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.
Craving Sweets On Keto Here’s How To Combat Keto Sugar Cravings
Feeling like youd kill for a candy bar right about now? If youre craving sweets on keto, the good news isits totally normal!
Keto sugar cravings happen. Even if you are following the plan to the letter and eating plenty of food, chances are you’ll walk by a bakery or past a chocolate shop, and those cravings will hit. Smells are particularly triggering .
But if youre regularly experiencing sugar cravings on keto, it could also indicate that one of your bodys needs isnt being met. Lets look at what you should do to combat keto sugar cravings.
You Are Craving An Energy Boost
The main reason we crave sugar is not its taste. Sugar gives you an instant and powerful energy boost. Our bodies have evolved to seek high-energy foods sensible if food is scarce, but detrimental when food is abundant and highly-refined.
But sugar energy is treacherous. It comes fast and disappears just as quickly.
Your blood glucose spikes and then plummets, leaving you tired and despondent. You start craving your next hit chocolate, a doughnut, a glass of juice The compulsion gets worse if your energy is depleted for other reasons, for example, if you are not sleeping enough or when under a lot of stress.
Some of us get permanently locked on this rollercoaster, relying on sugar to get us through the day.
A Keto diet breaks the addiction cycle. But your body is used to getting its energy from sugar and other fast highly-refined carbs. Until you become fully keto-adapted, you might struggle with tiredness and crave that fast easy energy.
Solutions
Crank up the fat macro in absence of carbs, dietary fat is your main energy source. During your first weeks on low-carb, aim to get most of your calories from fat. Your body needs to get used to burning fat instead of glucose. Once you are fully keto-adapted, you can review your macros and add more protein if required. How to eat more fat
Use supplements for energy try exogenous ketone salts, MCT oil , extra-strong B-vitamins and Co-Enzyme Q10.
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Check Your Sleep Habits
If you’re craving sugar on keto, you may want to look at your sleep habits. It sounds strange to think that sleep could be connected to sugar cravings, but when we’re tired, our willpower goes down, and our desire for comfort goes up.
During sleep, our body has a chance to metabolize and reset. It can change our insulin sensitivity when we don’t get the rest we need. A lack of sleep might damage our metabolism, take our blood sugar out of whack, and make us crave foods like sugar.
The other issue with a lack of sleep is that it reduces our executive functioning. It makes it harder for us to resist temptation and make smart food choices. When tired, we’re much more likely to cave to our cravings and derail our diet progress.
Sweet cravings on keto are a normal phenomenon, and it doesn’t mean you’re doing keto “wrong” or can’t be successful with your diet. Plan proactively by filling up on healthy foods. Look for keto swaps so you can avoid deprivation.
Its Skinny can help you stay on track with your keto diet. You dont have to say goodbye to your favorite meals just because youre avoiding sugar. Use Its Skinny Pasta and Its Skinny Rice to help recreate everything you crave . Order Its Skinny today to keep yourself on track!
Hydrate With Water And Electrolytes
On a Keto diet, your fluid and electrolyte needs go up. Thirst is a good indicator of fluid needs, but electrolytes like sodium and potassium may need more planning.
What you think is a carb craving might be a sodium craving. It makes evolutionary sense. Sodium was scarce in ancestral times, so we evolved to crave salty things. The research bears this out.
The solution? Add a few shakes of salt to your water and a few more to your food. You may find your carb cravings dissipate.
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Best Keto Snacks To Eat When You’re Craving Sugar
Craving sugar is common for lots of people. Like, lots of people! It usually happens when the blood glucose levels in our bodies drop. Most people eat a high-carb, high-sugar diet and this leads to repeated sugar cravings and sugar addictions.
Even if you’re on a keto diet, its still possible for you to have such cravings and this is especially true for people who are still in the early stages of the diet. The drastic changes from bulking up on carbs and giving in to sugar cravings, to suddenly limiting carbs and sugar intake may cause a temporary upset in your system leading to increased urges to eat something sweet.
So why do you get those cravings and what can you do about it? Below, I’ll outline the reasons for getting sugar cravings along with my top seven ‘go to’ snacks to beat the urges and keep you on track to your keto goals.
