Adapt Your Diet For Exercise
If you are an ardent exerciser, you may experience more hunger. This is especially true if you are trying to get by on fewer calories. Very strict diets and intense workouts are not compatible. If you are training hard, you may need to eat more food, so you have the energy you need for your workouts. Eating a little more should help prevent hunger.
How Do I Stop Sugar Cravings On Keto
You can end your ride on the carb rollercoaster with the following 13 tips to control carb cravings:
9 Easy Keto Desserts to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth
One may also ask, why am I always hungry on the keto diet? Some complain of hunger when trying to follow this diet. Not consuming enough fiber or water could be contributors to hunger. Relying on plant-based dairy and getting inadequate sleep at night may lead to hunger, too.
Thereof, does sugar affect ketosis?
That makes sugar 100% carbs, and all these sugars have identical impacts on weight gain, blood glucose, and insulin response. On a keto diet, sugar in all its forms is strictly avoided. Sugar is bad, no surprise, so these are bad options, especially if you’re on a keto diet.
Can I eat ice cream on keto?
You can‘t eat regular ice cream on keto, but you can eat keto ice cream! And fortunately, making my homemade low carb ice cream recipe is super simple. This keto friendly ice cream is also super low in carbs, with only 3 grams net carbs per serving.
Eat Protein And Fiber At Each Meal
We all know how important protein is to our diet, but making sure we have enough at each meal is also helpful for staving off sugar cravings. “Eat protein and fiber at every meal! This is the most important tool you could have on your plate,” says Brooke Alpert, RD, and author of The Diet Detox. “Both protein and fiber help to slow down the absorption of sugar to prevent any blood sugar spikes which would make you crave more sugar. Plus, they help keep you fuller longer, leaving you more in control over your food choices and less likely to dive into that cupcake!”
Don’t Miss: What Is Good Blood Sugar
What Happens During A Sugar Detox
Abel: Tell me about that change?
I shudder to think about day 4 when I was crawling out of my own skin. It was the moment I was sitting on the couch and my son was eating this chocolate bar, and it wasnt even that I wanted to eat it.
It was a flashback and realization that my entire life I had been bribed, rewarded, and punished with this stuff and I was voluntarily not having any.
My wife gave me a massage to get me through the hard part. I was flopping like a fish on the table. I wouldnt be standing here now if I had grabbed a piece of his chocolate bar.
Abel: Part is physiological, but some is mental. When you dump something like sugar, you have this inclination thats tugging at you I want a little bit of candy or cookie, or this is the time of day I normally have that sweet fix.
What do you recommend to people who are in the sugar slump?
Its a mindset. If someone wants a little bite of this, I wish it could be that way. Sugar is not designed for satisfaction. This brain gets very happy when it has something like sugar, and its about wanting more.
Thats how weve gone from back in the day when it was discovered, rich people ate maybe 4 pounds of sugar a year. Today, we eat 8 pounds of sugar every threeweeks.
If you want to try to eat less sugar, heres a simple hack:
We are seeking that a lot in this world. Since birth, we are bribed, rewarded, and punished with sugar and it has a real part in our vocabulary.
Bonus Tip: Remember Your Why
When cravings arrive, instead of thinking of cheating on your diet, ask yourself why you started keto in the first place. Think about your goals and the benefits and reasons WHY you want to keep going.
Instead of thinking about the things you cant have on keto, start focusing on the amazing and delicious low carb foods you can and want to eat.
In our meal plan section, youll find plenty of great recipes to choose from.
The Takeaway
Dont think of the keto diet in terms of restriction instead, see it as a way to shift your focus and desires from carb-heavy, highly processed food to food that is whole, nutritious, healthy, and doesnt cause blood sugar spikes and fatigue.
Sure, if youre doing keto there are a number of foods that are off-limits, but how much do you actually need them, in order to properly fuel and nourish your body? Yeah, in many cases not very much. Of course, there are plenty of natural, whole foods that are heavier in carbs, such as rice or potatoes, or most fruits, but you could add these later on, once you reach your weight loss goals. The key is to do it in a sensible and controlled manner in order to not regain the weight youve just lost.
Dont think about all the foods you cannot have as a limitation thats imposed on you instead, see it as a choice, and own it. Because, in the end, thats what it is youre choosing to follow a ketogenic diet for the sake of your health.
Read Also: How To Counter Low Blood Sugar
Why Is Quitting Sugar So Hard
Its often said that sugar is addictive and, given how powerful those sugar cravings can be, its hard to argue with this opinion. Sugar all-but encourages you to overeat, and it can be a hard habit to break. People are only half-joking when they say sugar is as addictive as heroin!
