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You set out to lose weight. You found a diet that several people told you worked. You’ve started holding it, or maybe you’ve already completed it.
You are satisfied with the results. If you keep it that way, by the end of the cure you will surely lose the “X” kilograms that you have set for yourself. Or, if you have already finished the diet, from now on you will be much more careful about what you eat, so that you do not gain weight.
But at some point, you just feel like something.
Everything you set out to do, that you will no longer eat sweets, that you will no longer eat flour, is as if it did not exist. Cravings take control. Before you know what you’re doing, you’re done with chocolate, or pizza, or a portion of french fries, or a bag of chips.
I’m not saying you should never eat any of the above. We all grew up eating them, and it’s very hard to just give them up, just because you found out they’re not healthy or that you’re gaining weight. Logic has no power over lust. Not in the long run.
What can you do then? There are solutions, and this is exactly what I want to offer you in this article: intelligent solutions through which you can reduce or cancel your cravings so that you can lose weight more easily or maintain your ideal weight.
Let’s see first why lust is your enemy when you want to lose weight.
Many people think they are gaining weight because they eat too many calories. It is not like that. You can eat a lot of calories from salad or vegetables and you will not gain weight. But if you eat fewer calories from bread, rice, potatoes, sweets, you will deposit fat. It is not the number of calories in food that matters the most, but their glycemic index, which shows how quickly that food turns into sugar / glucose in the body. And it also matters a lot how much potassium you have in your diet.
The foods we usually crave, such as sweets, flour, starches, quickly turn into glucose in the body. This causes your blood sugar to rise rapidly, and then insulin, the hormone that lowers blood sugar, is activated.
The problem is that insulin is one of the hormones that causes fat deposition. The sugar that insulin removes from the blood is converted into fat when there is not enough potassium available. Every time your craving makes you eat foods with a high glycemic index, insulin comes into action and creates fat while lowering your blood sugar.
You don’t even need a lot of calories to activate insulin. You can eat two cookies, and you’ve already triggered your insulin response. You don’t need a lot of calories to lose weight. It is enough to activate insulin regularly.
If you have a slower metabolism, each time the insulin response is activated, fat burning is blocked for 24-72 hours.
If you eat a diet based on salads and vegetables to lose weight, but every two days you eat a cake, your chances of losing weight are minimal. That is why you need to understand what are the causes of cravings and what you can do to get rid of their domination.
Appetite has two types of causes: physiological or emotional.
In this article we will only talk about physiological / physical causes. We will also address emotional causes in other future articles.
Physically speaking, when you crave a certain thing, your body tells you that it is missing something. The problem is, you don’t understand what’s missing, and you give your body something other than what it needs. The body will continue to signal to you that it needs something, even if you think you gave it what it wanted.
Below you will find the causes of the most common cravings and solutions you can apply to reduce cravings.
Cause: lack of potassium
The body reserves fuel, which it uses for its rapid needs. The fuel is called glycogen and is a molecule composed of molecules of glucose and potassium. Glycogen is stored in the liver and muscles and is used whenever the body needs energy for effort.
When you do not have enough potassium available in your body, a problem arises. Even if you ate foods that brought a lot of glucose into your body, your body can only produce glycogen within the limit of available potassium. All other sugars that cannot be converted to glycogen are converted into fat and stored.
The problem is even bigger, in fact. Because the necessary glycogen stores could not be created, the body sends you the message that you need to eat more, because it knows that it still needs to create glycogen stores. If you eat something that contains enough potassium, your body will be able to produce the necessary glycogen and the feeling of hunger will disappear. If what you eat is not enough potassium, appetite and hunger will continue, and what you eat will be largely turned into fat.
Solution: Eat at least the equivalent of 7 cups of green vegetables daily.
In order to have enough potassium in your body, you need to eat enough green vegetables. An amount of 7 cups of greens per day (about two servings of salad) gives you the potassium needed to create enough glycogen.
I don’t know anyone who eats two salads of greens a day. The solution to bring enough potassium into your body, when you are not eating two servings of salad daily, is to add to your daily diet some of the alternatives below:
a green shake (spinach, mangold, or kale) or,
a portion of green wheat or barley juice, freshly squeezed or obtained from wheat or barley grass powder
a cruciferous supplement (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.)