Sugar and the keto diet
With a keto diet, you limit your intake of carbs to just a small percentage of your daily calories. This means that you only take a few grams of carbs per day depending on your body type, your goals, and the level of your activity.
So although its not easy to quit sugar, its also not impossible, and like anything in life, you rarely get the rewards without putting in a little effort!
So Why Do You Crave Sugar?
There are many reasons why you might be craving sugar and here are some of them.
Stress
These fluctuations in blood sugar can cause cravings, so constant stress due to hard workouts can lead to sugar cravings.
Best Snacks For Curbing Sugar Cravings On Keto
Here are some snacks to help you satisfy your keto sweet cravings:
- Veggies: For a quick and convenient keto snack, make your own veggie sticks out of celery or carrots and dip them in nut butter or guacamole.
- High-quality protein and fatty fish: Good protein sources include chicken, turkey, and grass-fed beef. If youre in a time crunch or just looking for a quick high-quality protein source, a lot of people will buy protein powder and make their own shakes or smoothies. Fatty fish like salmon, herring, mackerel, and tuna contain omega-3 fatty acids, which give you the energy and brainpower to fight sugar cravings.
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More Tips For Craving Sweets On Keto
While satisfying a sugar craving with a keto-friendly treat is one way of reducing sugar cravings, you may need to employ a few other strategies for extra help:
- Drink more water. Being dehydrated can send your carb and sugar cravings through the roof.
- Drink a fruity tea sweetened with a keto-friendly sweetener. Im a HUGE fan of Tazo Passion Tea . I drink 32 oz of it iced a few times a week, and it really hits the spot.
- Drink a fruity electrolyte drink. I love Ultima Replenisher, especially the grape flavor.
- Eat a small amount of fruit. Small quantities of strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are perfectly fine on keto. Put together a yummy bowl of them and enjoy.
- Eat more fat. If you find yourself really struggling with eating enough fat, the lack of fat may be a culprit in your sugar cravings. Try making some fat bombs or adding some extra MCT oil, coconut oil, ghee, butter, or olive oil to your daily meals.
- These Lemon Coconut Fat Bombs are especially helpful theyll help with fruit cravings.
Choc Zero Coupons
Dont forget to use your when you buy chocolate chips for any
Experiment With Different Keto Recipes
If youre really missing pizza, ice cream or sushi and cannot imagine your life without them, just relax! You can actually make fabulous keto-friendly versions of these foods.
Fat bombs can also help with sweet cravings. This will allow you to still enjoy special treats from time to time without cheating . They can help you stay on track and curb a specific craving while staying in ketosis.
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Stop Limiting Carbs Too Quickly
As you start on your keto journey, your pre-keto goal is to cut your carbohydrate intake to about 25g per day, cutting out all sugars and refined carbs completely.
When you start the keto diet, there are two approaches you can take. Either you could start day one of your goal carb macro set by going immediately cold turkey on carbs, or you could track your normal pre-keto carb intake and gradually cut 50g of carbs per day until you reach your goal.
With the average carb intake clocking in at 325 grams of carbohydrates a day, most people will opt for going cold turkey, especially since its the fastest way to reach ketosis.
Hungry On Keto 6 Common Reasons And Easy Solutions
Tags: Keto
For most people, the ketogenic diet of high-fat, low-carb, moderate-protein keto foods is highly satiating and dramatically reduces hunger cravings. However, some people find that they are still hungry on keto, especially when first adapting.
There are a few reasons why people can be hungry on keto, and fortunately, they all have very simple solutions.
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Ways To Control Carb Cravings
Keep carbs low ð
The Keto diet’s basic rule is to restrict carbs to a minimum. Keeping carbs to minimum aids your body’s switch from sugar to fat burning.
This shift is slowed when your keto diet contains too many carbs. Your body becomes perplexed. Do you want to use fat or sugar? If it believes the answer is “sugar,” then you’ll continue to crave sweets.
Control your environment ð
As we mentioned before, when you reduce the number of sights and odors that trigger desires, you reduce the number of cravings.
