9 Root Causes of Sugar Cravings (& How To Feel In Control Again)

If you feel like you're addicted to sugar, carbs or starches, like you have to have something sweet after a meal, or you find yourself constantly thinking about that next meal that you're going to have, that's something with junk food or a snack or some kind of meal that you're always craving, know that cravings are multifactorial. There are nine factors that I've identified in the last 10 years of working as a registered dietitian that can contribute to this impulsive feeling that makes you feel like you're constantly out of control, or your mind is always racing to the next food, or the next bite, or the next speck of sugar that you're going to be able to put into your mouth. So today I want to walk you through the three most common myths about cravings, the nine biggest drivers that I've identified in contributing to cravings, and three science backed strategies to help you curb your sugar cravings. So what I've seen is that there are so many people, especially women, I find that cravings are more present in women than men. This is just in my clinical experience, so many women in particular who report that they know what to do, but it's the cravings that they're experiencing, the hunger, the out of control feeling that drives them to make different decisions than they ultimately want to make when it comes to their health. And so if you feel like the solution is just to swear off sugar or shame yourself every time that you make a less optimal choice or try to white knuckle your way through these sugar cravings, I want to tell you that it will continue to not work for you. There is a lot to uncover, and thinking about cravings more like a symptom of something that's happening underneath the surface. Now, I'm not going to say that you can just completely eliminate your cravings and never experience them again in your life, but I will say that this is entirely possible if you struggle with cravings, thinking of it as a sign that there may be other things that are happening underneath the surface. Because when you're able to put more of these pieces into place, it can drastically help to decrease your cravings. And this was my own experience. I remember there being a time when I was very early on in my career as a dietitian and still experiencing so many cravings, especially after dinner, where I would have to have like popcorn or even fruit or other things after my meal because I wasn't satiated enough after the meal. And there were so many things that I ended up changing from a nutrition standpoint, like minor tweaks, I will tell you, like, the first experience that I had that really changed so much of my cravings and made me feel like I had more control over my cravings was a 10 day kind of like reset that helped me remove some of the foods that were contributing to more of my cravings. I increased my protein, I increased my fiber. That really helped me stay more satiated and it had a dramatic effect on my cravings. And over time, continuing to stay consistent with that has made me feel very in control for the most part over the food choices that I'm making now. There are still times since having kids, honestly that, you know, I've had moments of stress eating primarily after, you know, putting them down to bed and just feeling like, wow, that was such a long day, I need a pickme up. And most of the time I can identify this as, you know, we do a lot of coaching work in my programs to help women to overcome this because it is such a barrier. But I would be lying if I said that I was 100% perfect in being able to identify other, other ways to help to get that dopamine hit. There are, you know, occasional times since having kids that I will still, you know, gravitate towards like CSA chips or something like that after putting them down. But it's not a craving. And so there is a difference between stress eating and cravings. Today I want to get into cravings. So the idea that cravings are just like randomly happening is also completely not true. There are some specific reasons, for the most part for why. And so we're going to uncover those today. I just want to reinforce how much you can change the cravings that you're experiencing. I want to just highlight one person that wrote me last spring. She wrote my team and I saying prior to starting the blood sugar reset, when I tell you that every single day after lunch I would have to have some chocolate or scrunch for something sweet, I am not kidding. It's kind of miraculous that I don't crave it any longer. And she had done the blood sugar reset, which in the blood sugar reset we outlined this specific way of eating and a lot of the strategies that I'm going to talk about today, we put it into a seven day protocol for you. And just within that first week she wrote me this message. And so it doesn't take a long period of time. I think that's another thing that people think is like, oh, the cravings, you know, if I start working on improving some of these choices that I'm making that it's going to take a while for me to see the results. It is very common. I have supported more than 25,000 women in the blood sugar reset and the number of people. It is by far the number one symptom improvement that people report in just four days of doing the blood sugar reset, where they're like. It is astonishing to me that I used to crave sugar after every meal or after dinner every night, or felt so out of control and had so much, you know, food noise in my brain. And when I implemented your