How to Overcome Sugar Cravings

My weight-loss program focuses on low glycemic with lots of raw foods and vegetable juices. One question that comes up often is what to do about sugar cravings.

If the ice cream, chocolate or sweet energy bar continually calls you, it may be time to try something new. Here’s what you can do:

• Eat adequate protein.  One of the symptoms of not eating enough protein is sugar cravings.
• Improve digestion. Even if you’re eating enough protein, you may not be digesting it well. If so, you could benefit by taking digestive enzymes. I recommend taking enzymes—when taken between meals, they help “clean up” undigested proteins from the recent meal. A great benefit is that your hair will grow thicker.
• Apple-cider vinegar. Drink unfiltered apple cider vinegar and watch your sugar obsession disappear. Add 1 to 3 teaspoons of pure, raw, organic apple-cider vinegar to a 6-ounce glass of filtered water. Apple-cider vinegar promotes digestion by keeping your stomach acid in balance, helping the body digest proteins and fats. Good digestion is essential to seeing the desire for sugar fall by the wayside.
• Eat umeboshi plums. These are salty and sour, which can put an end to sugar cravings.
• Sleep enough; sleep well. When you don’t sleep well or enough, your appetite-controlling hormones get out of whack. If you need help, check out the amino acid program to balance brain neurotransmitters. This program can do amazing things for your sleep. Go to neurogistics.com and take the self-test quiz. Use the practitioner code SLEEP.
• Control yeasts. If you have a yeast overgrowth, known as candidiasis, you will probably crave sweets and/or starches, which easily turn to sugar. You can take the candida quiz to get an idea of possible yeast overgrowth (in the book The Coconut Diet). Coconut oil has been proven in scientific studies to kill yeasts. When you get yeasts under control, the cravings should diminish quickly.
• Face your emotional pain. Sugar cravings may be due to you saying, “I don’t want to really face the bitterness of my pain or the lack of sweetness in my life right now. I want to get ‘charged up’ and stuff my emotions.” There is only one way emotional pain ever leaves us. We must acknowledge it, forgive the offender and let it go. See my chapter on “Emotional Eating and Binging” in The Juice Lady’s Turbo Diet.

Cherie Calbom is the author of 21 books, including her latest best-seller, The Juice Lady’s Big Book of Juices and Green Smoothies, and Juicing for Life, with 2 million copies sold. Known as the Juice Lady for her work with juicing and health, her juice and diet therapy and cleansing programs have been popular for more than two decades. She holds a Master of Science degree in whole foods nutrition from Bastyr University. She has practiced as a clinical nutritionist at St. Luke Medical Center, Bellevue, Wash., and as a celebrity nutritionist for George Foreman and Richard Simmons. She and her husband conduct wellness juice and raw foods cleansing tetreats throughout the year. For more information and to sign up for her free newsletter, go to juiceladycherie.com.