Top Reasons for Sugar Cravings & How to Stop Them for Good with JJ Virgin

Hey, J.J. here.

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Welcome to the.

JJ Virgin Lifestyle show with celebrity nutrition expert, fitness hall of famer and four time New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin. JJ is a warrior mom whose knowledge and expertise have helped change hundreds of thousands of lives. With over 3.5 million podcast downloads and a appearances on Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Rachael Ray, Larry King, Love.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. This show is about you, not about me. I want to help you find practical, real world ways to dial in your health and mindset so you can finally lose that weight and feel strong and energized. Stop settling for less than your personal best. It's time to find out how to look and feel better than ever. And I'll be right here with you the whole way. Okay, today you've got all me and only me because we are going to do a deep dive into one of my favorite topics and that is sugar. So we have been deep in the weeds over here on Team JJ working on a new online program for the Sugar Impact diet. We're calling it Breakthrough Carbon Tolerance. What we're doing is upgrading and up leveling our online program and adding in new information about intermittent fasting and fasting. Things you need to know before you think about doing those, a little bit more about how to move from being a sugar burner to a fat burner and ketogenic diets. Should you do it? When should you do it? How should you do it? Should you not do it? So super excited about all that. We've been, all of us have been focused, focused, focused on that. And one of the things I've been really looking at that I wanted to jump in and talk about today was sugar cravings, which you know, I talk a lot about in the Sugar Impact diet book. But today I want to talk about why the heck we have sugar cravings and more importantly, what you need to know to get rid of them, what you should do, what you must not do because it'll make it worse. So there you go. So we'll be talking about that before we dive into that. I need to do a shout out and you know, we do a shout out for reviews at the top of each show and I am so grateful and appreciative of these. The whole team is. We all read them. This one is from MTN la. It's from Sherry Mountain LA says my favorite podcast. Five stars. The JJ Virgin Lifestyle show is by far my favorite podcast. I listen to several, but this one is different because it feels so personal. It gets right to the point. It offers sound health advice in a brief period of time. Whether a guest is on the show or just JJ sharing her knowledge, it is sure to be packed with great information. JJ really lets her personality come through. She makes me laugh all the time. No matter what is going on in my life, when I tune in, I know I'll be learning more about my health and getting a smile out of it. Thank you, jj. Keep being awesome, all right. I will do my best. I'll do my best, Sherry, to keep being awesome. I super appreciate that. I've been trying to do kind of an even split between guests and topics that you guys bring up when we are hanging out on Facebook or Instagram Live together. So if you haven't hung out with me there yet, come hang out with me and let me know what you want to know more about. And I'd love to, of course, for you to come jump on over and check out the new breakthrough carbon tolerance online program. It is going to be super awesome. And again bringing in some cool new concepts that everybody has been asking for more about. Yikes. I almost forgot to give you the link to today's show notes and you are not gonna want to miss those because I'm gonna put in my recipe for my lemonade that helps crush those sugar cravings. So can grab that@jjvirgin.com sugar cravings. Alrighty, I'm back. And again, we are going to deconstruct sugar cravings. And why this is so important is I hear all the time, oh my gosh, I crave sugar. What do I do? And the answer is, and I know how much you love this answer so much, it depends. And it really depends on why you're having those sugar cravings in the first place, right? So that's what we're going to figure out today is why are they happening? What the heck is going on? And then we can figure out what the best approach for you is. Now, of course, I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet to help you get rid of your sugar cravings forever and to help you retrain your taste buds to appreciate the natural sweetness of Foods and to, like, savory and spicy and sour. So keep that in, you know, the back of your mind here as we're going through this. But let's just go through some of the key things that I found over the years and that are creating issues with sugar cravings. Now, the first one that you can't ignore are genetics. And I'll tell you a funny little story about this. So I'm adopted. And growing up, my nickname