How to Stop Sugar Cravings Naturally
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The average American eats over 150 pounds of sugar every single year…because we’re addicted!
Why Do We Crave Sugar?
When it comes to sugar, studies have shown that it’s more addictive to your brain than a drug like cocaine is! What happens with addiction is you end up needing more and more in order to get that same dopamine release and marketing companies are taking advantage of you and hiding sugar in everything!
Sugar is in foods you would never expect them to be in which is why you should avoid processed foods when possible and be careful to check your labels! There are over 50 different names for sugar. Here are some of the common other names that sugar will go by.
- Sucralose
- Fructose
- Dextrose
- Glucose
- Sucrose
- Maltose
- Lactose
- Corn Syrup
- Dextrin
- Cane juice
- Malt syrup
And these are just a few! Be sure to check your food labels so that you are not unknowingly feeding your sugar addiction.
10 Negative Side Effects of Too Much Sugar
Your cells have receptors on them and those decide what to do with the sugar that you’re ingesting (should it store it, or use it as energy)? When you’re over-consuming sugar, those receptors get overworked and start to actually reject that excess sugar back into your system. This backup turns into excess fat – and even worse, diabetes. Sugar is a major culprit in so many conditions!
- Diabetes
- Excess weight
- Low energy
- Excess candida bacteria
- Poor dental health and gum disease
- Increased risk of cancer
- Depression and anxiety
- Increased risk of heart disease, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure
- Increased risk of kidney disease and poor kidney function
- Increased risk of mental decline and dementia
Luckily, if you already have one of these conditions or you’re heading in the wrong direction. There is hope for you. You can naturally stop your sugar cravings, break your addiction and get back to real health!
How to Stop Sugar Cravings
There are plenty of reasons to cut out sugar cravings. Just like drugs, in order to break a sugar addiction, you’ve got to cut it out completely (cold turkey) so you can give the cells time to repair. Then, those cells won’t need to form a resistance to the sugar and the insulin levels can actually deal with it as it comes, resulting in fewer cravings. Your body can then switch from sugar-burning mode to fat-burning mode!
1. Break Your Sugar Habit
A sugar fast is a sure-fire way to fight off sugar cravings. It’s the best way to go cold turkey and give your cells a break from all the damage.
I would recommend a minimum of 21 days to break that sugar-burning cycle. The first 3-7 days can be a rough “withdrawal” period where you may see headaches, changes in energy, and sleep problems.
After that, your taste buds actually start to change and by around days 14-21, you’d be disgusted at how overly sweet some of the foods you cut out are! If you tried having one of your usual sugary drinks, for example, you’d really get a wake-up call. Your body had been desensitized to the amount of sweetness that you were putting in, but now – you may even crave vegetables instead of sweets because a sugar fast will change your cells!
Once you’ve healed the receptors and broken the addiction, add natural sugars like fruit and honey back in so you can get good nutrients back onto the body and experience real health.
2. Find Healthy Sugar Substitutes
There are plenty of healthy sugar substitutes such as stevia or monk fruit. Everyone has a day when their cravings are strong. Instead of reaching for sugar, use one of these healthy substitutes in your coffee or recipe instead. Today, there are lots of food companies using a natural sweetener instead-but, beware of sugars by other names listed in the ingredients!
3. Avoid High Sugar, Processed Foods
One great way to slowly break your sugar addiction for good is to find healthy alternatives to the toxic and sugary snacks you used to eat. We all know that sugar is HIGH in sweet treats but, we may not realize that there are many types of high-sugar foods. Here are some high-sugar foods you should avoid when possible!.
Bread, Cereal, and Granola
Most bread and cereals, even the ones marketed as healthier, are loaded with hidden sugars and toxins. Cereal should be avoided if necessary. Instead try keto variations of breakfast favorites such as low-carb muffins, omelets, or even healthy delicious donuts! There are many bread alternatives that will give you that toxic sugary bread taste, but coconut bread is a great one to try once you’ve broken your sugar addiction!
Drinks
We rarely think about the amount of sugar in our favorite sodas and coffee drinks but they are loaded. Just one bottle of soda can have almost 40 grams of sugar in it. Your average mocha or vanilla latte can have anywhere from 20 grams to 50 grams of sugar. Those are damaging levels of sugar especially if consumed weekly. Avoid these drinks at all costs. You’ll want to avoid the diet and skinny versions of these drinks as well, as they present dangerous health risks of their own. Check out 7 Sugary Drinks to Re-Think for drink alternatives!
Sweets and Pastries
Of course, sweets and pastries are on this list. They are everywhere and we use them to celebrate all the good things in our lives so they are hard to avoid. But once you break your sugar habit and find low-carb flour and healthy sugars you can experience the goodness of sweet treats without the dangerous side effects of sugar. You’ll never have to live without cookies, cakes, brownies, or pie when you find the right healthy alternatives!
In summary, stopping your sugar cravings and breaking your sugar addiction is not a permanent sentence to bland and boring food. Once you get on the road to real health, your outlook and your cravings change. What might have been unappealing 21 days ago could be just the sweet dessert you crave once you fix your sugar habit!
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