Whether snacking on a late night piece of cake or filling up on potato chips, sugary foods seem to keep sneaking into your diet. Even when on a strict, pre-portioned diet, sugar cravings continue to tug on your mind, guiding you on an endless search. To really beat the cravings, you need to understand them and use that understanding against them.
Figure Out Craving Timings
It may seem that your cravings are random and pop into your head at the worst times possible. Fortunately, cravings are actually quite scheduled, making them easier to fight. Once you know the timing of your cravings, you can focus on trigger times and prepare for battle.
To find accurate timing, it’s helpful to practice mindfulness. Cravings come from your subconscious, so without conscious awareness, you may not realize that you always end up searching for a sugar fix at the same time of day. Once you have your times down, you’re ready to start conquering your sugar cravings.
Cut Out Sugar
While it may not sound easy, cutting sugar out of your diet completely can be very effective in silencing cravings. After a week or so of sugar free meals and snacks, the tug of your cravings can become almost non-existent and much easier to ignore.
While attending social engagements, such as a birthday party or wedding, it can be difficult to avoid sugar, as sweets are a societal norm. An occasional sugary piece of cake may not entirely ruin your healthy lifestyle, but it can bring your cravings back in full force. Before taking a bite of a sugary dessert, weigh the cost and prepare to battle your cravings once again.
Build a Healthy Routine
Intermittent dieting or sugar fasting is not enough to conquer your cravings. To truly defeat them, you must implement a healthy routine into your daily life. This could be choosing healthier snacks at the grocery store or going for a run every morning.
By clearing your home of sugar and keeping your mind and body active on a regular basis, you can begin to shift your diet away from sugar and towards sustaining, filling foods. With this in place, finding sugar to tempt your cravings requires going out of your way; greater effort provides natural discouragement from eating sugar.
Not all types of sugar are bad for your health, but to overcome cravings, it can be helpful to cut them all out. Once the cravings for sugar have been silenced, try experimenting with fruits and vegetables containing high amounts of fiber alongside natural sugars. If they don’t renew the cravings, implementing them into your diet is healthy and tasty.
Sugar can seem to be everywhere, and the cravings for it can force you into a lifestyle you don’t enjoy. By monitoring your cravings, starving them of sugar and coming up with a plan to keep them quiet, you can take control of your life and eat the way that makes you feel great.
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