Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to talk about the number one absolute best way to
stop sugar cravings and if you have difficulty controlling your sugar Cravings it's probably
because you don't realize that there are three separate problems and you have to address all
three and the first problem is that sugar is a carbohydrate and carbohydrates in general tend
to create a dependency the more carbs you eat the more you rely on carbs the more dependent
you become and some people say well that's because you need carbs for energy that's because carbs are
the preferred fuel it's used up first and it is not the preferred fuel but it is used up first
because it has to be used up first it must be used first and here's how that works that your blood
sugar is a very very tightly controlled variable a fasting blood sugar should be around 80 and after
you eat it's going to get a little bit higher but it's important to still keep it roughly in
that same range so 80 to 100 is ideal even when you're eating unless you're eating a bunch of
carbs but if you eat carbs and sugar and processed foods and you become a little insulin resistant so
the insulin doesn't work quite as fast and as as well anymore now your blood sugar is going
to go way way outside that range and already at around 180 to 200 milligrams per deciliter
your body has a safety valve the kidneys start releasing sugar where normally sugar is filtered
out but it's reabsorbed into the body well above that level it's not being reabsorbed or not all
of it is being reabsorbed anymore so as your blood sugar jumps it's very important to bring
it back down into a safe level quickly because again high blood sugar is toxic to the brain you
can lose Consciousness you can get into a coma so blood sugar quickly gets back down but then
we're told hey you have to eat carbohydrates you have to get your blood sugar back up again so on
and on and on we go with this roller coaster and because the carbohydrates have to be used first
that becomes the primary fuel that we're burning at the expense of other fuel sources and the other
fuel of course primarily being fat even though we can use protein for energy that's not the
main purpose protein is primarily for replacing tissues we have two fuels the primary one is
fat that's why the body stores fat so we can use fat from the reserves carbohydrate is more of an
emergency fuel it's to be made to store quickly and it has to be used up first when blood sugar
is high and that's why high carb diets tend to create a dependency and sugar is part of that
high carb diet typically so now what happens as you try to cut back on the sugar your body
says Hey where's my energy I don't know how to get energy from that fat anymore I've shut down those
Pathways I've down regulated I've withdrawn those receptors and those enzymes and those
Pathways so now you don't have any energy and now you start getting symptoms anytime you cut back
that's problem number one so now you get fatigue you get lethargy you get irritability you get
headaches and what's the first thing that people tell you when you experience these your fatigue
your irritability your lethargy headache they say your blood sugar must be low you better replenish
your blood sugar you got to eat something sugary so you get your blood sugar up it is so common
it's part of our language as soon as we feel down it has to be blood sugar right well all
that's going to do it's going to perpetuate this cycle of carbohydrate dependency so the solution
to problem number one of course is to reverse that carb dependency and to do what's called restoring
metabolic flexibility to teach your body to use other sources of fuel that are more even
and more stable and long lasting and the best way to do that is to reduce your carbohydrate intake
overall now some people like to do cold turkey they just like to cut it all out but what I would
recommend if you don't like pain and suffering is that if you are whatever level you are say
300 grams a day like a lot of people are then you can safely jump down to 150 120 that's not really
going to create any symptoms that's still enough carbs to make your body feel like it's used to
and then from there you gradually cut back you go down 10 or 20% every few days or every week
and mostly it's about finding other things to eat it's not all that difficult and then you do that
until you're down to about 50 grams of carbs per day and at this point now you have mostly restored
your metabolic flexibility you are fat adapted because you don't eat so many carbs your body
has learned to use fat for energy so at the same time that you cut back on the carbs you don't want
to deprive yourself you want to increase something else and that's something else is to increase fat
but don't increase fat if you're not going to decrease the carbohydrates dramatically at the
same time because then you just end up eating more and that's not a good thing and the fat that you
want to increase you want to make sure that it's a healthy fat and what we're talking about here is
monounsaturated fatty acids those are basically olive oil and avocado you want to also eat
saturated fat acids for energy and those are the animal fats primarily coconut oil is the exception
of a plant that has mostly saturated fats but all of those are good animal fats coconut and
monounsaturated fats and you can let this take as long as it needs to but if you're consistent and
you have a goal and you move forward you should be able to definitely complete this in about two
weeks time and have restored your metabolic flexibility so it's pretty simple to handle
that part of the problem and the second problem is that Sugar changes how you feel and we're not just
talking about like the blood sugar aspect of it where you were your blood sugar was a little bit
low and now you brought it back up so you feel a little better this goes way beyond that because
sugar is what's called psychotropic what does that mean it means that it affects your mental
state it's a drug sugar will fit into opiate receptors drug receptors that we have in the
brain that create intense pleasure now this varies with different people but it can be very very
rewarding and what's important to understand here is Everyone likes sugar because there's a natural
attraction if you've been eating woolly mammoth for six weeks straight and you come across some
honey it's a very natural attraction it tastes really good humans are drawn to that flavor the
problem is our ancestors and again we're talking thousands and tens of thousands of years ago they
had no processed sugar other than the occasional honey there was nothing so when we are attracted
to the sweet taste that means we're attracted to things like potato and fruit and things we
can find naturally in the wild that might have a tiny tiny little bit of sugar and sweet taste but
nothing like the stuff we're exposed to today and then we learned how to refine it we learned how to
extract these sweet crystals out of the food and leave the rest of the food behind the same thing
happens with opium the poppy seed isn't all that bad but once we concentrate it and extract the
Active Components we can turn it into opium and heroin and they're intensely addictive and the
same thing happens with sugar once we get the sugar out of its natural environment out of the
products that naturally contain a little bit of sugar now everything changes and we increase that
addiction many many times and I know I'm going to read some comments about people saying that
hey it's not a big deal I have a little sugar it doesn't happen like that to me and that's fine
for you But realize that everyone is different and for some people it's an intense addiction
and those people you have to know what's going on with you if you can handle a little sugar great