framework, it completely went away, disappeared, or I just feel like I have so much more control over it, or it completely quieted the noise that I was experiencing before. Okay, let's start with the three common myths about cravings. The first myth is it's just about willpower. You just have to have more discipline. You need to train yourself to say, okay, diet starts to get on Monday. I'm going to be super strict. If you're having a high level of cravings, this will make it feel very difficult to stick to anything because you're going to gravitate towards more of those foods that feel exceptionally pleasurable or sweet or whatever the case may be. And I think it's important to identify that that is not a normal experience to constantly feel cravings. So for some people, it's easier to follow a plan when they aren't feeling like they're swimming uphill or swimming upstream trying to go against these cravings. So it is, of course, important to learn how to have self discipline, to learn how to say no to certain foods that you know are not going to serve you and are going to take you away from the goals that you're working towards. But the more important skill to really develop is learning how to nourish yourself well enough that you can decrease your cravings altogether. And cravings do shrink when your meals and your blood sugar and your stress response are dialed in. And we're going to talk about those common contributors today. Myth number two is that you need to cut out all sugar in order to stop your cravings. So there is room for less optimal foods in your diet. And when there's strategically integrated into your nutrition plan or in a way that helps to support balanced blood sugar, you will be able to have sugar. Sometimes that doesn't lead to out of control cravings where then you need to eat like the entire bag or box of Oreos in something like the blood sugar reset. We do remove added Sugar for the entire seven days. Because I do believe that there's, you know, there's, of course, a few different ways you can go about it, but I personally have had so much success in working with clients where they remove added sugar for the seven days and they focus on these blood sugar balancing principles. Getting enough protein, getting enough fiber, that really helps to change their cravings and gives you just a little bit of a reset. But then after that time, you should be able to have sugar occasionally and not feel like you're spiraling out of control where you're like, okay, I need more where you have a piece of cake, and then you're like, I need a second piece and a third piece and a fourth piece. And sometimes there will always be that natural, you know, desire to be like, oh, yeah, I would love to have another piece. But the idea that you have these out of control cravings is where it becomes less normal. So myth number two is that you do not need to cut all sugar out of your diet in order to drastically improve your overall sugar cravings. Myth number three is that skipping meals will help. So a lot of times people will approach this, especially women, from the idea that they're going to save calories or they're going to jump back on the plan on Monday and try their very best to be perfectly on plan and not eating less optimal foods, or they're fasting for too long of a time period. And this can actually lead to more issues. It can lead to more blood sugar imbalances that make you feel out of control around food once you actually are in front of that meal, or you are in front of that dessert, or you are in front of that bowl of pasta. So skipping meals and undereating is definitely something that can completely backfire. And we see this in women all the time. It's not that they're not trying. They're actually trying very hard, but they're not focusing on the right things that are gonna move the needle, that are gonna make them feel like they're in control of the foods that they're putting into their mouth. So the idea is understanding how to have more of that control. And when we think about the idea of cravings, they're of course not random, and they are not your body's cruel way of trying to just derail you and derail all of your success. But cravings can almost always be attribute some kind of a root cause or an imbalance if they're chronic and you feel like they are concerning, like they're prohibiting you from achieving your goals. So overcoming these barriers means knowing how to implement a holistic approach to cravings, Factoring in the ways that these nine key contributors can impact your underlying cravings and then influence your habits at the end of the day. So let's get into those common triggers. There are nine common triggers for cravings that, again, I've identified In working with tens of thousands of women in the last 10 years. And I'm gonna unpack what each of those are. Number one, the most common contributor that we see to ongoing cravings that make you feel out of control around sugar and starches and carbohydrates Are blood sugar spikes and crashes, Meaning that you are eating something and it's contributing to a large blood sugar increase that's then leading a crash that leads you to needing that next pickme up. That blood sugar change. That physiological change is a lot of work on your body, and it drives you to look for that next hit where you're like, where can I get this? I need more sugar. I need more caffeine, Sometimes something to help to pick me up. And when you are on that roller coaster on an ongoing basis, which most people are, and they do not realize