In this article I want to discuss carb cravings because this is a huge stepping stone for weight loss. I want you to master those carb cravings and I’m going to tell you how. Firstly, I want you to know it’s not your fault. But it’s your responsibility to change it.
I want you to realise that you can retrain your body to not crave carbs and you’re going to do that by implementing three key things. But these things may be easy or they may be difficult depending on what’s going on in your body.
What I’m focused on is giving you some principles that you can step into to change some of these behaviours like craving carbs you need to implement to be able to overcome the hurdles that can happen with a body that craves carbs.
Let me simplify it. Here are the three things.
Stabilise Blood Sugar
This is the first thing you need to do. Let’s take biscuits and cakes because they will give you continued insulin resistance and carb craving. There’s a whole lot of ingredients in these products that are not helpful for weight loss or metabolic health, and create insulin spikes and make your cells insulin resistant.
So it’s going to take some time for your blood sugar to actually start to come back down. And when your blood sugar starts to come down it’s going to go down to the to a new low and when it hits that low you’re going your body’s going to say danger what have we got going on here is the blood sugar dropped too low you might want to eat a carb to get it back up.
So what ends up happening is you end up on this high low cycle. A lot of you that are having a sugary cereal in the morning you’ll notice you start to become hungry around 10 am and maybe even again then at noon. That’s because your blood sugar is doing this up and down all the time.
So we want to end that. We want to stop that and here’s how you do it.
You have to take refined flour and sugar out of your diet. So that’s cereal, bread, rice, pasta, and highly processed foods like biscuits and cakes. Try it for a couple of weeks. Even better, try it for 30 days. Take those things out and all of a sudden you are off the blood sugar roller coaster. This is going to help keep your blood sugar more stable throughout the day.
Next, after you’ve made those food changes, start to compress your eating window. Make sure you’re going into intermittent fasting 13 to 18 hours every day. That also is going to help stabilise your blood sugar. During your eating window particular dinner, ensure you consume adequate protein, good fats and low-carb vegetables or salad. This will help reduce carb craving the next day.
How to Balance Stress
Balance stress. What happens when you’re in a stressed state? Constantly throughout a day you are going into your sympathetic nervous system which is your fight or flight and then there should be a relaxation where you go into your parasympathetic nervous system which is rest and digest. Just like we’re meant to go from sugar burner to fat burner in and out all the time.
I want to make sure that your nervous nervous system is able to go in and out of sympathetic parasympathetic if you have a highly stressed life if you are diving into that fight or flight all the time. What your body is going to do is it’s going to say we need more sugar so that we can start to use it to handle all of the stress and run this fight or flight system.
So if you can’t stop the stress what I want you to do is look at what is called
practising parasympathetic. This is training of the parasympathetic
nervous system. It is your rest and digest – this is where meditation, breath
work, downtime, even walking in nature can help.
Making sure you’re prioritising sleep and you are building that nervous system up so that you can go in and out of sympathetic and parasympathetic when you’re able to balance that nervous system, you stop craving carbs because your brain doesn’t need as much glucose.
How To Repair Your Gut
There is specific bacteria or fungus in the gut that will make you crave carbs. It’s called Candida. Candida is a fungus inside your gut that will tell you they need more food. What they thrive on are carbs. Some people have no idea they have candida. But carvings are the number one thing to signal you could have candida. Other signs are rashes, vaginal itches, and brain fog. One of the best tools to eliminate candida is fasting. With 24-hour fast you’re rebooting your microbiome you’re getting a better mucosal lining. So the longer fast will help and in that 24-hour period what’s going to happen is you are going to kill the candida. There will be a die- off reaction. A tip here is to watch your tongue. You might see a white furry coat as a sign of candida.
So, to recap:
- Stabilise your blood sugar
- Balance Stress
- Use fasting to heal your gut