Simple Strategies to Banish Cravings

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And the most likely reason is stress. Yep, when you get stressed out, when those stress hormones go up, your blood sugar starts a wild roller coaster ride. While you feel while your feel good, brain chemicals, they just take a dive. That's a combination that's going to send you rushing off in search of your favorite high sugar impact snack. Or it could be that you didn't eat by the sugar impact plate at your last meal if you didn't get your clean lean protein like wild salmon or grass fed beef, some healthy fats like avocado or coconut, and some low impact carbs like lentils or quinoa or pumpkin. You're going to start sniffing around a few hours later to find something to boost your mood and your blood sugar. Or perhaps you need some help digesting that protein so it can go to work boosting your brain chemicals. Now, if you're under stress or over 40, which I think pretty much qualifies just about everyone nowadays, you would probably benefit from some digestive enzymes. More on those in a bit. And finally, you may have just trained yourself to expect a little treat or two at a certain time of day. You know, just like Pavlov's dogs. Now the good news is, if you've trained yourself to do this, you can retrain yourself to knock it off too. So let's go through some strategies to help you kick those cravings to the curb. Number one, get the enemy out of the house and out of the office, out of the car, out of the glove box, and anywhere you might be stashing stuff you have no business getting into. Get it going, make it easy on yourself. It's just flat out mean to stick a candy bar in your office drawer and think you're going to be okay. Come on now, next, add some sour cultured food to your diet. I got this one from Donna Gates, so she does these cultured veggies, which I will admit are an acquired taste, but they do take away your sweet tooth. Here's an easy way to do it. Just get some lemons, squeeze some lemon juice in, and by the way, if you do a couple tablespoons of that, it can help temper your blood sugar at the next meal. And that nice sour taste is going to help take away your sweet tooth. What I like to do, I call this my lemonade. Spelled a I D. My lemonade is I'll take couple tablespoons of lemon juice, freshly squeezed, put it in some water, throw in some glutamine powder which makes your body think it just got some protein in, which is very satiating. And then I'll throw in some fiber, either my virgin diet, extra fiber or some chia seeds. And that can help just take the edge off so you can keep going for another hour or two before you eat. Now be sure to eat by the sugar impact plate. And here's what it is. Number one, clean lean protein. The reason I'm having you do clean lean protein, grass fed beef, wild salmon, pastured pork, pastured chicken. Quality is everything. Here you are what you eat ate. But that clean lean protein is where you make your brain chemicals. That's how you're making the dopamine and you're making the serotonin. It's going to give you better satiety because it slows down stomach emptying and it keeps ghrelin, that hunger hormone that pops up to tell you to eat it keeps it under control and it cuts cravings fast. And that's why that glutamine in the lemonade works so well. Another big part of the clean lean or I'm sorry, the sugar impact plate. Healthy fats. Healthy fats. Yes, you need to eat fat to lose fat and to be healthy. But also healthy fats not only make a happy brain, our brain's over 50% fat. But they also activate the same reward center that all these treats that we're going for do. So healthy fats, what are they? Coconut, avocado, olives, olive oil, nut butters. I'M going to talk about that in a second. Raw nuts and seeds. I like to take my nuts and seeds, and what I do is I will dehydrate or low roast those nuts. Now, little bit on the nut butter, just so that you don't turn a good thing bad. Because too much healthy food's unhealthy. Right? And I'm just going to be very vulnerable and authentic here and tell you that almond butter is my crack. So if you are one of those people that thinks that the jar of nut butter is the serving, then it's your enemy and you can't bring it in the house. Okay? I'm so sorry, but that's the way it works. Although I have found these little packets of nut butter. I mean, what a brilliant idea. Just make sure they don't have sugar in them, because again, that's how you make a good thing bad. But. But fat is so great because fat triggers some little chemicals in the small intestine to go, hey, I've eaten. So it tells your brain that you've eaten, and it also activates the reward center in your brain so you feel good and rewarded. All right, now, low impact carbs. Here's the deal. I see with a lot of people, they try to just go, okay, no carbs at all. Well, how has that worked for you? You know what it does? It sends you racing for a cookie. But if you do some quinoa or some pumpkin, I am all over the squashes, by the way. If you've not been doing squash, you've been missing out. I'm talking kabocha squash, butternut squash, pumpkin. All these things have basically really, really low sugar impact, loads of great fiber and amazing nutrients. So you're gonna get quinoa, lentils, legumes, pumpkin squashes. Again, I say the sugar impact diet's agnostic, so I just named off some things you can do if you're a Paleo dieter or if you're a vegan or anywhere in between. But what happens when you eat low impact carbs is you get nice, steady supply of sugar to the brain so you won't go sniffing around for a cookie. It helps stabilize your blood sugar. All right? The other thing here you have to make sure is that you're actually digesting your food. So here's the first tip. Chew. Who knew, right? I know that sounds crazy, but they did this study on chewing. It's amazing what they study out there. And people who chewed more lost more weight. Why? Because, first of all, it gave their body Time to register that, oh, yeah, I ate something. But also it breaks things down, improves digestion. Where I see people having trouble with digestion is in protein and fat. So I take a daily enzyme. I actually take my virgin diet enzymes every day that help me with protein and fat digestion. I do it with each meal. But here's the coolio thing. I take something in that digestive enzyme. It's called phase two or white kidney bean extract. That's slows carbohydrate digestion. Because here's the deal. While most of us need some help with protein digestion and fat digestion, do you really want to speed up carbohydrate digestion? No. The answer is no, you do not. Because if you do, it's going to raise blood sugar faster. We don't want that. We want this nice, slow, steady release of carbohydrates, which is why we look for high fiber, low impact.

