Sugar Cravings Corporate
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Sugar cravings crashing your best laid plans of a healthy diet and perfect weight? Me too!
It’s 3pm. You’re tired, mind is drifting, you have a bit of a headache and you KNOW that the cake from Mary’s birthday tea is still in the tea room. It’s sugary, creamy, bland. Not even all that nice but you can’t get the image out of your head. It’s there and you need it!
Can you relate?????
So here are my top tips on banishing sugar cravings for good;
1. Get informed on where they’re coming from- so you can seriously ignore them
Why do you crave sugar?
One of the biggest causes of sugar cravings is a low blood sugar level or hypoglycaemia. You might also notice irritability, light-headedness, and generally feeling fuzzy in the brain. Other symptoms that have been attributed to hypoglycaemia are not being hungry for breakfast in the morning, but needing caffeine to top up your energy. Waking at 3 am (your brain is hungry) and an energy crash in the afternoon are also tell-tale signs. Ironically it’s not those on a low carb diet that get these hypoglycemic episodes but those on a high sugar, high refined carbohydrate diet. Probably because your insulin levels are turbo charged. Insulin, the sugar metabolism hormone can rapidly move insulin into your cells, leaving your blood sugar levels very low.
This is probably why you often get a really big sugar crash after you’ve had crackers, biscuits or a soft drink with your sugar levels surging then crashing in short succession.
Apart from low blood sugar, your brain can put the call out for treat food. Annoyingly, the human brain is programmed to desire pleasurable experiences. Like eating a Tim Tam. Sugars definitely give you a spike of the feel good neurotransmitter, dopamine.
But despite the media hype, scientists have quashed the sugar addiction theory.
A large meta-analysis in the European Journal of Nutrition found “[Sugar Craving] behaviours likely arise from …. access to sweet tasting or highly palatable foods, not the neurochemical effects of sugar.” So that means you need to…….
2. Get organized
If you have access to unhealthy food + No access to readily available healthy food + you’re starving because you’ve had a useless breakfast and/ or lunch, your chances of being able to resist your sugar cravings are next to hopeless.
So come to work armed with healthy, snackable foods when cravings hit you. Things like nuts, some cut up veggies, a mandarin or a natural yoghurt are good options.
Have a decent breakfast (if you’re a breakfast eater) and a quality lunch (not at 2:30pm!!) A lunch packed with vegetables, some protein and complex carbohydrates is the go. Whether that be a chicken and salad whole grain wrap, or a quinoa salad with some sweet potato and salmon. Get hydrated!
Lastly detox your home. If you can’t control what’s in the tea room at work, you can at least make your home a junk food free zone. In that category I include many popular breakfast cereals, juices and muesli bars. Banish temptation and you’ll have no choice but to grab some walnuts and a banana instead!!
3. Get enough sleep!
We have long suspected that lack of sleep turbo charges poor food choices. A long awaited 2018 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition confirmed it in 2018. The verdict? Don’t get enough sleep and you are much more likely to binge on sugar. But the good news was that getting enough sleep made the study’s chronic insomniacs improve their diet and crave less sugar.
Save Your Brain By Dr Ginni Mansberg
The evidence is clear almost half of all cases of dementia and cognitive decline are preventable. But sadly none are treatable.
So what are the lifestyle changes that really make a difference to our brain health? What do the experts do to protect themselves from cognitive decline? And what can we do right now to preserve our quality of life as we age?
Save Your Brain answers all these questions and more. As we age, dementia and Alzheimer's pose a serious threat to our health and wellbeing. To give us a running start in the fight against cognitive decline, GP and acclaimed broadcaster Dr Ginni Mansberg presents the very latest evidence based research on how to protect your most valuable asset your clever, vulnerable, powerful brain. As the health of our brains increasingly takes centre stage, Ginni gives up to the minute advice and strategies you can implement now to protect your brain as you age.
A must read for anyone looking to maintain their quality of life, or that of loved ones, into old age.
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