#1 Ultimate Best Method To Eliminate Sugar Cravings

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 resistance, so the insulin doesn't work quite as fast and 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 desoliter, 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 fats 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 so 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, you fatigue, irritability, you're 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 car of 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 percent 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 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 mono unsaturated fatty acids. Those are basically olive oil and avocado. You want to also eat saturated fatty 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 mono unsaturated 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 psychotrophic. What does that mean? It means that it affects your mental states. It's a drug. Sugar will fit into opiate receptors. Drug receptors that we have in the brain that create intense pleasure. Not just various but 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, 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 a simple as that. But you want to be fat adapted 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 are a hard core 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 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 will 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 three quarter 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 changes 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 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. 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 that 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. And 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 facade, but I'll 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, is holding the forties, 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, 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 level of goal, that intensity, then it's also required that you must want to change something. 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 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 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 100 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 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 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 reached the goal. Because that is what's gonna give you the driving power to move forward. If you enjoyed this video, you're gonna love that one. And if you truly wanna master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell, and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.