One of the strangest things about my pregnancy has been my salty cravings. Typically, I am the sugar queen and will always choose sweet over savoury. When that shifted, I couldn’t believe it! I wasn’t complaining though because I am sort of obsessed with the effects of sugar on our health.
Consuming too much sugar can cause so many issues in our body like an overgrowth of bad gut bacteria or simply just making us overweight. When I started to study health and wellness, the amount of sugars a product has became the first thing I checked on the label.
I also learned to understand why we crave sugar and truly how addictive it is.
Lately, however, I have been back to my old fly-like tendencies and am gravitating to anything sweet. Candy, chocolate, you name it, I want it.
So I decided to take a step back and try to get to the root of it. I find that if we understand why we crave something, it helps check ourselves in the moment and we are more likely to be able to walk away.
So if you are someone who is eating balanced all day and then binging on ice cream at night, or if you always needed to have a little something sweet after dinner, read on for what those sugar cravings might be saying about you.
1. Time to go to sleep
Have you ever noticed after a giant meal that you are so full you can’t possibly take one more bite. But then dessert comes and all of a sudden there is room. Well that “second stomach” we hear so much, the truth is, is your brain playing tricks on you. After a large meal, your body is working hard to digest it and it becomes overworked and tired. When our bodies become tired, our minds are signaled to wake us up. How do we do that? Sugar!! So those sugar cravings will hit hard. The same goes after a long day at the office or if you’ve been up all night with a baby. If we are tired, we will automatically crave sugar. So if it’s 10 pm and you’re watching TV and find yourself gravitating to the junk cupboard, you may just want to walk past it and go straight to bed.
2. How much water have you had?
This is one of my favorite tricks. Sometimes we just mistake our thirst for many other things. Craving sweets is one of them. So the next time a craving comes on hard, have a glass of water. Wait 5 minutes and see if that need for chocolate is still there.
3. It’s just emotions taking over
I fall hard into this category. Emotional eating is something I have struggled with in the past. Normally in the form of binging on granola because that is sometimes the only “treat” we have in the house. It’s no secret that consuming sugar releases endorphins and makes us happier. So is that what’s going on here? This is something that is really hard to do, but the next time you’re craving sugar hard, just take a quick moment to check in on how you feel. Sometimes we just want ice cream and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if we just had a fight with our partner or a horrible day at the office, and we are ready to skip the bowl and dig that spoon into the pint, it might be time to take a quick pause and see if a long bath or phone call to a friend will do the same thing for you in that moment.
4. Have you eaten enough?
I hear a lot from my clients and readers that they are “so good all day” with their eating but then night comes around and they can’t stop binging on treats. The first thing I will ask them is did you eat enough during the day? It’s easy to confuse eating well with eating little when society has taught us to believe that. But often times it leads to overeating at night at over consuming sugar. If you are restricting your calories too much during the day, your blood sugar levels will be too low. And then guess what happens? That’s right, those sugar cravings come on strong. Making sure you are not only eating enough, but eating nutrient dense foods, which will help with these night cravings.
5. Habits are hard to break
Sugar is addictive. Duh. And habits are hard to break. So if you’re in the habit of treating yourself to something sweet after every meal, well that is one tough habit to break. Now to me, there is nothing wrong with dessert every day or a little something sweet every night. BUT, keep in mind how addictive sugar is, and for the most part, once we start, we can’t stop. So if you are going for something sweet, try a really good quality dark chocolate that isn’t filled with refined sugars that will keep you craving more more more. I personally find I CAN have one square of dark chocolate and stop there. But give me a spoonful of ice cream or one sour key and forget it. The night is a write-off. I know I can’t beat the addictiveness of refined sugars.
At the end of the day, I am all for dessert, eating balanced and don’t believe sweets should be a reward after a day of eating well. If you want it have it. But sometimes we don’t actually want it and it’s just our minds playing tricks on us. And the more i’ve learned about sugar, the more I understand how harmful over consumption can be. So it’s important to be able to catch ourselves in moments of uncontrollable desire, especially if it’s likely our bodies telling us something else.
I hope you found this helpful! Comment below if you have any more tips!
xoxo