for you if you can't then you need to realize what it does to you and we'll talk a little bit
more later about that so the solution to any intensely addictive drug is to Simply cut it
out it's as simple as that but you want to be fat adapt Ed first because otherwise you will
double the pain now a little sugar is like a little alcohol to some people even though we
have accepted that people eat sugar we understand that an alcoholic can't have a little alcohol so
if you're a hardcore sugar addict then a little bit might just set you off so some people need
to cut it out completely some people can handle a little bit but you need to understand where
you are so the question is how do you respond to different forms of sugar and I'll just give
you a couple of examples of myself I am a sugar addict in certain regards so if I have a really
really good ice cream and I buy a pint and I'll take a nice big bowl which is like half the Pint
and I finish that then I cannot stop from going back for that second second half of the Pint so
ice cream is one of those things that set me off where I can't control myself on the other hand if
I have a cappuccino which 99% of the time I'll just have my coffee black or just with milk but
occasionally I'd like to do those like authentic Little Italian cappuccinos that are tiny tiny cups
with just a tiny bit of milk and then I have half or 3/4 teaspoon of sugar in that tiny little thing
and that does not set me off that tastes really really wonderful and I don't do that often at all
but that is something that does not set me off so if you know that you have some things that throw
you off the deep end like ice cream does for me then that's something that you can't keep around
and problem number three of sugar addiction is that the physiology that we just talked about
what Chang in the wiring of the body the carb dependency and the drug effects that's only
part of it and that's the easy part to fix because if you cut it out your body adapts very very fast
in about three days time you will have overcome that need for carbohydrates at the physiological
level now the rest of it is emotional it's in your nervous system in your wiring because we all have
different different habits and there are different types of habits we have social habits humans are
social creatures we like to interact around food when we meet people then we expect to have certain
things going on we have cultural habits we have holidays we have Easter we have Halloween and
Christmas and birthdays and parties and at all of those events we have certain cultural expectations
patience and then we have emotional habits we're in different emotional states when we wake up in
the morning when we sit in traffic when we come home to work when we feel down when we feel like
we need a reward when we feel we've accomplished something and we deserve something now again we
have all these different habits and associations that become triggers and sometimes before we even
realize what's happening we had good intentions we say oh I'm not going to do that this week
and before we even notice it we're sitting there with that donut or the candy or the ice cream or
whatever in our hand and this might be the most difficult part of this to handle so first of all
we just have to get a little firm with ourselves and I'll give you some suggestions here but the
very first thing is do we want to decide or do we want to try I think you've all heard what
happens when you try to do something I think you have experiences where people say oh I'll try to
be there and that means under no circumstances will I ever be there that's what try means it
means I will put up a façade but I plan to fail the very word decide means to cut off that means
to cut yourself off from the possibility if you cut yourself off there is no possibility at all
that you would ever cross that line and one of my favorite examples is from the movie The Lord of
the Rings where they're being chased through some caves and there's this big monster and
Gandalf is stopping it's is holding the fort he's uh blocking the way to this monster that's like
a thousand times his size and he has this magic wand and he slams it into the ground and he says
You shall not pass and the determination there's just absolutely he put his life on the line there
and he says You shall not pass that's the kind of determination that you need to have but in order
to set that kind of level of goal that intensity then it's also required that you must want to
change something right if you don't really want to change then not much is going to happen and that's
the biggest problem for a lot of people they kind of sort of would like to and someone has told them
that sugar is bad or they feel a little bad when they eat a ton of sugar but then again when they
eat the sugar they feel good so they're they're all over the place but at some level they don't
really want to change and that's the first thing you have to handle so in order to fix this to
set yourself up for Success so that you can meet these challenges you can get into these triggering
situations without succumbing you need to set some powerful goals and a powerful goal is something
that moves you something that is really really important to you and there are many different ways
of setting goals but I'm going to break it down to three simple steps so first you have to decide
what is it that you want do you want to reverse a disease have you've been diagnosed with heart
disease or diabetes or arthritis and you don't want it do you just want to lose weight to look
better are you sick and tired of feeling the way you do as you move your body around so you have
to get crystal clear and write down hundred things that you'd like to be different that's fine what
are you trying to accomplish do you like walking do you like hiking do you like running do you like
tumbling around with your grandkids would you like to be able to ski or sail or play golf whatever it
is that you'd like to do then that is the what but that's not enough because we all have those kind
of loosely stated goals now you have to get clear on why you want it what is it that that thing
is going to do for you being able to be in that place how are you going to feel that is the key
because we basically never do anything for any other reason that that we think we're going to
feel better if we get that or accomplish that and this is the key to any goal if you want to set a
powerful goal then you have to feel strongly about it and if you can't feel strongly about it if you
just say hey I want that but it doesn't move you then you haven't found your goal yet you have to
keep working on that until you feel something very very strong you visualize it you emotionalize it
and you keep working on it until you feel it very strongly and then you start talking to yourself
about why you deserve it and this is not because you work harder than anybody else or you're not
trying to justify it you're saying that this is how I want to feel and I deserve it because I'm
me and I am willing to learn I'm willing to make some changes and it doesn't have to happen all
right away but as I start moving I am ready and willing to get better and better until I have
that and if you start working through these three steps then these goals will become real and you
have more ammunition to withstand any Temptation and the most most important thing about goals is
that it's not something that you set and then come back and look at it next year a goal is something
that you revisit daily and you need to experience the goal you need to feel those same feelings that
you would have if you reach the goal because that is what's going to give you the driving power to
move forward if you enjoyed this video you're going to love that one and if you really want
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