Tips To Control Sugar Cravings: Diabetics Spcl

By Padmapreetham Mahalingam

Wednesday, December 18, 2013, 11:02 [IST]

When you feel down or bored it can sometimes leave you to crave for a sugary treat. Sugar and especially sweet is an energy booster. Cravings can happen anytime and anywhere when you are least expecting it. It sometimes becomes so difficult to battle the temptation that we hunt for chocolates and ice-cream in the fridge.

We yearn for the sweet stuff and devour it by truckload and end up complicating our health with a surfeit of fat. Sugar is a carbohydrate that breaks down in our body, to give us energy by releasing the happy hormone serotonin to make us feel good and cuts down stress .

When the body prompts us to eat sugar, it is a natural way of telling you that your sugar levels are dropping and it has to be reloaded.

HAVE A TASTY DIABETIC DIET: Delicious Diabetic Special Recipes HAVE A TASTY DIABETIC DIET: Delicious Diabetic Special Recipes

But have you realised that munching more sugary stuff increases the desire to pop more sweet treats. This has the ability to satisfy your hunger and give your body the much-needed energy boost, yet it can make you feel ravenous again and pine for more sugary snack.

When this food enters the bloodstream, it causes the blood sugar to spike up. All this roughly starts to produce the hormone insulin, which happens to coerce the sugar from your bloodstream into cells. Unfortunately elevated levels of insulin makes your cells to become sensitive leading to diabetics and heart disease.

But how to break your addiction? Most nutritionists suggest that the best strategy to control your sugar cravings is to eat less. However to avoid and to understand the daily intake of sugary stuff, here are tips to control sugar cravings.

Eat a bit little

Eat only less of what you are craving for; it can be a cookie or a chocolate bar. If you want to sustain the normal blood sugar levels, try to eat a bit; like snacking smaller and smarter throughout the day. Instead of eating anything huge, make sure to please your sugar cravings by just popping in some candy. To control your sugar cravings, enjoy and love the little of what you are eating which supposedly tames the cravings and won't make you feel denied.

Choose low-GI foods

Another tip to control your sugar cravings, is to plump in GI (glycemic index) foods. This helps to release energy slowly throughout the day and won't leave you feeling crashed. To control your sugar cravings, eat some of the good GI foods like nuts and brown rice, non-starchy vegetables, legumes and oats.

Snuffle vanilla scented products

If you still struggle with the desire for sugary stuff, try to squirt or spray some vanilla-scented perfume. An interesting tip to control your sugar cravings is to use air freshener or lighting a vanilla-scented candle. It is noted that the smell of vanilla has a strong tendency to repress or control the sugar cravings in you.

Make ways to increase your happiness levels

Carbohydrates always helps the release of the happy hormone serotonin in our brain, and that is why we yearn for more sugary treats when we are feeling stressed or depressed. To control your sugar cravings, you can use neroli or lemon boosting essential oil to perk up your mood. Or the other tip to control your sugar cravings, is to call your boyfriend to give you some cuddle or do an activity that can brighten you up and make you happy.

Spot your craving trigger

To help control or beat your sugar cravings, avoid falling for any kind of temptation. Make sure to find out the patterns that yield to your craving and try avoiding it. For example if you have the habit of picking a take away coffee on your way to work, choose a different route or turn and walk away to the other road to avoid your favourite coffee shop, if you want to spurn giving in to your sugar temptation.

Grab some gum

If you want to tame and not completely surrender to your sugar craving, make sure to chew a stick of gum. It is common knowledge that chewing gum can trim down your food cravings.

These are some of the ways to control your sugar cravings and break the addiction to safeguard your health from diabetics.