5 Best Ways to Beat Sugar Cravings When You’re on A Diet

When it comes to dieting, you never know when a sugar craving will creep up on you and ruin your groove. Once that desire for sugar takes hold, most people can kiss their diet goodbye.

This is why celebrities like Kourtney Kardashian and Adele have done everything they can to keep sugar out of their diets. Sugar has a tendency to not only add empty calories to your daily caloric intake, but it can also spawn an increase in the body’s hunger response.

For this reason, you need five surefire ways to get sugar cravings out of your diet so that you can lose weight without any difficulties holding back your progress:

1.Plan to Cut Sugar Back Before Hand

Before you even begin your diet, it is a good idea to get into the habit of limiting sugar more and more over time beforehand.

This way, when you are used to not eating large amounts of sugar anyway, the tendency to crave sugar will be far less of an obstacle to your dieting goals. Typically, we get used to craving the things we tend to like to eat on a regular basis.

By retraining ourselves to not eat a diet high in sugar as a standard of practice, we limit the conditioned addictive effect sugar has on us whether we are dieting or not.

2.Eat Saturated Fats

The body depends on two primary sources of energy. One is sugars and the other source of energy is fats. Fortunately, it is possible to switch between these two forms of energy and reduce one while increasing the other.

The advantage of increasing saturated fats while dieting is that fats burn slower than sugar. As a result of this phenomenal property of fats, this means you can go much longer on an increased fat diet without getting hungry and losing energy than you ever could on a more predominantly sugar-based diet.

The thing to watch out for is that you do not want to eat high amounts of both sources of energy, because this would not be good for dieting; rather, it would lead to rapid weight gain instead. It is best to think of using one source of energy in your dieting efforts or the other, but never both in significant amounts at the same time when you are trying to lose weight.

Also, fatty fish like salmon are a great source of healthy fats that will help you control a sugar attack. If salmon is too pricey for your wallet, you can try trout instead as a cheaper fatty fish source alternative. Their flavors are similar and it’s quite easy to cook trout. Before including trout in your diet, make sure to read more about its flavor and various ways of cooking it.

3.Take Zinc and Magnesium

If the urge to consume sugar is a real problem for you, then you may want to consider supplements that help reduce and mitigate the desire for sugar.

Two common minerals that should help in this area are zinc and magnesium. If you choose to use zinc, it is important to remember to not take it on an empty stomach in order to avoid a stomach ache.

4. Include Stevia in Your Diet

If you feel you need a bit of sugar to attenuate cravings, then try including stevia in your diet. Aside from the fact that it’s loaded with antioxidants which are known to increase brain function, stevia is also a non-caloric natural sweetener. It does not possess nearly the calories of regular table sugar or high fructose corn syrup.

Another great thing about stevia is that a very little bit goes a long way. Since stevia is not a normal sugar, it will not have the tendency to spike your sugar levels when dieting either; thus, making it a healthy alternative to sugar for diabetics too.

5.Try Counseling

When dealing with a hard craving that behaves more like a sugar addiction, there may be more behind our dependence on sugar than simply a physical desire to eat lots of it. Sugar may be a security blanket of comfort that helps some people cope or even forget about certain deeply emotional experiences.

When dieting, something that is emotionally stressful for people anyway, the power sugar has over you may be intensified and harder to face because of behavioral patterns we put ourselves through due to our desire to eat sugar to cope with emotional stressors and loss.

By talking with a professional, you will learn techniques to mentally prepare yourself to dismiss and overcome cravings by addressing the emotional triggers and associations.

Conclusion

Sugar is a central component of most diets. When you diet and try to avoid sugar cravings, you are basically asking your body to give up its most bioavailable form of energy. This is why cravings and low sugar states impact our body so dramatically. It is also why switching to an alternative, slower burning energy source like saturated fats on a diet can actually help a person to lose weight.

This is part of the logic behind the ever-popular ketogenic diet where sugar and refined carbohydrates are reduced drastically, and protein, fats, and unrefined carbohydrates are increased to replace the need for sugar to reach your weight loss goals with minimal sugar cravings.