If you’ve ever started a new diet, you know that sometimes your health seems to get worse instead of better at first – even if the diet is good for you. Particularly if you’ve tried to cut back on a particular category, like sugar or even carbs in general, you’ll likely have some intense cravings. Other people experience some discomfort or fatigue as their bodies adjust to new forms of fuel.
These cravings can kill a diet before you experience the results you want. So if you've ever felt like a failure because your food cravings got the best of you, I've got great news for you – it's still possible to improve your health and even lose weight, if that’s your goal.
What most women don’t realize is that by emphasizing self-control, doctors and diet gurus are overlooking an entire aspect of weight management. And by doing so, they're contributing to your failure.
It's very likely that the reason you've failed to lose weight is that you haven't recognized why you can't resist certain foods. Eating small portions and making healthy choices is not just a matter of discipline. Food cravings are your body's way of telling you there's an imbalance. Once you know what a particular craving means, you can correct the imbalance and be free from temptation forever.
What’s more, there are easy, natural ways to take the edge off your cravings and reduce your fatigue. In fact, you may find that these natural substances make you feel better than ever – something few of us experience in the early days of a diet overhaul. So let’s look at a few specific cravings and how you deal with them. Some nutrients can actually help you overcome these cravings more easily and faster.
Chocolate Cravings: Your Body's Need for a Common Mineral
Are you a chocoholic? A lot of women are. Believe it or not, a chocolate craving could mean you’re deficient in magnesium. Dr. Guy Abraham, a doctor working with nutritional solutions to PMS, found that a deficiency of magnesium and vitamin B6 contributed to many PMS symptoms. As an aside, he mentioned that chocolate was highest in magnesium of all foods.
It’s one thing to like chocolate and enjoy it periodically. But if you crave chocolate, try taking some magnesium. Many people find that their craving for chocolate goes away when they take up to 1,000 mg of magnesium daily. If you have a sensitive bowel and/or you are prone to diarrhea try magnesium glycinate. It is a form of magnesium consistently more gentle on the stomach.
Chocolate craving is often a sign that you’re taking too much calcium. Most women need 500 mg of supplemental calcium. If you’re taking more than this, you might crave chocolate. If so, you’ll need to reduce your supplemental calcium intake to 500 mg and increase your magnesium to bowel tolerance (comfortably looser stools), but no more than 1,000 mg. Hint: Most of us need more magnesium than we're getting.
Craving Sweets and Starches: Two Possibilities
Craving any food that turns into sugar quickly can be either due to an overgrowth of the yeast Candida albicans or a blood sugar imbalance. Candida lives on sugar. Like all living things, it fights for its life. When it's starving, it will do whatever it can to trick, con, or beg you to give it food. But eating sweets and refined starches perpetuates the overgrowth and craving cycle. If you have too much candida you have to starve it, kill it with antifungals, and increase your colonies of yeast-fighting friendly bacteria with probiotics.
Craving carbs can also be a sign of a blood sugar imbalance. All foods eventually turn into sugar. Refined carbohydrates (sugar, white flour) turn into sugar quickly. If you don't eat enough protein, your body may be crying out for energy from sugar or starches. A doughnut or an energy bar will lift your blood sugar quickly. But it will drop it quickly, causing another sugar or starch craving. To stop this craving, eat protein at each meal and eat every four to five hours.
Some people have a sensitive response to insulin. If your body produces more insulin than it needs, or if it produces it inappropriately, you'll crave sugar, refined starches, fruit juice, or alcohol.
You may also crave carbohydrates that turn into sugar quickly, such as potatoes, bread, and potato chips. If so, add supplemental chromium (200 mcg twice a day for two months) to your increased protein and frequent meals to help regulate your blood sugar.
Craving Fatty Foods: A Need for More EFAs?
Eating high-fat foods fills you up and makes you feel satisfied. That's why some people eat them. Others just can't get enough fats. These people may be misinterpreting their body's cry for a particular kind of fat: essential fatty acids (EFAs).
We need a balance of fats, but many people get too many animal fats and vegetable oils and not enough EFAs. As you increase your EFAs, decrease animal fats and cooking or salad oils.
Essential fats, if you remember, are fats your body needs and can't make. The foods highest in EFAs are fatty wild fish (farmed fish are low in EFAs), flax oil, soy, and walnuts. Add them to your daily diet or begin taking two or more essential fatty acid capsules a day. A variety of EFAs (flax oil, fish oil, borage oil) will give you the balance your body needs. You can get a complete balanced essential fatty acid formula in Complete Daily Oils.
Craving salt: Are you stressed?
There's nothing wrong with eating a bit of good quality salt. Your adrenal glands, which handle stress, need some sodium to function. Sometimes problems like high blood pressure and water retention occur when you eat too much of it. You may have noticed that you crave salt more often when you're under pressure than when you're relaxed.
If so, pay attention to the stresses in your life and take steps to reduce them. Drink more water throughout the day. Exercise regularly. Get an extra hour's sleep. Eat healthy foods. And watch your salt cravings lessen.