was Poppy. Not for the state flower of California where I was raised. Nope, nope. It was for Pop Tarts. Yep. And I loved the frosted ones. Oh, my gosh. The chocolate fudge frosted ones. The brown sugar cinnamon ones. The raspberry. The frosted raspberry ones. Can I get an amen like anyone else over there going, yep, that was me, too. When I wasn't having those Pop Tarts, I was having Captain Crunch. Not with Crunch berries, though. That's sacrilegious. Or Cocoa Puffs. Or occasionally on a Sunday, I got one of those Sven Hards, those little, like, pastry things. So that's how I started my day. Which is crazy when you think about it, because of the second meal phenomenon that says basically, what you just ate is going to impact what you eat next. So when you have something that hijacks your blood sugar first thing in the morning, guess what's going to happen for your next meal? Yikes. You're sunk. That is why it's so absolutely crazy that we eat so many different things nowadays that are just dessert for breakfast. Makes me crazy. I am on my own personal mission to change that. But that is how I was raised. Now I don't have a sweet tooth. My mother, my adoptive mom, has such a sweet tooth. Oh, my gosh. She's got stuff hidden all over. She's got See's candy boxes. She's got ice cream. We always had cookies and cake and all this stuff growing up. And at the age of 12, I just went like, I did a Susan powder. Stop the insanity. I was like, enough. And I just stopped eating it, which made my mom nuts, to be honest. She was like, try some. Have some. She's kind of a food pusher, but I honestly don't have the genetics. When I was on TLC's Freaky Eaters for a couple seasons, we did genetic testing on those Freaky Eaters to see, you know, how much of this was genetics versus learned. And there definitely is a genetic component to sweet. There's two different things. There's this person who has is a sweet Taster and turns out the more sweet they eat, the more sweet they want. Now we all have a little bit of that. Exposure equals preference. You can be trained to want more sweet sugar, but these people, it's way more, it's amplified or you just have a natural sweet tooth. Now we all have a little bit of that too. We're hardwired. You know, we are on this planet because we sought out honey and fruit and we ate as much as we could during the summer to survive the winter. But this is above and beyond that. So we've got the genetics, right, and we've got training. And this is where things like artificial sweeteners and fructose, these things can be really problematic because they're super sweet. And the more sweet you eat. What do you want? Yep, more sweet. So you're actually training yourself to want more and more sweet and you're desensitizing your taste buds to it. Now next thing that can happen is you can totally trash your gut microbiome. And this can happen due to a variety of reasons. Biggest one though is really kind of a crappy standard American diet where we're not eating enough good fiber soluble, insoluble resistant and prebiotic that's feeding those good bacteria in the gut and helping to get rid of the bad guys and the yeasts and the, all the funguses and all the, so that those ones, especially the yeast, don't kick up and say, hey, feed me sugar. So that's one thing because sugar is going to feed yeast and bad bacteria in the gut and then make the more you have, the more it wants to be fed. It is absolutely demanding. So your gut microbiome and the health of your gut can have a big role to play here too. Next one. And I'm going to share a story I haven't told any anyone really. I've told a couple friends about this, but I swore them to secrecy. So now I guess I'm just kind of letting this one so I don't have sugar cravings. I haven't eaten sugar for so long. And then when I wrote the sugar impact diet, I kind of found that last little bit of sugar sneaking in. Even I, as I wrote that book, I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe some of the places sugar's still sneaking into my diet. This is crazy. So I really don't ever eat sugar. And you know, I don't eat gluten, hardly ever eat dairy. If I do, it's goat cheese. You know, people always ask me what do you do to cheat? And I'm like, I don't, like, I don't, I don't really cheat. I'd have another glass of dry farm wine. Like that's about it. So you know, little bit more grass fed beef. I don't know. So anyway, when you get past all these cravings, it's just you don't ever have to cheat because it's just not an issue. Isn't that cool? It's like you're out of your get out of jail free card. So anyway, last December I had to have surgery on my hip. I'd been chased by a dog. I had an accident. I hurt my hamstring, hurt my hip. I had to have surgery on it. It's the night before surgery and I'm in Santa Monica and I start getting super duper anxious. Like super anxious. Like so anxious. And here's the worst part. I'm having surgery the next day at St. John's now I know