreas, which makes insulin, actually contains bitter taste receptors.
To stimulate your bitter receptors, try adding a dropperful or two of aromatic bitters on the back of your tongue before meals and at your usual snack time. In terms of other herbal therapy, many herbs such as burdock root and dandelion root are naturally bitter, having been derived from bark and roots. Some bitter herbs also help support healthy blood glucose levels, such as andrographis, Dr. Rawls says.
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Why Is Sugar Addicting
What’s wrong with sugar, you ask? Everything. Outside of making things taste better, sugar has no nutritional value and is full of empty calories. These calories can create weight problems and, in turn, heighten your risk of heart disease and stroke.
That’s only the physical downside. The psychological component is real, too. Sugar releases dopamine and can increase serotonin production, a hormone that can boost your mood.
In reality, sugar isn’t any different than comfort food or a satisfying fast food meal loaded with simple carbohydrates. These carbohydrates are high on the glycemic index, meaning it takes less time to turn them into glucose. During this quicker digestion process, you may feel good in the short term, but hunger will quickly set in since sugary foods lack nutrients and leave you unsatisfied.
It can turn into a vicious cycle. At first, the sugar you eat tastes good, bringing on a “high” when your brain initiates the dopamine release. Then, the sugar causes your insulin levels to increase, leading to a drop in blood sugar levels. As your blood sugar falls, your appetite and hunger levels increase. Your body then craves sugar again to fix any hunger deficiencies or feelings of unease, even if the fix is only temporary.