Other food cravings
Do you have a sensitivity to a healthy food like corn, chicken, or bananas? If so, it could be causing physical and emotional problems in addition to the craving. Eliminate every trace of the food you crave for 14 days.
If you suspect corn (corn chips, popcorn), be aware that corn syrup is in many salad dressings and other prepared foods. Avoiding prepared foods for two weeks will make a large difference in your health. Once you start reading labels, it’s a slippery slope of ingredients that often don’t sound like food.
At the end of two weeks, you should be free from the craving. Test the food you've eliminated. If you have any negative reactions, stop eating that food for three months and try it again. If there's improvement, ease back into it. Just don't eat it daily, and keep its quantities low.
Now that you know why you crave certain foods, there are certain nutrients you can take to curb those cravings and help you lose weight even faster. Here’s where to start.
Adaptogens Can Stop the Cravings
If you’re just feeling bad overall, stress might be the culprit. Even positive changes to your health can create short-term stress. After all, exercise is a form of stress. And changing the way you eat can initially create stress for your digestive system. Many athletes cope with such stress by turning to adaptogenic herbs. And non-athletes are starting to recognize their benefits as well.
Adaptogenic herbs get their name from their ability to “adapt” to what the body needs. They’re especially good at helping the body reduce and respond better to stress. And that helps your body function better overall.
One of my favorite adaptogens is Rhodiola rosea. And once you learn what it can do, I bet it will quickly become one of your favorites too. It does help quite a bit with stress, fatigue, and anxiety. But it can also help you lose weight and enhance the effects of your diet.
Rhodiola works to help you lose weight by targeting key aspects of your metabolism. In particular, it stimulates enzymes called AMPK. AMPK enzymes tell cells to start making more ATP. ATP is what cells burn for energy. AMPK also tells the muscles to take in more glucose and fatty acids. Altogether, these changes rev metabolism and make cells more efficient. Rhodiola turns the body into a fat-burning machine!
Rhodiola helps you burn fat all over. But many people are most worried about stubborn belly fat. Well, AMPK isn’t the only enzyme Rhodiola stimulates. It also tells the lipase enzyme to get in gear. And lipase tells the body to get to work breaking down belly fat. Several studies have confirmed Rhodiola’s effects in this area.
Burning fat can certainly help you lose weight. But you need to make sure you’re not putting fat back on as quickly as you’re burning it. Rhodiola can help with this as well by reducing appetite and cravings. In particular, it seems to reduce stress eating, a common source of unhealthy choices!
Of course, it won’t surprise you to know that Rhodiola works best at promoting weight loss in conjunction with a healthy diet and exercise regimen. So unfortunately, if you aren’t enjoying your new diet, this isn’t a replacement. But Rhodiola could supercharge your efforts to help you see the results that make all the changes seem worthwhile! And all that extra energy can make it feel easier to get the gym. You can get Rhodiola and other adaptogens in Advanced Adaptogen Complex, which you can order by following this link.
What to Take With Rhodiola
As amazing as Rhodiola is, it’s not your only option for supercharging your healthy diet. You can also try chromium. Chromium is a trace element that can have more than trace effects on your blood sugar and fat metabolism. One study with type-2 diabetic rats indicated that chromium could help with both high blood sugar and poor fat metabolism.
Another study with diabetic rats also found great results. In this study, the rats’ fasting blood glucose levels, serum insulin levels, insulin resistance index, and C-peptide levels all improved.
Plus, their HDL (good) cholesterol went up even though total cholesterol went down. If you’re concerned about getting too much cholesterol from a high-fat diet, chromium malate may be able to help.
We often think that changing our diets means cutting things out. But to maximize your diet’s effects, you may need to add a few things in. A supplement that contains Rhodiola rosea or chromium can be a great place to start.
One of the best I’ve found is: Keto Crave Control. It can help you feel great in the short-term as you make changes that will transform your health for the long-term.
This supplement formulation also contains white kidney bean extract, which has been shown to inhibit alpha-amylase. By doing so, this extract functions as a dietary carbohydrate blocker in the body, preventing the digestion of starch. I’ve found it to be highly effective in helping my patients curb their cravings. But there’s a problem with this extract.
Many craving formulas on the market contain only 500 mg of white kidney bean. I’ve used these formulas with my patients, and they just don’t work. You really need a formula with 1,000 mg. And that’s what Keto Crave Control contains.
The Final Piece
Keto Crave Control also contains an extract of mulberry leaf (50 mg). This extract has been shown in scientific studies to support cravings, healthy digestion, blood sugar levels, and lipid levels.
One Japanese study examined an extract made from mulberry leaves. They found that the mulberry leaf extract helped to prevent diabetes in otherwise healthy adults. It did this by suppressing the rise in blood glucose levels and insulin secretion after meals.
I’ve found that it can have a dramatic impact on curbing your cravings when you start a new diet.
You can order Keto Crave Control at www.ketocravecontrol.com.