it, this will lead to you perpetually wanting carbohydrates or sweets after every single meal and not feeling satiated. So the first thing that you want to do is follow a blood sugar balance approach that helps with improving this. And I cannot tell you the number of people who are trying to eat healthy, but their healthy eating is still leaning to increases in blood sugar levels. So that's number one. Number two is conditioned habits. Now, conditioned habits literally strengthen your neural pathways. So the more often that you repeat a specific behavior in response to the craving that you're experiencing, the more efficient and automatic that pathway becomes. So instead of pausing to decide, is this something that I actually want? Is this something that I actually need in this moment, your brain defaults to that ingrained behavior that it's become accustomed to expect. And that reduces the consciousness around those eating choices and makes the cravings feel like a reflex. It feels like it's something that you have to have. And the more that you continue to default to the having the sweet reward, it creates that habit loop where the brain is anticipating the reward. When the cue appears like, you relax after dinner, and then immediately you're relaxing, and that triggers that sugar rush, and it releases dopamine. So when it comes to this habit loop, you, want to be able to break that conditioned habit so that you have more conscious control over the food choices that you're making. Number three. The number three contributor is gut microbiome disruption. When you have more harmful bacteria, which is very common when you have more harmful bacteria in your large intestine, this can lead to drivers for sugar. Oftentimes people don't realize that the bacteria within you, especially within your large intestine, we have trillions of them. They drive so much of our desire, our cravings, our taste buds. And these harmful bacteria specifically, they thrive off of sugar, carbohydrates and starches. So when you have more of an imbalanced gut microbiome and more of these bacteria that are trying to fuel themselves and create a place for them to be able to live and thrive, they are sending signals to your body, in your brain, specifically to signal you to eat more carbohydrates that will help to fuel them. So when it comes to the role of of the gut microbiome, you can have gut dysbiosis, which most people do not know that they have. Unless you're running like an in depth stool test. This is more than just a stool test that you would get at the hospital for a concern about C. Diff or something like that. It's actually looking at the composition of beneficial versus more pathogenic or harmful strains of bacteria. So if you have gut microbiome disruption, this can be too much harmful bacteria, not enough good bacteria. It could be not enough beneficial bacteria. It could be having more yeast strains like Candida. These will make us literally feel out of control around these sugar and carbohydrates. And I have worked with countless people. I have been running stool tests for the last 10 years, way before they were popular or anyone knew that. You know, a stool test can help you uncover so many things. And I've also been running organic acids tests for 10 years in thousands and thousands of people to look at not only nutrient deficiencies, but look at some of the composition around things like Candida. And I can tell you time and time again that when we use the proper protocol like we focus on in My Food is health with targeted supplements, with the right nutrition plan, and we're able to uncover things like an imbalanced gut microbiome. Whether that's bacteria or Candida, people report so many improvements in the control that they have around their meals. Number four, fasting for too long or skipping meals will drive more sugar cravings. So when you are skipping meals, it increases your body's stress response, which will lead you to feeling more out of control at the next meal. Regular Meals can make a drastic change in how many cravings you have throughout the day. One of the main reasons for this is that when you're eating fiber rich meals, this helps to regulate your hunger hormones. It helps you feel more satiated after each of your meals. And that benefit lasts for hours after. It actually can even set the tone for the day when you incorporate a high protein, high fiber breakfast. So when you go a long period of time and you're skipping breakfast, this can actually increase that desire for something sweet after the first time that you eat and then throughout the rest of the day. And I'll give you one example, for many months I was eating just an organic Greek yogurt bowl with protein powder and a little bit of nut butter and a handful of berries. And so, I mean, overall I was getting about 40 to 45 grams of protein in that actual bowl. But the lack of fiber that I was eating actually led me to have more cravings. And when I switched my breakfast to being completely in alignment with, you know, the rest of recipes that we have in the blood sugar reset, my cravings later at night drastically improved. So this isn't necessarily skipping meals, but my point is, is that how you eat and how you feel yourself at the beginning of the day impacts how you're going to fuel yourself for the rest of the day and can help with decreasing those cravings. Another thing that one of my clients recently reported is that she was traveling and she had skipped about three meals because she had a late flight that