Sugar appeals to not just our sense of taste but also receptors buried deep in our brains. On some level, humans recognize sugar as being something worth seeking out. We are hard-wired to appreciate and crave sugar.
Sweet foods, such as fruit and honey, are excellent sources of energy, and naturally sweet-tasting foods are often safer and healthier than unsweetened or bitter foods. Sweetness is a good indicator that fruit is ripe enough to eat. Unripe fruit can make you ill. Sweet-tasting food helped your hunter-gather ancestors avoid eating things that may have harmed them. They also knew that sugar would give them a quick burst of energy just what they needed during a hunt.
Sugar not only affects your body it affects your brain too. Sugar triggers the release of dopamine one of the feelgood hormones. This is the same substance that is produced by addictive narcotics like cocaine and heroin. Our bodies reward us when we eat sugar by making us feel happy and relaxed. This is why sugar is so addictive, and why we crave sugar, especially during times of unhappiness or stress. Its no coincidence that most so-called comfort foods are high in sugar.
Give Into Your Craving Then Move On
“If a craving for something sweet like a piece of chocolate or a scoop of ice cream persists, just have it,” says Jessica Levinson, MS, RDN, CDN, and author of 52-Week Meal Planner. “Trying to satisfy cravings with other ‘healthier’ foods or restricting yourself from having a food you’re craving often leads to overeating. As is often said, the forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.” So, eat your piece of cake, don’t feel bad, and then move on.
Read Also: What Is Blood Sugar Level
Identify Those Behaviors And What Was Triggering You
Many a time, a craving is more than just the addictive qualities calling you in, and you may uncover stress, anxiety, and burnout causing you to emotional eat – perhaps coming from your relationships, work, money, health, or from events or traumas from your past that have you caught in a stress loop, zapping your energy and keeping you stuck. Its time for you to take action to resolve them.
Working towards learning to recognize your triggers for cravings should help you stop sugars addictive cravings in its tracks, by helping you prepare and acknowledge it before it happens, letting it fade before it even happens.
Once you have tracked your patterns, from there you can prepare ahead of time for that craving trigger by finding an action to take the moment that intense craving hits you. Replace it with a healthy comfort like calling a friend, taking a walk, or even a positive food action like whipping on your apron, putting some music on, and making something keto and healthy to eat that you can feel proud of and positive about. Check out my Recipes Section for some yummy inspiration. Ive got plenty of yummy yum yum, keto options!
How I Quit Sugar
One of the things I quickly noticed when I began to address my unhealthy relationship with high carb foods, was that I had deprived my brain of healthy fats.
Sadly, I was a victim of the low-fat trend where we swapped out fat in all its forms for a diet that was very high in carbs. I truly believe that this was the beginning of my unnatural love of foods that were loaded with sugar.
I remember how I trashed all my high-fat foods and began only eating low-fat options. As long as the label said low-fat I thought I was good. It was after all that we heard over and over back in the eighties and nineties.
You May Like: Is Maple Syrup Better Than Sugar
Cant Control Addiction Despite Keto
Ive been keto since 2016. Im 53 , and have lost 130 lbs . The problem is that I still can not control my urge around trigger foods. I try to control myself by buying things like nuts and nut butters and limit portions but I keep failing. Then I will throw them in the garbage. I want to be in control after four years of keto! Am I fooling myself?
Pam,
Im sorry you had to wait so long for an answer. Yes, you are fooling yourself. We also call this denial. We want to keep a backdoor to our drug but we dont want the consequences. What I hear is that you might have a sugar addiction That means we have a very carb-sensitive body and brain. If that is the case, controlling is like trying to lift yourself in your hair. You need so much more knowledge about our addicted brain and sensitive body.
Wish you great recovery,Bitten
Adjust Your Sugar Baseline
The craving for sweet flavors is, in many cases, linked to the flavor baseline we set. If we frequently sweeten hot beverages or even fruits, that raises the bar for considering something sweet. At the same time, after depriving oneself of the sugar and sweet fruits for several weeks, even tomatoes and peppers may taste sweet, setting a new standard for the palate.
Read Also: Should You Check Your Blood Sugar Before Or After Eating
Manage Your Stress Levels
Research shows that stress affects food preferences and increases cravings for sweet foods.
Sugar also appears to have a calming effect on stress hormones, which contributes to your desire for sugar when feeling stressed.
Keeping your stress in check will make it easier to cut sugar from your diet and help keep cravings under control.
Taking a short walk, talking to a friend, and reading a book are a few simple ways to relax.
