Halloween might be long gone, but many of us still feel haunted by the ghosts of sugar cravings. It can be really hard to kick sugar cravings once we’re started to make a habit of indulging them and working excess sugar into our diets. Here, we’ll go over how to combat sugar cravings, including by using detox juice in low sugar juice cleanses.
What Causes Sugar Cravings?
As the eminent scholar Sun Tzu once said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.” In your constant struggle against sugar cravings, it’s therefore important to understand just why your body keeps demanding the sweet stuff, and why your mind keeps giving in.
There are actually a few reasons that we end up craving sugar – no two people’s battle against sugar cravings is the same. Some of the main reasons for sugar cravings are generally the following:
1. Blood Sugar Issues
Not all sugar is bad, of course. The trick is trying to regulate the right amount. Your body is trying to run a constant balancing act between your blood sugar levels, and your natural insulin levels. Get too much sugar and your insulin levels spike – thus making you think you need even more sugar. You can easily end up trapped on a sugary roller coaster with no way off.
2. Stress
Sometimes it’s not that your body’s sweetness cravings are too powerful. Sometimes it’s that your mind is in a particularly vulnerable state. If you are under constant stress, or not sleeping well, your body can start to release hormones that mess with your blood sugar level, leading to you rushing for the sugary foods for comfort.
3. Addiction
Some studies have suggested that sugar might have addictive properties. This means that some people are just going to be wired to crave sugar more than others, especially if they have a history of binging.
4. “Empty Sugars”
A lot of refined sugars in processed foods (such as high-fructose corn syrup) provide the taste of sweetness while not actually giving you much in the way of real sugar or nutrition. This means that you are left unsatisfied and more desire to eat sugar.
5. Dehydration
Not getting enough to drink during the day can cause an increase in appetite, particularly for sweet things. Without enough water, our body struggles to perform many of its basic functions – including converting existing sugars into energy. So if we’re low on water, our body gets confused by the lack of sugar conversion and assumes that we need more.
6. Digestive Issues
As we can see, sugar processing in the body is a delicate process, and there are plenty of stages where it can either get messed up, or your body can’t recognize that it’s getting the sugar you need. One of the most important steps is digestion. If you have issues with the flora in your gut (not enough good bacteria, or too much bad bacteria), you may not be getting enough sugar from your stomach into the rest of your body.
7. Carbohydrate Overload
Often, it’s pretty obvious if what we’re eating is a sweet treat that will add glucose to our bodies. But did you know that many kinds of carbohydrates will break down into glucose as well? Too many carbs can actually cause your body to spike its insulin levels so severely that you may become somewhat insulin immune.
How Do I Beat These Sugar Cravings?
As you can see, sugar cravings aren’t a simple matter. Rather they are the result of your body demanding more of the things it needs to function prosperity, or your mind panicking and misunderstanding what you need right now. Of course, knowing is only half the battle. The other half of the battle is going to need some good tactics in order to beat those sugar cravings.
1. Moderate Indulgence
Sometimes the best strategy is to stage a temporary retreat. What’s most important is that you avoid those devastating sugar binges. Eat one cookie to avoid going through the whole box. Get a bar of dark chocolate to avoid binging on higher-sugar chocolate. Better yet, try mixing your sweet indulgence with something a bit healthier. Go for a chocolate-dipped banana rather than a processed candy bar. Make sure to eat slowly, and savor the flavor.
2. Get a Healthy Alternative
Sure, your body might be telling you that you need junk food right now. However, if you grab some healthy and slightly sweet fruit, you may find that it manages to curb your sugar cravings, giving you the glucose you need. You can even find some sweet gum to chew on to help give at least the sensation of eating sweets, without adding any new calories or carbs into your diet. Most importantly – drink plenty of water with your snack!
3. Get Moving
Sun Tzu wrote an entire chapter of his famous “Art of War” on the subject of maneuvering. Moving around is very helpful for fighting sugar cravings as well. If you have a sugar addiction, exercise can give you those feel-good chemicals in your brain – without the subsequent crash in mood that comes after realizing you ate the whole tub of ice cream.
4. Maintain a Healthy, Regular Diet
If you end up often skipping meals, or eating meals low in nutritional value, your body and mind are going to go into full panic mode trying to figure out what is going wrong. And often, their solution is going to be to try to get you to eat sugary foods in order to bump up your blood sugar levels.
5. Low Sugar Juice Cleanse
Sometimes all this maneuvering around and accommodating your sugar cravings isn’t enough. Sometimes you need to attack the problem head-on. Sugar cravings can be such an insidious enemy because of their tendency to create cycles. You crave sugar, so you load up on sugary foods. Then your body is thrown out of whack and overproduces on insulin. Then your blood sugar drops, and you are back to square one, craving sweets desperately.
A low sugar juice cleanse is the perfect way to help fight those sugar cravings directly. Detox juice helps serve as a “reset button” on your blood sugar levels, helping you break that deadly cycle. However, it can help in other ways as well. A low sugar juice cleanse is great for the health of your gut. The promotion of better gut health means that you’ll have a better time extracting natural sugars in the future.
Low sugar juice cleanses are also a great way to lose weight. This can help reduce your stress, as well as the issue of all that extra fat slowly breaking down into new sugars. In fact, when it comes to defeating sugar cravings in open battle, a blended juice cleanse is one of your most powerful weapons. So why not go check out our cleanse options, and ready yourself for your victory over sugar cravings?