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Carbs. All right, so I do that with my meals. I don't take enzymes with shakes because shakes, when you're eating a high quality protein shake, that's very bioavailable for you. Okay, next one is eat by the sugar impact clock. Now, this means you're going to eat within an hour of waking up. Now, if you're one of the people that does intermittent fasting and you go without breakfast, see how you feel there. I find most women don't handle that one very well. So see how you do. Because there's been enough research showing that people who eat within an hour of waking up tend to eat less throughout the day. It really sets the metabolic tone for the day. But that means you're not eating dessert, right? You're eating by the sugar impact plate. And that means probably starting the day with a low sugar impact shake. So you're going to eat every four to six hours and stop eating three hours before bed. And that doesn't mean go to bed later. And the reason that I have you eating by the clock is if you tend to skip meals, then you're going to tend to lose it and go reach for something. But if you know that you had breakfast and you're going to eat lunch and you know when lunch is coming, then you don't tend to go snarf out something an hour before. Now, if you are used to eating every two hours, because you fell for that myth that snacking is good for stabilizing your blood sugar, you might have to go to three hours and then go to four hours, and that's fine. But in between those meals, make sure you're really drinking some great water or green tea. Green tea is great for helping with cravings because it improves insulin sensitivity and gives you something called theanine, which is calming. It raises GABA in the brain, which helps calm you down. Next thing is, I want you to make sure that you're writing this down. Because if you're writing down what you're eating, this is one of the most powerful tools that you can possibly have, is write it down. In fact, one study showed that this was the big determinant as to whether people were successful on a program or not. Purely writing it down. I mean, how simple is that? So the nice thing about writing it down is, let's say that you all of a sudden, at first 4 o', clock, you have this crazy craving you can go back and go, what did I do at lunch? Did I blow it at lunch? Did I get everything in that I was supposed to buy the sugar impact plate? Did I have lunch? Right. So by writing it down, you can go back and go, what the heck went down there? That's creating the craving here. Because a lot of times we have a craving because we really didn't get what we needed at lunch or dinner. Okay, next one. And I talked about this with the talking about almond butter being my crack. Take out the trigger food. So too much healthy food's unhealthy. If there's something out there that you know that you just cannot handle, don't make it hard on yourself. That's just mean, right? So if you know that you can't have 10 slow roasted nuts that you go for like 50, then that's not going to be a great option for you, right? So figure out which foods really work for you and pull the trigger foods out. You might find over time you can get some control over them or not. I still have not managed to control myself around almond butter. I keep trying. I think I don't need to do that experiment again. Now figure out when your big challenging times are and I can tell you. You know how they say it takes 21 days to create a new habit? I found this work in literally two to three days. And it's really about creating replacement strategies in the Sugar Impact diet and the virgin diet. I'm big on what I call swaps. So you know, if you're used to having a white potato, have some pumpkin. If you're having white rice, have some quinoa. But that works well with strategies, replacement strategies as well. If you're used to every night, like having a little treat before bed, get in the bath with a great book, figure out some replacement activities to replace those treats that you're having. Okay, so if like every afternoon you're having this little treat, maybe do a little meditation, do some burst training, watch a funny video, put something else in instead. And along that line, you're probably going to want to put things in that help you deal with stress. Burst training, music, Burst training, by the way, which is I talk about look for my other podcast where I really talk about exercise in depth. But burst training is great because it helps your body handle stress better. And that's just where you go out. You do simple all out exercise for 30 to 60 seconds and then recover for twice as long. So you sprint, walk it off. Sprint, walk it off, or ride your bike Real hard, stand up, push up a hill, then pedal easy, but something hard and then recover hard and then recover for just a short amount of time. But it trains your body to handle stress better. I'll tell you what I use as a pattern interrupt for stress that works really well is music. And I have on my iPhone all sorts of different types of tunes depending on the type of stress I am under to. Boop. I hit that music and it helps me just get out. And I dance a bit as if no one was watching. All right, intentioning, you know, I start every morning with my journal and I work on what are my three wins going to be for the day and what are my long term goals. So intentioning can really help with stress. Of course. Meditation and sleeping. Boy, if you do not sleep well, you're going to wake up the next morning and you are going to have higher stress levels, you're going to be more insulin resistant. And what are you going to be craving? Not salmon, right? You're going to be craving that muffin, that cupcake and a latte. So sleep is a huge one. Now what's interesting with exercise is when you really look at this, exercise has the same endorphin response as some of these cravings treats, but you have way better outcomes. So I like to say, you know, like do some push ups, not some pop tarts. Now, based on why you're craving that sweet something, I just listed off a ton of strategies. Obviously you're not going to start with all of them right now, based on why you're craving, pick one or two of these strategies to start with and ideally grab a pal to be your accountability partner who you can ping if you need a little support or a little push. You can kick your cravings to the curb in two weeks or less. I'm talking a couple of days and it's easier than you think. And you're going to love how great it is to be no longer controlled by sugar. If you'd like a free transcript of Today's show, text 58885 and enter JJ Crave, your first name, space and your email address now. Again, that number is 58885 and you enter JJ crave space, your first name space and your email address. In the Sugar Impact diet, I help you clear up the confusion around sugar and take back the control that sugar has over your life. In just two weeks, you'll lose your sweet tooth and shrink your waistline. Why wait? Start those two weeks today. Hey everyone, did you like this episode? Be sure to subscribe for the next one and tell a friend. If you like training and cutting edge information, Visit the Virgin Diet.com.

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