Today we're going to talk about the top 10 foods to stop sugar cravings and if you're like most people you have probably tried to reduce or cut out sugar at some point in your life and you've also probably found how hard it is and for some people it seems almost impossible so we're going to talk about some of the mechanisms today to understand why it can be so difficult and how to overcome that. So cravings, especially for sugar, are tied to three factors and the first is that sugar stimulates opiate receptors that means sugar is a drug it is highly addictive and of course it's going to affect different.

People differently just like an alcoholic can't have one drink and then stop whereas some people can and the sugar is exact same way secondly we have to break our carb dependency if you have taught your body to top off to expect to top off blood sugar every couple of hours then your body doesn't know how to generate energy without that frequent snack and those high carbohydrate and if you also tied that habit into the pleasure of sugar from these drug receptors that makes it even more difficult and third is emotional conditioning that we can break our physiological addiction in a matter of days three.

Four days and we're done your body has rewired but then there's all these different cues in our environment so maybe after a meal or in front of the tv or on a trip in the car we trigger these reward seeking behaviors we feel like we've got to have something else even though the physical addiction is gone we still have this emotional conditioning so we have to understand that this transition is a process that we have to be firm it's going to take some time the physiological addiction is going to be pretty fast but the emotional is going to be taking that transition it's going to take a little bit longer and we have to.

Recondition every system in our body that's involved so we're going to talk about 10 different foods and categories to make it easier for you to break that sugar addiction but don't click off at the end because there's a bonus that you're going to love one of the most important things to recondition is our energy production so realize that if your body is used to sugar for fuel and you cut it out then it's not going to know what to do in the short term so you have to give it something else such as fat and protein and another thing is don't try to do too many things at once so someone might say oh I'm going to start my.

Life over I'm going to stop drinking stop smoking I'm gonna do intermittent fasting and stop sugar and lose weight and exercise all at once that's a recipe for failure you cannot go hungry and stop sugar at the same time so don't make any drastic changes other than cutting out the sugar the next thing to recondition are enzyme pathways and fat uses certain enzymes carbohydrate uses certain enzymes and your body is going to have to adapt and up regulate some and down regulate others but like I said this happens pretty fast in two three four days most of that is going to be taken care of for you as long as.

You're consistent and at the same time your body will also need to rewire neural pathways and some emotional habits and this is going to take a little bit longer probably three to four weeks so because of these opiate receptors that we mentioned sugar is a highly addictive substance but it's not just the substance itself it's because of what we have done with it so if you take this flower it's called poppy and it is perfectly natural however if you refine it a thousand times and turn it into heroin then it's not natural anymore we changed it we extracted a powerful component and concentrated it a thousand fold.

And now it becomes one of the most addictive drugs there are and sugar is the same way it is one of the most natural substances in the world there's a little bit of sugar in everything but the key is a little bit when we concentrate it when we refine it then it's not natural anymore and now it becomes a drug so I'm not opposed to sugar in all the different forms because sugar like I said it's in everything but you have to find out at what level does it become a drug for you so food number 10 is berries so based on what we just talked about with rewards it can be nice to have something to transition with so instead of.

Having sugar instead of having processed candy and snacks and desserts a berry can be a very nice reward you get a little bit of sweet and for most people it's not going to set off any addictive behavior so it's only slightly bad you're getting a little bit of sugar but for most people it's going to be all right however that's most people not everybody so this is not okay for some for some people it's going to be like an entry it's going to be a pathway drug where it's going to set off that addictive behavior and this could be even just the sweet taste even things that don't even have sugar in them such as alternative.

Sweeteners like stevia and monk fruit and sugar alcohols that don't actually have anything that raises blood sugar but just this taste itself can set off that behavior so is stevia all right for most people yes but you have to recognize if it is okay for you or if it triggers some addictive behavior so in order for this to work you need to set a goal and if you're truly addicted to sugar then you need to understand that you can't have just a little bit you need to cut it out completely to break that drug addiction and once you make a decision decision means to cut off all other possibilities so it's like you draw a line in the sand.

And I always think of the movie lord of the rings where Gandalf says you shall not pass and that's how you want to think of this line in the sand once you've drawn it once you made that decision then it is not even an option to cross that line then you set a time limit for yourself so I would suggest that you do it for a month your physiological addiction is going to be broken it's going to be fine in a few days time but then you have all these emotional habits and it takes somewhere around three weeks to make new habits so I think a month is a good goal good time period for a goal and unless you are super human.

Then you want to throw out all the sugar because if it's around and you're not superhuman then you will probably eat it at some point it's too much of a temptation don't keep it around number nine is spices and we have things like cinnamon that actually help stabilize blood sugar it helps the body control blood sugar better and therefore it's been shown to reduce cravings we've got fenugreek and turmeric there are two herbs there are pretty major components of curry so if you like curry then just eat a bunch of it have some cinnamon you don't have to go buy supplements that have these in in capsules or.

Anything because the the spice is going to do the same thing for you cloves is another one and ginseng is another so ginseng you probably would have to go buy a supplement but again don't don't spend a fortune the reason this is number nine is that this is like the the last few percent they can help you a little bit but don't count on this you have to do all the other things that we talked about number eight is leafy greens and seven is non-starchy vegetables so what do these do they fill you up they have some volume because of the fiber and if you have some fluid some water with the fiber then they create some.