Consider your kitchen to be a laboratory. The goal of that experiment is to encourage people to eat more healthily.
If at all possible, keep carbs out of the house. If this isn’t possible because of children, or partners, at least try your best to keep them hidden.
Eat low-carb vegetables full of fiber ð¥¦
Kale, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, and asparagus are some of the most nutrient-dense vegetables available.
Fiber is an indigestible carbohydrate. Yes, fiber is a carb, but don’t worry, it won’t knock you out of ketosis.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Fiber fills you up without adding calories to your diet.
Get enough sleep ð´
If you’re not getting enough sleep, your capacity to resist carbs will suffer. Sleep deprivation has been proven to increase ghrelin, the hunger hormone.
As a result, obtaining enough sleep is critical for controlling cravings. You’ll be glad you got your seven to nine hours.
Keep yourself well hydrated ð¦
Consume healthy fats ð¥
Do I Have To Quit Sugar On Keto Not Entirely And Heres Why
When you start a keto diet you learn about increasing your fat and lowering your carbs. But sometimes there are questions about sugar. Do you have to quit sugar entirely?
You might be surprised at the answer. No, you dont have to quit all sugars.
Sticking to your keto macros will definitely lower the amount of sugar in your diet. And the less sugar you have, the less likely you are to crave it so its a win-win.
Some type of sugars are usually a no-no, like honey, white sugar, brown sugar, and agave syrup. But you still can have small amounts if you budget them in to your daily macros.
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Processed Food/junk Food Addiction
If youve ever gone cold turkey on coffee before, youve experienced the power of caffeine addiction. Caffeine is a drug with addictive properties.
In a sense, sugar is like caffeine. Its also a drug with addictive properties. However, we should be very cautious here. Many of the studies which have reported neurological addictions to sweet foods have used techniques like fMRI assessments, which have some real problems we can dissect another day.
Sugar elicits addiction-like craving, and self-reported problem foods are rich in high-glycemic-index carbohydrates, write the authors of a 2018 paper from the Journal of Clinical Chemistry.
Heres how it works. When you eat sugar, your brain releases a bunch of dopamine, a reward chemical that makes you feel happy.
Your brain likes feeling happy. It wants that feeling again and again. It wants more dopamine, so you crave more sugar.
It can be a vicious cycle. This is, to be fair, more of an issue with refined carbohydrates. In many cases, it is the hyper-palatable combination of salt, sugar, and fat which are amalgamated to elicit the greatest addictive responsethe addiction grows stronger as we eat more.
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.
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Keto Bulletproof Coffee Ice Cream
If youve made and loved bulletproof coffee before, youll definitely love this recipe for keto bulletproof coffee ice cream. With eggs being a nutritional powerhouse and no real sugar in the recipe, this ice cream is a nourishing and healthy alternative to traditional ice cream but every bit as good.
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If Youve Got It Really Bad Here Is Supplemental Support
- 500 mg 1000mg of glutamine really helps some people. Break open the capsules and empty under your tongue, then swallow with water. This does not work for everyone.
- certain minerals like chromium help arrest sugar cravingsyou can often find them in blood sugar balance blends with other herbs or nutrients to help stop sugar cravings. Examples are gymnema, alpha lipoic acid, and even cinnamon. Body Ecology Ancient Minerals is awesome.
- Try this crave arrest to help balance brain chemicals that can cause cravings.
- Have a cup of green tea. It may sound preposterous, but we sometimes mistake hunger or craving cues for thirst, and the minerals in green tea give you a boost. Minerals in general also help stop sugar cravings. Drink lots of green juicesvery high in minerals!
- Have a protein snack using suggestions above. As I mentioned, when blood sugar is low, you actually need protein, not sugar.
Stick to dark chocolate it has health benefitsor truffles over hard candy, and bring treats that dont contain refined sugars to parties. Its ok to treat yourself every once in a while, and I often recommend sugar busting snacks in the afternoon, like coconut butter or coconut oil melted with almond butter and a bit of honey that can satisfy a craving. Remember that indulging in too much sugar every day will only make sugar cravings worse, so save the treats for parties and special occasions.
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