the surgeon, he's amazing. Shout out to Dr. Andrew Yoon. He's incredible. So I know the surgeon, I know the hospital. St. John's is amazing in Santa Monica. It's kind of like you're going to the Four Seasons and it happens to be a hospital. So like that's totally calming. Except that I know what I'm going to go have to go do. Like they are going to saw off a bone, right? And I made the silly mistake of looking at the surgery beforehand, watching videos and you know, note to self into you listening. Don't do that, don't do that. That's just a silly thing. So now it's the night before surgery. I am trying everything. I'm with my hubby Tim and I am trying to distract myself. I got the doggy with me, I'm petting the doggie. This is not working at all. I am anxious, anxious, anxious. And I don't have surgery till 12:30 the next day, which is making it even worse. I mean, it would have been great if I could have gotten up and gone there and been in the hospital 5:00am but no such luck. It's 12:30, so it's now 8:00 clock at night. I've had one glass of wine, can't have more than that. I'm gonna go have surgery. I can't. Like there's nothing I can do. I'm anxious. Nothing I can do. I look at Tim and I said, I must have a piece of chocolate layer cake. Now I can't even tell you the last time I can think of that I had a chocolate piece of chocolate layer cake was when I was pregnant with Grant down at Gladstone's in Malibu. So we're talking 23 years ago. I cannot honestly think of a time. I don't even like cake. So I can't even think of a time that I've had this. But I can't. I mean it was like there was no question in my mind that I had to have a piece of chocolate layer cake. It had to be chocolate layer cake. It's 8 o' clock Sunday night. Tim's looking over at me and, and I'm like, we have to find this. So first we check the restaurant we were staying at, Le Merry Go. No such luck. I get on grubhub, I start searching. Turns out you can't just have. No one's going to bring you one piece of chocolate layer cake. Fortunately, Shutters down the street had chocolate layer cake. And so we've got this piece. You know, this is a kind husband. He shared it with me. You know, the real reality is Tim has a total sweet tooth. So he was like, yes, let's get you some chocolate layer cake. But it was interesting. I had that. I was like, okay, I'm good. That's it. But it was like such a sign. Why am I rambling on about chocolate layer cake? Because that is a total, total sign of anxiety and stress lowering serotonin and, and your brain going, I've got to get, I've got to calm myself down. And that's what I did. Now I knew exactly what was going on. And in any other situation, if this been an ongoing thing, I would have been like, I am not having chocolate layer cake. I'm going to do some tapping. You know, I'll find something else to do. Shout out to my buddy Nick Ortner. Hey, let's put in the show notes to Nick Ortner and tapping solution. You know, you can do Ziva meditation with my girl Emily Fletcher. You do something. Take a hot bath. I was staying in a place with no bathtub just to, to make it even worse. But you know, I have things that I do, but I never get to this point. So that's why I was like, eh, it's one, it's one time I took my safety net and I took my car blockers. So I had safety net and I took my metabolic digestive balance. I did all this stuff and I, I just said, I'm gonna have this, it's fine. Which because I took all that stuff, I was pretty much Fine with it. But. And I knew it wasn't going to be a habit, but it was such a clear, I'm under stress and it's lowering serotonin. I've got to calm myself down. Boom. And I thought, this is how people feel. So this is what stress does to you. Now, that's acute stress. It's, it's really chronic stress is going to lower serotonin. And it also makes your gut leakier, your gut more permeable, so then you react more to foods. And of course, one of the classic signs of a food intolerance is to crave the very food that's hurting you. So this is another thing that can make you crave sugar. And of course, think about it, all carbohydrates, except for fiber, which we don't digest, turns to sugar. It's just whether you're mainlining it or making it from the food you eat. But there's things that turn to sugar very quickly, like popcorn, you know, wheat bread, right? So muffins, pancakes, all that kind of stuff just turns to sugar pretty quickly. So just be aware, you know, because what we want to figure out is if you're craving sugar, why are you craving sugar? If you're craving sugar because of stress, you want to start putting in things like tapping, meditation, what mindful practice. You could have a really cute small dog like Daisy. But then also, I take my sleep candy every night to help me sleep. It's got some 5 HTP, which of course crosses the blood brain barrier, makes serotonin. So your body can make serotonin for my 5 HTP also. So, and then of course, you can then turn your serotonin, you can