Ok, Dopers, I need some help.
My wife, in an effort to eat more healthy foods, has significantly reduced the amount of sugar in her diet - minimal snacking, no soft drinks, unsweetened tea, that sort of thing. She’s being smart about it, and we’re eating fairly balanced meals and excercising, but…
She gets massive sugar cravings that drive her (and me)nuts.
Anyone know how to defeat a sugar craving without resorting to sugar?
Well, let’s clarify–is she eliminating all sugars, or only “white refined” table sugar, i.e. “sucrose”? 'Cause you can get a dandy sugar hit from fruit (which is fructose, of course), and honey (which is an amazing sugar cocktail, with mainly fructose and glucose, and only a tiny percentage of sucrose).
I can’t think of any medical reason why she would want to eliminate sugars from her diet–even diabetics are allowed sugars.
Sugar is the body’s quick hit for energy, it’s normal to have a certain amount of craving for it. You’re hard-wired to “like” sugar.
whoops–“why she would want to eliminate all sugars from her diet”.
I think it was fairly clear from the OP that this involved reducing the consumption of high sugar non-essentials rather than removing sugars from the diet.
I wonder if it’s a craving based on need (like that for fat which serves us so well now), such as when we feel faint, or is it a craving based on a desire to have a sweet sensation in the mouth alone? Is it possible to distinguish between the two? Sorry, questions don’t make great answers do they?
Thanks for reading carefully, Andy…
I’m talking about sugar as in sweets, unnecessary sugar. The sugar cravings are the craving for sweet tasting junk, Duck, not the result of some harebrained idea to “eliminate all sugars from her diet” which is nearly impossible and a pretty damned unhealthy thing to attempt. I’m talking about soft drinks, candy, and other sugary junk food that as Americans we’re in the habit of munching on.
She craves sweets when she doesn’t want them. As far as I can tell it’s the taste she’s craving, because our diet is pretty well balanced (if a bit “Southern” in execution, mostly my fault for having Texas hillbilly parents).
I’m hoping somebody can offer some suggestions on conquering a sugar craving like this. It’s something I’ve never had to deal with.
Cutting excess sugar is a lot more effective in dieting technique than cutting excess fat, in my experience.
My guess:
Your pancreas is used to reacting to an ungodly amount of sugar entering your body (post-agricultural diet), and compensates by immeadiately pumping as much insulin into your blood stream as it can muster to stem the tide.
However, when you’re eating less sugar, and it triggers the same thing, then you’ve got extra insulin in your blood. This drops blood sugar levels and you get sugar cravings.
Anyway, there are, I think, certain enzymes you can take to suppress this process… but I can’t remember what they are offhand.
From personal experience, if you take protein powder often ( i do 3 times a day) it really kills the sugar cravings. I know while I’m here at college i don’t get them at all, but I went home for break, had little protein (for me) and man I really wanted to dig into those brownies and such