You may not think much of your sugar addiction. It would seem, what is the problem? Sweets are available on every corner, and getting a new dose if the mood begins to sour is not so difficult. But it is still too naive to underestimate the harm of sweets: teeth deteriorate, it is more difficult to monitor your weight, mood swings affect relationships with others. I think you've also heard about diabetes.
On the other hand, most people are accustomed to sugar as something natural: from childhood, adults give their children candy to calm them down or just smile. There are lucky people who remain indifferent to sweets. But many, having become older and freed from parental restrictions, allow themselves as many sweets as they can absorb.
No matter how strong your addiction is, don't give up on yourself. There are several ways to painlessly reduce sugar cravings.
Consume more protein with your first meal
Research has shown that a protein-rich breakfast reduces sugar cravings throughout the day. Lean sources of protein such as Greek yogurt, unsweetened peanut butter, eggs and low-fat cheese help reduce the amount of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and increase the amount of pancreatic polypeptide, which signals fullness. These findings were confirmed at the University of Missouri, where MRI scans showed that those who ate a high-protein breakfast experienced less cravings for sweets later. Even if a piece doesn’t fit into your throat in the morning, still give preference to protein foods at your first meal.
Afterword
Nutritionists advise combining complex and fast carbohydrates, that is, eating desserts, but always after the main meal, and not instead of it. This scheme will not allow sugar to jump sharply, but energy will be produced gradually. But it will last for a long time, and then there will be no sudden loss of strength.
Consider whether you need to completely get rid of sweets. If you are simply worried about your figure, then learn to monitor your consumption, and not eliminate it completely. During active muscular and mental work, in stressful situations, sweets are a helper, not an enemy. On a weekend, on the contrary, you can eat fewer desserts. Remember that many substances are medicine in small doses and poison in large doses. In general, I would recommend focusing on the situation, getting rid of cravings, but not getting rid of sweets.
Develop your taste
In continuation of the previous point, the following advice: develop your taste and learn to enjoy products.
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Sliced tomato with fresh basil leaves, drizzled with flaxseed oil, lightly salted and peppered avocado, a cheese plate of course! Personally, I am delighted with such dishes. Although just three years ago, the first thing I thought about when I wanted to eat was chocolate or ice cream. It's a matter of habit.
Experiment with spices: cinnamon and ginger suppress sugar cravings. Delight your taste buds with more sophisticated additions than mayonnaise and ketchup—at least try balsamic vinegar and try different vegetable oils. Think about it: Is coffee with milk really not sweet enough? Lactose is not called milk sugar for nothing.
How much sugar do we need per day to avoid gaining weight?
- We don't need sugar to survive. We can do without it. There is now even a carnivore diet that eliminates sugar completely. We DO NOT need sugar. 4 grams of sugar per day is enough for us. But this depends on the state of health and existing problems.
- We are all very different, we metabolize sugar differently, but as for carbohydrates in cereals, root vegetables, fruits, this is a normal reaction in children, for example. I ate it and it doesn’t make me sleepy, it absorbs it normally, this is a healthy carbohydrate metabolism.
- It is better not to use unhealthy products that contain various syrups, maltose, dextrose. This is also sugar.
- Some doctors call sugar a toxic product.
Sleep more
The hormones ghrelin, leptin and insulin play a decisive role in cravings for sweets. Bring them back to normal, and you will stop falling into unconsciousness in search of a cookie. At the same time, there will be fewer problems with excess weight. Research from the University of Chicago showed that a few sleepless nights are enough for leptin levels to drop by 18%, and ghrelin levels to increase by a third—in total, cravings for sweets increase almost one and a half times. In addition, sleep deprivation reduces your ability to resist temptation. Therefore, sleep will help you in combating addiction to sweets.
Symptoms accompanying sugar addiction
The following types of sugar addiction are distinguished:
- physiological – the cause is hormonal imbalance (lack of joy hormones) due to regular stress or endocrine diseases;
- emotional – occurs in case of psychological discomfort, psychosis, disturbances in the functioning of the nervous system;
- behavioral – when excessive consumption of sweets occurs for social reasons (upbringing, traditions of society, patterns of behavior at work or in other groups).
Sugar addiction is determined by the following symptoms:
- sweets have a calming effect on you;
- there is a constant need for sweets;
- without sweet foods and drinks you feel restless;
- the lack of sugar is compensated by increased consumption of other unhealthy foods (fatty, smoked, fast food, canned food, salty).
