Sugar cravings: How to reduce them

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

Sugar cravings are common. These may be side effects of certain foods in your diet or a bad habit that has reprogrammed your brain. But some sugar cravings may be the result of an underlying nutritional deficiency.

So, the next time you have a dessert after lunch or candy in the jar on your colleague's desk, stop and look at the psychological and biological reasons for your sweet tooth.

What is happening in your brain

Several areas of your brain play an important role in the sensation of cravings. In each hemisphere of your brain, there is a caudate nucleus, which influences reward-seeking behavior, but is also responsible for the creation of new habits - good and bad - like taking a snack as soon as you walk through the door after work, without even realizing it. These habits are more like a conditioned response, which means that even after half-days of work, you want to snack.

Dietary factors that can cause cravings

Foods in your diet can also trigger your craving for sweet foods. One reason may be a low intake of protein and fat. Proteins and fats slow the release of sugar into the blood, but when you don't consume enough, your blood sugar can rise and fall at an abnormal rate. The result? Your body needs fast energy such as sugar.

The same applies if you eat too many carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates quickly enter the bloodstream, increasing blood sugar and then insulin. Without fibers, proteins, or fats in your diet, simple carbohydrates alone will not satisfy you and soon you will want more. When you reduce the carbohydrates in your diet, your body tends to need the fast energy it is used to.

Artificial sweeteners were invented to replace sugar with a less caloric option, but research suggests that you will feel the same cravings, or even that you will eat more food and calories by consuming sweeteners.

Bad habits that promote cravings

Your sleeping habits can also cause cravings. It has been shown that even a night of poor sleep can reduce the upper brain function of the brain - the part of the brain responsible for complex decisions and judgments - resulting in messy cravings the next day.

Why? Why? Your internal clock plays an important role in managing ghrelin and leptin hormones, which promote and suppress food intake. Chronic abnormal sleep or sleep deprivation can be seriously detrimental to your waist circumference when you give in to these cravings.

Problems and stress

Stress affects your cortisol levels, a hormone that, when high, changes your glucose and insulin levels. Stress affects hunger and cravings in different ways, but your body will quickly use its energy reserves when it is in overdrive.

Depression or bad mood can also mentally and physically affect sugar cravings.

Sugar consumption increases serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates mood, appetite, memory, and social behavior. As sugar stimulates serotonin, you feel happier, temporarily, so your brain wants this happy chemical over and over again.

Mineral deficiencies could be another reason for your sugar cravings

We used to think that if your body wants a particular food or taste, then you must be lacking it. Although this is not entirely false, as sometimes in the case of salty foods and sodium deficiency, the overriding need for sweet foods can be explained by specific mineral imbalances in the body.

An iron deficiency will zap your energy, leaving you tired and weak, and can also be a reason for your cravings. Your body will need quick energy to bounce back. Imbalances in calcium, zinc, chromium, and magnesium can also manifest themselves in sugar cravings.

These essential minerals help maintain hydration, which can make you want sugar when you may be thirsty. Together, these minerals are involved in hundreds of processes in your body, from carbohydrate metabolism to the production and regulation of hormones and enzymes that control the way you think, move, and feel.

Without sufficient consumption, absorption, and storage of these minerals, you may have abnormal reactions as you think, see or smell something sweet.

Things you can do

Consider these tips to reduce sugar cravings in the long term:

• Recognize bad habits. Have an alternative when you have a craving; it can be moving or drinking a glass of water. Start a new healthy habit.

• Include more protein or fat in your diet. Avoid snacks/meals made up only of carbohydrates. And reduce and then eliminate the consumption of artificial sweeteners.

• Get enough sleep. Make sure you go to bed and get up at the same time each day.

• Look for serotonin from other sources. Try green tea, nuts, eggs, and cheese, or increase your exercise routine to increase your serotonin levels.

• Eat foods with high bio-availability of chromium, magnesium, zinc, iron, and calcium, by eating whole unprocessed foods.