make melatonin, but that's another thing that can help with the sugar cravings. So that's another one. And then the final way that you could crave sugar is because you are insulin resistant, you have poor blood sugar control. So if you've got any issues with hypertension, blood sugar, elevated blood sugar, elevated insulin, pre diabetes, diabetes, if you've got that going on, you're not able to access the stored sugar. So when you eat, your body stores the food, right? So it gets, wants to get it out of the blood because elevated blood sugar is dangerous. So it gets it out of the blood, stores it. Insulin's up and you can't get that sugar back out. So even though you've got it on board, you can't use it. And you're hungry and you'll crave sugar because your blood sugar goes low. So that is another one. Now why is this all important? Because you want to know why you're craving sugar. So you can go hit it. If it's a stress thing, right? And by the way, stress also makes your blood sugar unstable. But if it's a stress thing, then we've got to look at, okay, what's going on. If it's a GI thing, we got to go, how do we heal the gut? Microbiome. But here's some foundational stuff. Of course, it's all in the sugar impact diet. But foundational stuff that will help you is it's always going to help to balance your blood sugar. And how do you balance your blood sugar? You start to. You make sure that each meal has healthy fats, clean protein and fiber from non starchy vegetables. A little bit of slow low carbs. So you know, that could be squash, that could be tomatoes, that could be wild rice, that could be legumes for your slow low carbs and then loads of non starchy vegetables. Why? Because fats insulin neutral and very satiating. Tells your, tells your body you're full. Protein and fiber work together to slow down stomach emptying plus proteins thermic. So it helps boost your metabolism. Right. Requires energy to be converted and used by the body. So that is why that's very helpful. It allows for a slow blood sugar release to the body. Remember, you want to make sugar from the foods you eat, not mainline it. So while all, you know, carbs and sugar all end up as sugar. But you want to slowly do it instead of just going, oh, it's all going to turn to sugar. I'll just eat sugar. No, no, no, we don't do that. No, no, no, no. So that's the first thing. Next thing is if you're having a craving and we'll put this in the show notes. Try my lemonade. And that is lemon juice. I got this one from Donna Gates. That's sour can take your sweet tooth away. You can put a little glutamine in there. That can help with cravings. A little bit of chia seeds, seed or extra fiber, right? So you get some fiber in there and spring water. It's that simple. If you need a little sweet, use my sprinkles and try to do as little as possible there. Right? Little as possible. And sour can take your sweet tooth away. So can some of the other fermented foods. So maybe you're going to have. I've been drinking a lot of these suja lemon cayenne drinks. They're Called Lemon love or I'll do Kavitas, the mojito lime or the lemon Cayenne. So try some of the more fermented. And I'm not talking wine people, right? It's not what I'm talking. Anyway, so that's the first thing is start to eat that fat, fiber, protein trifecta and have breakfast, lots of water in between lunch, lots of water in between dinner. Eat within an hour or two of waking up, have dinner early, three to four hours before bed at least. Shorten your eating window and start to really work on converting from being a sugar burner where you have to eat every two to three hours and you can't lose weight off your waist no matter how hard you try to being easily able to burn off stored fat and be able to go four to six hours between meals. So the first part of this is going to be by really looking at that plate. I call it the sugar impact diet plate because it helps you balance your blood sugar. Now there's a lot more that you can do here that can help again, things that help with stress, things that help restore insulin sensitivity like resistance training and sleep. But I just wanted to give you the first part of this, which is to really start to think when you sugar cravings, where the heck is this coming from? And you know, if it's a one off like my little night before surgery thing, hey, fine. But I'm guessing it's probably not. And the cool thing is we can fix it. Alrighty. Now, after the break, I'll be answering a listener's question, so stick with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. Now we get questions from all over the place. We get some writing into customer service, our customer experience team. But most of them we pick up off of Instagram @jjvirgin or my Facebook page @jjvirgin official. And this one allows me to go on a bit of a rant. So I'm just warning you in advance because this one came from Sharon and said, jj, I just use a little Splenda in my coffee every morning. That's not going