Identify what's really bothering you
Cravings for sweets are strongly associated with emotional discomfort. You may have developed a sweet tooth as a teenager when you were unable to cope with feelings of alienation or resentment. But now you have already matured! Find an outlet for negative emotions, rather than eating them with candy. Yes, it is not easy to change a reflex that you have maintained for years. But probably. The next time you feel irritated and reach for a chocolate bar, stop for a moment, close your eyes, become aware of your sensations, focus on your breathing and relax. Now it will be a little easier to resist another portion of sweets.
Details
If you have a sweet tooth, it's completely natural. Preferring sweetness to any other taste helped our distant ancestors survive. Bitterness in nature indicates poison, sweetness indicates nutrition. Finding food is not a trivial task, and death from starvation is common. Under such conditions, those who are good at recognizing bitterness and sweetness and are highly motivated to avoid the former and find the latter live longer and have a greater chance of passing on their genes to subsequent generations. Including those responsible for cravings for sweets.
In the body, sugar increases the level of the neurotransmitter dopamine - the so-called “happiness hormone”. To be more precise, it does not give happiness, but motivates us to get something to satisfy our needs. In the case of sweets, this something is energy, extremely valuable for the inhabitants of the Paleolithic era. Back then, most of the foods that the ancestors of modern people ate were no sweeter than carrots. Honey is one of the few exceptions.
Then people took up farming and began to eat more starchy foods. But everything changed radically when we learned to extract pure sugar from these products and add it everywhere. And now the problem is the opposite of what faced hunter-gatherers: it is difficult to find food without sugar. It is found not only in candies, cookies and cakes - obviously “sugar” products, but also in sauces, bread, semi-finished products and ready-made dishes.
What's wrong with cravings for sweets?
Even before the Paleolithic, about 15 million years ago, during one of the periods of global cooling, mutations occurred in the genes of our ape-like ancestors, which allowed the body to more efficiently store reserves for a rainy day, easily turning sugar into fat. Today is not a rainy day, there is an excess of sweets, fat reserves are growing, and this, in turn, can lead to a deterioration in metabolic health.
Another danger is that sugar, or more precisely glucose, is an extremely active molecule that can react with proteins and change their structure. The concentration of glucose in the blood is regulated by the hormone insulin: after eating, it is released by the pancreas, and insulin allows cells to use glucose to produce energy. But if the insulin system malfunctions (the first signs of diabetes) or if glucose peaks occur too often (you eat carbohydrates and sweets many times a day), then excess glucose in the blood will gradually destroy, among other things, the walls of blood vessels, which will lead to the development of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular diseases.
Glucose promotes inflammation in the body, which in turn leads to fatigue, anxiety and depression.
Doctors and health organizations recommend that adults and children reduce their intake of added sugar, which is found in almost everything from sugary drinks to sauces, breads, breakfast cereals and yogurts. WHO, for example, calls for reducing sugar to 5% of total calories consumed - that's about 25 g or 6 teaspoons of sugar per day. For comparison: a 0.33 liter can of Coca-Cola contains 35 g of sugar; 100 g of “healthy” breakfast cereal may contain 20-30 g of sugar.
How to stop eating so much sugar?
The problem has two sides: how to plan a diet with minimal sugar content (technical) and how to stop craving sweets (psychological). First, about the simpler side, the technical one.
The best way to eat less sugar is to learn to identify it in food and not keep such food in the house. Chocolate, baked goods and Coca-Cola are definitely “sugar” foods. Bread, sausages, ready-made salad dressing, low-fat yogurt, and cereals that say “sugar-free” on the label are less obvious candidates, but processed foods almost always contain sugar, and sometimes in significant quantities. Sugar can be hidden under different names: corn syrup, maltose, fructose and several dozen other options.
There are also plenty of tricks you can use to push sugar out of your diet: replace cookies with carrots or dark chocolate, eat bitter arugula, play Tetris or take a walk when you want candy, and so on. But they don’t work well if the reason for your craving for desserts is not a love of sweet taste, but so-called emotional hunger.
“Emotional hunger” is a fairly common concept: this is what some psychologists and nutritionists call the desire to eat something high in calories, contrasting this impulse with real, physiological hunger.