night, night and was on the plane. It got delayed and so she didn't end up having dinner, she just had some snacks that she had in her bag. The next morning she had to get up to go to a meeting and she didn't have breakfast because she was out of her additional snacks that she ended up eating on the plane. So she ubered directly to her meeting and then at the meeting didn't have lunch because everyone had eaten before. And so it wasn't until like mid afternoon that she had her first meal and she said, I ate so much. I felt like I was so out of control. I had had so much food and I like couldn't stop eating. And so much of that comes from going long periods of time without eating. That completely backfires and then makes us feel like we have to have so much more Food number five is nutrient deficiencies. Nutrient deficiencies can fuel sugar cravings. Nutrient deficiencies, there's a number of them and most people think that if they're eating a healthy diet, then they have no nutrient deficiencies. But this could not be further from the truth. And running thousands of nutrient deficiency test, I will tell you that the norm, the standard, even for people who are taking supplements sometimes is still having nutrient deficiencies. If you're not taking the right supplements or you have an absorption problem, A lot of people can be eating a healthy diet, but not have a healthy gut microbiome. And when you look deeper under the hood, you can see that the impact of the unhealthy gut microbiome is leading to lower levels of absorption of some of these key nutrients. So some of the key nutrients that people can be deficient in that increase cravings are things like magnesium. Some of your B vitamins can also impact your cravings and your desire to eat. Things like iron deficiency, omega 3 fatty acid deficiency, even lack of electrolytes. All of these things, specifically like sodium and potassium, all of these things can impact your overall cravings. Number six is dehydration. So many people confuse hunger and thirst, and they will think because they are thirsty that they're actually hungry. And so the first thing that you want to do is make sure that you are well hydrated, especially if you're experiencing a craving, to say, have I had enough water today? Especially water with electrolytes to help to bring that water intracellularly so that your cells actually recognize that you have fluids on board. This drastically helps with decreasing cravings. So you always want to make sure that you're assessing when you notice more cravings. Have I had enough water today or in the last 24 hours? And do I have enough electrolytes on board for the amount of exercise that I've done, or sweating or basic overall needs. This is also true for women who are breastfeeding. Breastfee requires so many electrolytes. And I, when I was breastfeeding, was to, you know, I had so many packets of electrolytes that I was pouring into my water to try to help with staying hydrated myself. And also it drastically increased my milk supply. The seventh most common driver of sugar cravings is chronic stress or emotional dysregulation. So when we think about nutrition, we want to take a holistic approach, not only from factoring in all these different mechanisms, but also thinking about your mental, emotional and spiritual health. And so often when women especially experience more stress, the first place that we go to for an outlet is food. It can drive more cravings and make us feel like you can't control how much you're eating. Emotional dysregulation can Also do this where you're trying to numb yourself with food or you're trying to offset the lack of dopamine and happy reward chemicals with some kind of food, especially sugar and carbohydrates, to give you the pick me up that you need to help you through the emotional dysregulation. So being able to incorporate more yoga and meditation and journaling to help you get in tune with your emotions and to decrease some of that chronic stress can actually be phenomenal when it comes to improving your sugar cravings. Number eight is poor sleep or late night screen time. Poor sleep is one of the most common drivers of sugar cravings the next day. There have been countless research studies that have been done where they look at people who are sleep deprived. And when they take the sleep deprived people compared to the people who had a quality night's sleep and they send them out to the grocery store or they put them in a room where they have unlimited access to food, the people who are sleep deprived continuously across the board eat more calories and specifically more calories from high glycemic foods. So sugars and starches. They also will purchase more of these high glycemic foods when they're sent to the grocery store. And the researchers look at grocery store receipts. So just sleeping adequately at night will help you with your sugar cravings. And this is something that you probably have, you know, identified where when you're traveling a lot and you're, you know, changing time zones or you're feeling extremely exhausted because you've not slept as much the nights prior because of your kids being awake or being sick, you can identify that there for any person, regardless of how much you know about nutrition, you can identify that you will experience an increase in those cravings. And being able to rationalize your way through it can oftentimes help. Where you're able to say, this is because I didn't sleep well the night before and there's things that I can do, there's things that are in