If you have added enough greens to your diet, but the craving for sweets persists, this may be a sign that you need more protein in your diet. Add protein, especially for breakfast. Protein eaten in the morning stabilizes blood sugar levels during the day and reduces the risk of making you crave sweets in the evening.
Cause: lack of B vitamins
When you feel like craving bread, your body actually asks you for B vitamins.
Solution: Eat 1 teaspoon of inactive yeast each day. You can take it as such, you can put it in salads, yogurt, etc. It tastes good, some even call it “vegan parmesan”. It can be bought at any health food store.
Cause: lack of serotonin
Solution:
Cause: salt deficiency in the body.
The body needs certain minerals, including sodium. When you go on a salt-free diet, your body may become deficient in sodium. Even when you put salt in food, if you use refined salt, your body may become deficient in certain trace elements. The refined salt contains only sodium and chlorine, without other minerals.
Through the desire to salt, your body signals that it lacks minerals. If you eat salty foods with refined salt, you will almost certainly not bring the missing minerals into your body. But there is salt that in addition to sodium and chlorine has many other minerals needed by the body. One such salt is sea salt.
Solution: use sea salt in food
Cause: saturated fat deficiency
Unsaturated fats are essential for a healthy diet. But you also need a certain amount of saturated fat in your diet. Saturated fats are the ones that give you the feeling of satiety.
Solution: Add more saturated fats to your diet: butter, bacon, bacon, yogurt. Add more nutrient-rich foods and green vegetables to your diet. When you eat protein, eat vegetables with them. Proteins alone do not satisfy your hunger.
Cause: nutrient deficiency in the diet
When you eat, the body expects to receive the nutrients it needs for optimal functioning and regeneration: protein, unsaturated fats, minerals, vitamins. If the food you eat is “empty of nutrients”, even if you eat a lot, your body will still tell you that it has not received enough nutrients. As a result, you will feel that you are not full.
Another reason may be that you do not digest the foods you eat well enough. Due to poor digestion, even if you eat foods with enough nutrients, the body does not benefit from these nutrients, because they are not extracted from food by digestion.
Solution:
It’s not smart to try to deny your cravings. Even if you want to lose weight or you want to stay, you don’t have to pretend that you don’t have cravings, when you actually have them. The best option is to apply the above solutions or eat the healthy options of the foods you crave.
Are there healthy alternatives to “unhealthy” foods? Yes, and below you will find some suggestions.
Use sweeteners such as xylitol, sorbitol, stevia instead. Put them in tea, coffee, or mineral water.
Buy sweets with xylitol, sorbitol, stevia. There is chocolate, jams, soft drinks sweetened with these sweeteners. Just look at the label.
Note: I do not recommend “Diet” or “Zero sugar” soft drinks if they are sweetened with Aspartame or similar substances. There is evidence that Aspartame is harmful to long-term health, and it is best to avoid it. There is a debate on this topic, there are pros and cons, but until the situation is definitively clarified, my suggestion is to go for the safe options.
Any of the above alternatives you will use, you will reduce the number of times you will activate insulin or at least the intensity of its activation, which will help you lose weight easier or not put back the pounds you just lost.
Who doesn’t like to nibble on some chips? I like one. Maybe it’s the habit, maybe it’s their taste. French fries are tempting for anyone, and chips like that are after all. With a high glycemic index, plus an amount of refined salt added, the chips can also block your fat burning or cause fat deposition due to the insulin response.
Fortunately, you no longer have to be frustrated because you are not allowed to eat chips. Lately there have been all kinds of chips from which you can eat as much as you want, without the risk of gaining weight:
All of the above are as tasty as potato chips, but without their disadvantages. Where can you find wonder chips? Here are some sources, but don’t go shopping until you read the whole article: kale chips and beet chips.
Make cakes according to recipes that use something other than wheat flour for the dough. There are countertops that can be made from ground walnut and egg, or from almond flour. Obviously, use xylitol or another sweetener without a glycemic index as a sweetener for these recipes.
As you can see, you can satisfy some cravings without gaining weight, if you replace the foods you crave with others without a glycemic index. You can reduce other cravings if you give your body the nutrients it needs.
What desires do you have most often? Tell me in the comments on the article. If your desires also provoke you, put the above solutions into practice and come back and tell me what has changed. If you still know greedy people, share the article so they can read it too!
And, don’t forget: make your cravings … but in a smart way!