Real hunger
it grows gradually, is felt below the neck, appears a few hours after eating and goes away after eating. The meal itself is satisfying.
Emotional hunger
comes suddenly, is felt above the neck, does not depend on time and is felt even after eating. At the same time, eating food causes feelings of shame and guilt.
Watch yourself. If your relationship with sweets sounds like the description of emotional hunger, try to minimize sweets in your diet by analyzing and changing your habits or dealing with the “problematic” feelings themselves.
How to change the habit of eating sweets?
We associate eating with certain emotions and situations, so sugar cravings can be viewed as a learned behavior—and addressed through behavioral science.
Step 1: Identify triggers.
Habit is a reaction to a stimulus. What happens before you order carrot cake with your coffee or open the refrigerator in search of ice cream? Try to track the sequence of events several times and write them down at least in the notes on your phone. The trigger can be different situations and emotions - not just those that you clearly identify as “negative”.
Step 2: Have a plan in place.
If the triggers are clear, you need a plan—alternative behaviors when the habit takes over again. This advice was given to the doctor of medicine and author of the book “One More Piece!” David Kessler Behavioral Experts. The point is that it is easier to resist habits when you have developed a plan in advance: specific actions that you will take when something happens that you are used to eating sweets (trigger). The more often this plan is implemented, the sooner you will develop new automatic behavior that will allow you to cope with the old one. Solutions? Any other actions that can give you a feeling of self-care: drink a mug of hot tea, chat with loved ones, pet the cat, do a breathing exercise.
Step 3. Argue with your thoughts.
Behavior is largely controlled verbally, through mental pronunciation. Eating problems are no exception. This is the way to overcome the automaticity of habit. Psychotherapist Karin Melvin suggests using the ABC model: highlight the trigger (Activating experience), irrational beliefs that push you to eat sweets (Beliefs), and consequences (Consequences). Separately, imagine or even write down arguments that would challenge your beliefs. For example, the belief that the only way to calm down is to eat chocolate can be countered by many others: “Chocolate actually has nothing to do with my situation”; “Perhaps the desire itself is caused only by bright advertising of chocolate”; “The brain acts automatically - why should I follow this decision?”; “Walking is a healthier way to relieve stress,” and so on.
Meditation can help deal with automatic desires and emotions - there are studies showing that such practice allows you to better understand what causes the need for sweets, and consciously make the choice “to eat or not to eat.”
How to deal with emotions?
It is believed that behind emotional hunger there is a strategy of emotional avoidance: candy allows you to distract yourself and not have to deal with difficult experiences. The solution is to stop running away from them. It's a difficult process, but accepting your emotions will increase your ability to tolerate the discomfort that causes sugar overeating. That’s why it helps more effectively than just behavioral methods.
Step 1. Name the emotion.
What feelings does eating sweets mask? To recognize them, the visualization technique of non-diet nutritionist Carol Grannick comes in handy. Sit in a quiet place, close your eyes and remember the moment you ate a chocolate bar. Imagine that you only ate two slices and stopped. Ask yourself: what thoughts and feelings does this evoke? Once you find the definition you want, write it down. This will reduce the intensity of the emotion.
Step 2. Take a break.
When the desire to eat your emotions with a piece of cake arises, nutritionist Svetlana Bronnikova advises asking yourself: can you put it off until later? If you can wait 15 minutes and do something else, do it. And then ask yourself: do you want a cake? Or has the desire changed? If everything is the same, eat the cake and don't beat yourself up about it. The goal is not to give up food, but to learn to tolerate anxiety.
Step 3: Focus on problematic feelings.
A paradoxical method from the arsenal of dialectical behavior therapy. The point is not to try to control emotions, but to ride them like a wave (that’s why the technique is called “surfing”). This is what it looks like. You close your eyes and focus on the experience that makes you want sweets. There is no need to try to change it somehow. Just observe what sensations it causes in your body. So you will notice that the intensity of the experience is not constant: feelings sometimes reach peaks of pain, then decrease to the level of calm. Glide on them like surfers glide through the water. The peak, most painful moments will become shorter, and the experiences will become such that you can cope without chocolate.
Also on topic.
How I gave up sugar and found out the psychological reasons for my addiction. The story of psychotherapist Ev Khazina. Link.