my own control. Okay, Item number nine. Contributor number nine is over reliance on caffeine. Over reliance on caffeine can impact desire for sugar or carbohydrates in a number of different ways. One, for some people, caffeine can actually increase your blood sugar response. So even without eating any sugar or carbohydrates or calories, a black cup of coffee can increase a person's blood sugar levels. I've seen this countless times on people wearing continuous glucose monitors. And this is very individualized. So in one Aspect, it could be a blood sugar impact. On another, it could be increasing stress hormones where chronically high caffeine intake can lead to higher levels of cortisol. Another is through sleep disruption and fatigue where if you're consuming too much caffeine, it impacts your sleep potentially depending on the person and how fast you're able to clear the the caffeine from your system, which is largely genetically based. It also can impact cravings through the dopamine and reward pathways. So caffeine can activate dopamine pathways in the brain that reinforce reward seeking behavior. And then when your tolerance for that build builds, the brain can crave additional dopamine hits and sugar can absolutely provide that. So there's a number of ways that over reliance on caffeine can impact cravings, but definitely is a contributor. So now you have the nine common triggers. Let me just go through them, listing them out. Number one, blood sugar spikes and crashes. Number two, conditioned habits. Number three, gut microbiome disruption. Number four, fasting for too long or skipping meat meals. Number five, micronutrient depletion. Number six, dehydration. Number seven, chronic stress or emotional dysregulation. Number eight, poor sleep or late night screen time. And number nine, over reliance on caffeine. Okay, now that we've identified the three myths and those nine key contributors, I want to talk about three science backed strategies that I have used in clients over the last 10 years years to help with decreasing cravings. The first is front loading your meals, not backstacking your calories. So skipping breakfast or undereating in the first half of the day in the idea or the hope of trying to save calories for later in the day. This can lead to more blood sugar dysregulation. It can also increase cortisol, which leads to more of those intense cravings. It can also negatively impact your sleep later that night night, which can then lead to more sugar cravings the following day. And it can lead to rebound overeating. So going too long without eating is a physiological stressor and women are more sensitive to those stressors than men. So the cravings only get bigger as your body tries to compensate for missed fuel. What you want to do instead is eating a protein rich meal within 60 to 90 minutes of waking up up, ideally aiming for 25 to 30 grams of protein, spacing out your meals throughout the day so that you're not backstacking your calories, where you're just eating all of your calories in the second half of the day. And I would Highly recommend not following things like the omad or overly aggressive diets where you're just eating one meal a day. For some people, two meals a day can work. That would definitely be individualized, but these are general recommendations. Number two, break the habit loop. So the mistake that people make is that they confuse cravings with actual hunger, especially after meals or during stressful periods of time. So this is when you would finish your dinner and then your brain starts to whisper to you like now go get some chocolate. And it's not about hunger as much as it is about the actual routine and the stimulus that you have created. With this conditioned habit loop that we talked about about your brain becomes wired for that routine. And then the simplest, most efficient way to live is just finish my dinner and then eat chocolate and that becomes your default. So even when your body doesn't need more food, that's where you go to. So instead of jumping to this, you know, conditioned behavior, I want you to start to break that habit loop. And the ways that you can do that are replacing your post dinner treat with some kind of comforting ritual like an herbal tea or going for a walk or something that's going to make you feel good and still give you that release of feel good chemicals. You can also break the snack equals stress relief loop by inserting a moment of pause and actually practicing a self check in where you're checking in with yourself and you're thinking about how do I feel in this moment? What do I need outside of food that can help provide me me with some comfort? And then using environmental cues to help to shift that automatic behavior, like putting the chocolate out of sight, not buying the chocolate, those kinds of things so that you don't actually have it on hand. The third science backed strategy for curbing your cravings is to eat blood sugar balanced meals throughout your day. It's not enough to just eat healthy. Building meals that are technically clean or healthy or have whole foods, but they're still imbalanced will lead to a rollercoaster blood sugar response that can drive fatigue, irritability, and it can also drive an intense feeling or desire for sugar. So blood sugar dysregulation, I would say in the last 10 years of working with thousands of women is arguably the strongest predictor of overall craving cravings. Even healthy carbohydrates like oatmeal, fruits, grain bowls, they can spike your blood sugar and lead