How to Deal with Sugar Cravings

A sugar candy or a crunchy choco bar, you don’t need to be a child to savour it.
Sugars are ‘The Feel-Good’ food. Any amounts/varieties of food we eat, our appetite feels satiated only after savouring our desserts.They satisfy our mind and complete our meal. Forget ‘How’, where is the need to curb the Sugar Cravings?

You cannot articulate it? Yet, feel insurmountable pressure to stop having them? Exactly!! That is the quality of Sugar.
It is non-nutritional, calorie filled food. Studies have found to show increased risk of anxiety, depression, obesity, cardiovascular, acne, skin/cellular aging and other issues with increased consumption of sugar.

WHO Strongly Recommends keeping intake of free sugars low to reduce the risk of non-communicable diseases[to reduce the risk of obesity and tooth decay]. Based on the quality of supporting evidence WHO decides on the type of recommendation. A Strong Recommendation from WHO can be adopted as policy in most situations.

When you eat sugars, you are taking empty calories i.e., you are not taking any healthy, nutritious food and on top of it, you are adding calories. You are deficient in nutrition and have excess calories.

Sugar increases triglyceride levels, reduces good cholesterol( HDL), increases bad cholesterol (LDL). Sugar increases the chances of having a non-fatty liver disease.

According to Sugar Science( University Of California, San Francisco), added sugars lead to Metabolic Syndrome, which in turn is very high risk factor for heart diseases and diabetes, also, Alzheimer’s, cognitive issues and aging of cells and skin.

http://sugarscience.ucsf.edu/too-much-can-make-us-sick/#.W3cpoaRE2Ed

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/

HOW TO STOP SUGAR CRAVINGS

1. The more healthy we keep our body, the less cravings we will have.

On a certain day everything seems to be going wrong and certain other days are just wonderful. When something unpleasant
happens, it manifests in other aspects of our actions. So, one thing going wrong will lead us to doing many things wrong out of frustration, disparity, unpleasant mood.
Likewise, when our body starts to have unhealthy cravings, it is cyclical. We satisfy them, we crave more for them.

Eat healthy when you have an unhealthy craving and things will certainly get better.

2. Balanced Diet

Deficiency in Chromium, Magnesium, Zinc and other trace minerals is supposed to increase cravings for sweets.
So make sure you eat healthy and complete meals. After all, Sugars are non-nutritional and unhealthy,
they definitely do not help in stopping cravings for them.

3. Meditation

Meditate for a few minutes everyday, experience the pleasantness of your mind. A mind free of compulsions, thoughts and enjoy the absolute bliss
of a thoughtless mind. Any craving lasts only for a while. Hold your horses when you have deep desire for Sugars.  When you have a craving just meditate. Your meditativeness
not just helps you overcome dietary compulsions, it would help you in every aspect of your life.

4. Yoga

Yoga poses have positive effect on endocrine system. Doing yoga for a few minutes not just makes our body flexible and agile but also balances hormones in our system and keeps our cravings in check.

Sugar Facts:
4.3 grams sugar =  One teaspoon.
One bar ice cream has around 17 teaspoons of sugar.
One serving( 64 grams) of homemade chocolate cake has 25.6 grams teaspoons sugar. [ 24 grams of sucrose]
One tablespoon of ketchup has one teaspoon sugar.
One can sugar sweetened soda contains 30 grams (around 7 teaspoons) sugar.
There are about 100 grams of sugar in Baskin Robbins’ Oreo Layered Sundae. That is around 25 teaspoons of sugar.