Volume and it's not going to be satisfying by itself because you can eat these and they have some volume but they don't really give you any energy they don't have a lot of calories so you don't want to eat them just by themselves but it's going to be a foundation it's going to be part of the things you eat and then you add other things to it and here's probably the root of all of these addictive behaviors and all these imbalances when it comes to sugar it's carb dependence that your body requires stable energy you have to have energy to function your mood your energy your ability to do things depends on stable.

Energy but it should not come from snacking this is one of those absolute worst things we've ever been taught is that you have to keep your blood sugar up with snacks we have four different hormones to raise blood sugar between meals we have an excellent system we have a fantastic capacity to allow the body to maintain energy levels as long as we don't screw it up with a bunch of snacking and a bunch of refined foods and so forth so what most people do is they eat refined foods and with that refined food and sugar we get a much faster rise in blood sugar than we could ever have there's nothing in nature that.

Will give us that kind of blood sugar spike and if something goes up really fast then it's an emergency the body needs to maintain a stable blood sugar level and if it rises super fast then it's an emergency and it's going to pump out insulin and with a lot of insulin it's going to drop quickly so now if we keep eating and keep living like this and keep listening to the stupid advice of having snacks every two hours then our blood sugar is going to look like this like a roller coaster and every time that the blood sugar crashes a little bit we think that we have to have something to bring it back up and the body has three.

Sources of fuel it has carbs fat and protein but protein is only in an emergency with long-term starvation so during regular living we have carbohydrates and fat for fuel and if we live with this model now we're going to train the body mostly to use carbs and if we cut out the carbs the body learns again to use fat and fat is a very very stable fuel it doesn't spike blood sugar it is processed very slowly we store it on the body and when we don't eat for a while then we can retrieve it from the body and use it for energy so if you were to reduce those refined carbs that cause this blood sugar roller coaster and.

Instead you eat what we talked about you eat the non-starchy vegetables and the leafy greens and then you add in some protein and fat then your blood sugar is going to look like this it's not going to have those huge spikes because there's nothing to set it off and then you also don't get the big drops that give you the cravings and what you find though in the beginning it's okay if you want to eat four five six times a day because that's what your body is used to then do that but when you don't get the spikes anymore you won't be so hungry you'll find that eating a couple of three times a day is plenty and then.

Your energy levels are not going to fluctuate your blood sugar curve is going to stay within a very narrow range so healthy fats is something that you want to add you don't want to be afraid of that and nuts is good they have healthy fats plus some protein and seeds do as well so nuts could be any sort of nut that you like it could be walnuts pecans macadamia are my favorite also almonds are pretty good but there are lots of different nuts that work seeds some of my favorites are pumpkin seeds chia seeds flax seed hemp seed but again you can use a lot of different seeds there are very few that are not going.

To work well for this so because these foods are richer they're more concentrated with fat and protein they're going to help satisfy you the leafy greens and non-starchy veg they put a little volume there but they don't satisfy now you're adding some things that are satisfying you can go much longer between meals and you can add these healthy fats to the vegetables you can add nuts and seeds to the vegetables and nuts and seeds you can also eat them by themselves as snacks don't be afraid to snack if you are trying to break an addiction and you feel like you have to have something then it's okay to do some.

Snacking in the short term while you're breaking that addiction just make sure those snacks don't have anything to spike blood sugar number three is avocado it's just a fantastic food it's rich creamy filling there's really no limit to how much you can eat of that it's plenty of fiber tons of fiber and very very low carb you can eat it as a snack you can eat it as a whole meal you can put a little oil and vinegar in it some spices and it has a dressing you can just spoon it out so many different ways and of course you can turn it into guacamole as well number two is eggs and dairy and these foods are very filling they're.

High in fat and protein and they're also complete foods much more than nuts and seeds these can become a meal in themselves and the key here is to go for the rich foods if you want to break a sugar craving you want food that is satisfying and filling and keep stable blood sugars you don't have to be afraid of the butter and the heavy cream and the sour cream what you want to be afraid of is the skim and milk because the skim milk not only does it taste nasty but it is also mostly sugar virtually all the calories in skim milk come from the milk sugar and even though that's not spiking blood sugar it's not.

Nearly as addictive as processed sugar it's still not what you're looking for and number one on the list is meat and this could be any sort of meat could be fish chicken beef lamb organ meats game meats etc. and why is this number one again it's not that you should eat only meat or that it's the best or any of that but it is the most complete it's the most satisfying because you get a combination of fat and protein and if you can only eat one thing that's really going to satisfy you and keep those cravings away then that should be meat and you can eat you can cook some chicken wings you could have some sausage you.

Could have some smoked salmon in the fridge and that's great stuff for snacking as well and if you understand all of the things we talked about now you are ready for a little bonus and the first one is apple cider vinegar because in apple cider vinegar there are several things one of them though is short chain fatty acids and these short chain fatty acids they feed the beneficial gut bacteria that actually help you with blood sugar they help stabilize blood sugar and they can reduce cravings when you have that type of bacteria and the other thing is MCT oil medium chain triglyceride so these are really kind of the.

Same thing the short chain and the medium chain it's just a short they're a little bit shorter even than the medium but both of them can act as energy so if you take a teaspoon of MCT oil a couple of times a day then that can give you a little bit of energy to help you break that sugar craving if you like this video you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to 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.