to crashes. And some people will say, oh, that's fine, your body is naturally equipped to handle elevations in blood sugar and that is Absolutely true. Your body is naturally equipped to handle increases in blood sugar unless you have type 1 diabetes. But when you become more insulin resistant, that level lowers. And so I have found that being able to focus on meals that combine enough protein and fats and fiber help to decrease some of that spike, leading to less fatigue and more control over those food choices that you're making. So here's one example of just a general way of eating that could be increasing your cravings. You wake up and your breakfast is oatmeal with berries, cinnamon and honey. Or you have a rice cake or a piece of toast with a glass of orange juice, or just a piece of toast with even avocado on it. All of these things can contribute to larger blood sugar increases and then decreases where you may experience more cravings, even mid morning lunch. Then you might have a healthy salad. What you think is a healthy salad where it has salad with quinoa and dried cranberries and sunflower seeds and a traditional dressing that has, you know, some added sugar in it. And then you go into your snack that has a handful of grain free crackers or an apple where you're having more carbohydrates that are eaten on their own or naked carbohydrates. And then you have dinner with a grain bowl that has sweet potatoes and black beans and peppers and onions and guacamole and salsa. When you combine all of these food sources of carbohydrates and then you're not getting enough protein. Like for instance in that dinner example where you have the grain bowl with the sweet potatoes which is a starch, the black beans which is a carbohydrate, a whole food carbohydrate, peppers and onions, which are non starchy vegetables, and then the salsa and the guacamole, you at least have the healthy fats and some fiber with the some of those vegetables and the black beans and the guacamole, but you have more carbohydrates on board for not a lot of protein that will contribute to an elevation in your blood sugar. So eating meals, I'm gonna give you an example of what it would look like to switch to that using the framework that I incorporate into the blood sugar res. So here's an example. Western omelet egg cups for breakfast where you're getting 25 plus grams of protein in addition to that healthy fiber. For lunch you're having a smoothie. Like we love creating different flavor profiles for smoothies because it makes it feel like you're going to an ice Cream shop for ice cream, but it's your smoothie every day for lunch and it saves so much time. So in the blood sugar reset, we always incorporate a smoothie for lunch to help to save time and and improve your energy mid afternoon. This is one of the best hacks that I have found for improving my afternoon energy levels is having a smoothie. So something like a chocolate pistachio smoothie for lunch that has again 30 grams of protein, it has more than 10 grams of fiber and healthy fats that will help you feel more satiated, more in control of your hunger hormones. You have for your snack, the apple with peanut butter instead of just the apple by itself. And then for dinner, the chicken parm skin skillet that has again more protein, more fiber and more of those healthy fats. So this is what one day of eating these balanced blood sugar stabilizing meals can have a huge impact when you compare it to what the first example of meals that I initially showed. So when it comes to improving your cravings, there is so much that you can do and making some of these little tweaks can make a massive difference difference. So what I would love for you to do, I have all of this that I outlined today. I would love for you to get my free guide that I created to walk you through these exact strategies. So if you go to being bridgid.com forward slash cravings, I created a free guide that shows you everything that I just walked through and gives you visual examples of exactly what I'm talking about so that you have something tangible that you can print out or download and come back to. Because a lot of times when you're making changes to your habits, it's not just about consuming a podcast and listening to the information, it's about really allowing it to absorb into your subconscious and looking at ways that you can take the information and apply them to your own life. So I would love for you to take advantage of this free download to help you improve your sugar cravings. Again, that's beingbrigid.com cravings My name is spelled B R I G I D being Bridget.com forwards forward slash cravings. And I would love to invite you to our blood sugar reset program. So we will be announcing the blood sugar reset soon. But this is the exact way that you can take all of these examples that I'm talking about and start to apply them to your life. It is the easiest way for us to try to make the largest impact with showing people how it can feel. And when you notice the changes in how you can feel and you notice them in just a seven day time period period. It's so motivating where you're like wow, I can't believe what I didn't know before or what I wasn't practicing before and how much of a difference it really makes in my everyday life. So I'm excited for that. I'm excited for you to download the Cravings Guide. Please message me and let me know what you think changes that you're making based on what I've outlined in the Cravings Guide. And thank you for being here today. I will see you very soon.