Identify sweet traps
Analyze your day and determine what times and places you are most susceptible to sweet temptations. Perhaps your office has unlimited access to cookies? Sorry. Read this article to your colleagues and suggest replacing sweets with fruits. Perhaps you can't resist buying chocolate bars from the supermarket after a hard day at work? Today, give in to temptation one last time, but buy an extra pack of nuts and put them in your bag. Tomorrow, before you go to the store, kill the worm.
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Psychological reasons for cravings
Sweets actually help relieve stress. Due to the rapid production of energy in the body, there is a surge of strength, and due to dopamine, mood improves. A person becomes psychologically, intellectually and physically resilient. But the effect of fast carbohydrates ends on average after half an hour. New recharge is required.
Everything would be fine, but fast carbohydrates are very high in calories. Nutritionists will say so. And the psychologist will say that eating stress is not a solution to the problem. Since you have found out that you are fighting stress with the help of sweets, then please find a more rational method to eliminate rather than mask the problem.
Other psychological causes of cravings:
- loneliness in personal life, lack of communication with family;
- internal problems, complexes, emotions;
- the bleakness of life;
- a void in some area that is filled with sweets.
Seek healthy rewards
Instead of treating yourself to sweets, reward yourself with more valuable pleasures. Sugar cravings often occur when you are bored or lonely. Make your list of sugar-free rewards and keep it handy for when you're feeling down. Think about what you could do in those 10-20 minutes while you are waiting for the next piece of cake in a coffee shop: listen to your favorite music, make a sketch, call a friend, scratch the cat, take a nap...
The main rule is that rewards must be non-food in nature.
Lack of physical activity
Previously, in the USSR and in many modern companies in Japan and Korea, daily exercise in the workplace was or is mandatory. If you do not disperse the stress hormone, cortisol, which was mentioned above, this leads to increased fatigue (even though the body has not experienced any real stress) and a desire to eat stress. We are genetically wired to experience physical activity, which the body rewards with bursts of endorphins after the first 20 minutes of activity. Many studies show that people who get at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day are less likely to overconsume sugar-containing foods.
Benefits of quitting sugar
- Helps to lose weight;
- Blood sugar levels decrease;
- Prevents hypertension;
- The blood lipid profile improves;
- Reduces stress and fatigue;
- Sleep improves;
- Gives a boost of energy and activity;
- The risk of developing diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome, etc. is reduced.
Get rid of any source of sugar in your home. Slowly but surely move towards your goal. Eat wisely and exercise regularly to stop eating sweets forever and improve your physical and mental health. Take care of yourself!
Source
Getting serotonin from other foods
Sugar-containing products contribute to the production of the hormone serotonin in the body, a biologically active element that helps improve psycho-emotional health, reduce anxiety and restlessness. Chocolate is essentially a natural antidepressant. But unlike prescription drugs, it is easy to obtain.
In the body, serotonin is produced from precursor elements - in particular, tryptophan, one of the essential amino acids for humans. When an individual is under stress, the consumption of this substance increases. Therefore, the daily dose of tryptophan during stressful times should be twice as much.
You can get tryptophan from the following foods:
- legumes (peas, beans, soybeans, lentils);
- cereals (buckwheat and oatmeal, millet, rye bread), potatoes;
- dairy and meat products;
- mushrooms;
- eggs.
Protect your sleep
Often work, household chores, and the rhythm of a big city do not allow a modern person to get enough sleep for the required 8-9 hours. Because of this, the city dweller is constantly in a state of stress and eats it. It turns out to be a vicious circle that needs to be broken.
Therefore, it is useful to take time for yourself, mentally abstract yourself from problems and try to go to bed no later than 22:00. It is important to ventilate the room before going to bed and turn off all gadgets. By removing all light sources, you can enjoy deep, healthy sleep.
No sweeteners
Synthetic sugar is used throughout the food industry. But there is more harm from it than from simple sugar, therefore, you should not even look in this direction. In stores and supermarkets, it is useful to examine each can that goes into the basket. Manufacturers often add sugar to almost all products on our store shelves. The sugar content in consumed industrial products should be eliminated or limited to a minimum.
Weekly meal plan to cleanse your body of sugar
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
As you can see, it's not all that complicated. It will become even easier if you add other healthy dishes in the same proportions. Now let's talk about the benefits of cleansing the body of sugar.