to hurt, is it? I just put a little arsenic in my, in my water every day. I just put a little bit of poison in my. You know what I mean? That's, that's how I look at these things. I go, if you knew something was bad for you. Now, of course, full disclaimer. I did not say splendor was arsenic. I don't want to turn into the Oprah cow controversy, but, you know, I do believe these things are not good for us. I think that artificial sweeteners are one of the worst science experiments done on man that we've done because they've set out to use artificial sweeteners so we could have our sweet without any health issues. But that's not how it's turned out, is it? And for a couple different reasons. Here's what we know about artificial sweeteners. Number one, what happens when you eat sweet? You want more sweet? Now, I will give you some options because there still are a couple options out there. So there, there's, there's something I'm going to do. I'm not going to leave you hanging. But even with some of the healthy options, I don't want you being A little piggy poo with them because they can still create that sweet craving. So don't do that, all right? Just use the least amount. But artificial sweeteners aren't anything that I would ever recommend because they can cause something called calorie dysregulation. They did a study where they fed my sugar water and then they let them eat however much they wanted and they ate just enough to maintain their weight. Then they gave them artificially sweetened water and let them eat, and they ate just enough to maintain their wheat weight. And then when they went back and they were fed regular water with sugar water again, they overate because they lost the ability to calibrate to correlate the degree of sweetness with the amount of calories. And so it's kind of that whole pizza and diet soda phenomenon. So we don't want to have calorie dysregulate regulation happen. And then the third thing we now know is that they can actually, we started to see a couple different studies came out. One study showed that people who are drinking diet soda had a higher waist circumference than people who were drinking regular soda. Then the next one started to show that people were drinking diet soda were at a higher risk for diabetes than those who drank regular soda. Now it's kind of a head scratcher. It was like, well, is this cause or effect? What's going on here? Is this chronic dieters? What's happening? Then we started to look at the gut microbiome, which I think we're going to start to find is everything. And what they found in the gut microbiome is that the artificial sweeteners were actually making us glucose intolerant. We weren't able to handle sugar like we used to, which then will lead to more insulin resistance, which then can lead to diabetes, which, of course, if you're insulin resistant, is going to make you crave more sugar and it's going to make you store more fat. There's nothing positive about artificial sweeteners. Now you're probably listening, going, okay, but I, I need something in my coffee. And here's the bigger thing, Sharon. It's what you do every day that makes a difference. It's that little bit every day that creates the problem. If you told me once a year I use this on my coffee, it'd like, okay, well, big deal. But every day is a problem. So what I want you to try instead. Here are my allowables. Allulose, stevia, erythritol, xyle, xylitol, and monk fruit. Those are all of the different blends, sweeteners and I especially like it when you put them in a blend because then you can they just taste a little bit better. But those are all the different ones that you can try erythritol and xylitol or polyols. It's called a sugar alcohol. Your body doesn't absorb as much, only absorbs I think like 2 calories instead of 4. And allulose is called the non sugar sugar. Same thing. Your body doesn't absorb a lot of it. And then of course stevia and monk fruit are basically like sweet herbs. So and allulose, stevia and monk fruit actually have health benefits, which is kind of cool. So some really cool new health benefits coming out now. You also put in the show notes my interview with Yemeni Mesa of no Foods where we really dove into and deconstructed allulose. So you have that. Alrighty. All right, big ask, Big ask. Here it comes. If you have not yet left a review, I would love to shout you out at the beginning of a show. So head on over. Leave a review while you're there. Be sure to subscribe and share this with your pals who are interested in taking responsibility for their health so we can get out there and help a billion people get healthy. I know it's possible and working on it every single day. Bye.

That's all for this episode of the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, which marks another step towards a healthier body and mind. Don't forget to rate, review and subscribe to the show and we'll talk to you next week.

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