Check Check And Check Some More On Your Macros
Adjusting your macros correctly is probably going to be one of the hardest long-term hurdles youll have to face while on keto. Adjusting your macros is a chore, and if adjusted incorrectly could trigger long term carb cravings.
If you eat too much of the wrong macro, you may see weight gain and negative physical symptoms like tiredness, hunger, or even headaches.
Be sure to keep an eye on your macros and if you keep experiencing craving, try recalculating your macros using a keto tracker and pay specific attention to the carbs youre eating.
Dont get lazy always track your food intake, because it is so easy to get too comfortable and fall into that all to the common trap of eating too many carbs and obstructing the fat for fuel process.
Of course, its extremely unlikely that youll correctly configure your keto macros right when you first start. So, dont beat yourself up at the beginning if you get it wrong.
You May Like: How To Stop My Sugar Addiction
Cinnamon To Restrain Your Sugar Cravings
Cinnamon is an additional supplement that can help to curb the sugar cravings. It does that by controlling the blood glucose levels in turn reducing the brain from triggering any cravings.
But thats not all the benefits of this spice. It also helps to reduce triglycerides, LDL-cholesterol and total cholesterol as this study shows. This improves overall health but also reduces cravings for food and sugar.
Are We Addicted To Sugar
We have overall become more used to sugar in our diet since more and more foods ended up being processed foods out of packages you bought in the supermarket. Our ancestors made their meals from scratch and sugar was not one of the main ingredients.
The sugar we consume today results in high levels of insulin in our bodies. This leads to increased storage of fat and typically the end result is weight gain. Cutting back on sugars will lead to your body consuming fat instead of storing it and your weight will be kept in check.
The increased amounts of sugar we consume have made our bodies somewhat addicted to it. You can watch an interesting video by Dr. Lustig that goes over the obesity epidemic and its relationship with sugar consumption. An interesting part of the video is also the explanation on how high-fructose corn syrup tricks your brain into thinking that youre hungry and need to eat! That certainly results in more food consumption and increased weight.
Breaking the sugar addiction is difficult for anyone that is used to consuming large amounts of sugar. Yet, there are ways to help with it. One of them is the use of a well-known spice which can help to minimize the cravings. The results typically being healthier food consumption and less blood sugars leading to less weight.
Recommended Reading: Is 258 Blood Sugar High
Dealing With Cravings On Keto
Even if you wean yourself off sugar before you start your keto diet, and eat enough fat, you may still experience sugar cravings from time to time. Because sugar affects you physically as well as mentally, these sugar cravings can hit at almost any time. You might be tired and need energy, or you could be feeling down or stressed. Sugar cravings can catch you unawares but, if you want to stop them derailing your weight loss journey, it is imperative you dont give in.
Here are some tried-and-tested strategies for dealing with sugar cravings.
1. Walk it off
One of the best ways to deal with sugar cravings is to go for a walk. Walking, like all types of exercise, increases the production of the same feel-good hormones as sugar, namely dopamine. Because walking is so easy and accessible, you can do it any time you are struck by a sugar craving. As an added benefit, walking also burns calories which can contribute to weight loss.
2. Drink some water
A lot of us reach for sugary snacks out of habit. Its 11am, so its candy bar time! Replace one addiction with another by drinking water every time you have a sugar craving. In time, youll find yourself automatically reaching for water when you used to reach for a sugary snack. As an added bonus, drinking more water will help reduce the severity of many keto flu symptoms.
3. Entertain yourself
Boredom makes sugar cravings worse. Avoid boredom and sugar cravings too by keeping yourself entertained. Good options include:
You Could Also Try Something More Physical Like Exercise Yoga Tai Chi Or Even Acupuncture Or And Massage
I personally have been hitting HASfit Youtube channel because they have such a huge selection of different types of exercise and different lengths, and come across and down to earth, nice people. I also love to do a Bikram video from youtube. My two favorites are Dr. Espen Hjalmby 60 min Hot Yoga Class + Guided Meditation, and then 30 Minute Hot 26 Yoga Class – Hot Yoga Asheville for a great overall stretch, and calming the mind.
If youre not already familiar with it, mindfulness is a practice that involves being fully focused on the present moment and bringing awareness to your thoughts and feelings. If you want to read more into how mindfulness works, check out this blog post.
Mindfulness has even been shown to enhance weight loss, promote healthy eating habits, help break food addictions, and even produce better examination performance. Its why I created an entire Mindfulness Library within my Sugar Balance + Wellness Circle membership community of how-tos, tools, exercises and challenges, not only to teach it but to keep it up as a super effective method to build and maintain mental resilience and calm no matter what life throws at you.
Read Also: How Much Sugar Is In Vanilla Ice Cream