Perhaps you want to loose weight. Or have more energy.  Or improve your overall nutritional state.  Or avoid getting diabetes, or heart disease.  No matter which of these health improvement goals you're working on - or even all of them - all point to reducing your consumption of sweets and even eliminating them from your diet.

Those goals are great as far as they go.  You may have charted your health improvement course and even started down the path. And then you're overcome by a huge - often sudden and unexpected- urge to eat sweets and do it now!

What's going on?  Is sheer will power enough to win and keep true to your goals?  Here are some strategies for dealing with these cravings.

1. Greet them as messages rather than temptations.  Consider them as friendly messages from your body.  When you do that, you will turn and face them rather than trying to overpower them.  And you will be in a listening, receptive attitude toward them.   Now you're in a position to find out what they're telling you.

2.  It's a simple fact of life that your brain will have enough blood sugar to keep you alive. So if it's in need of some energy, it will make you want to get it immediately, hence the craving.  That's really a life-promoting attribute. If that's what's going on, try getting up and moving.  That will bring fresh blood supply with its glucose molecules coursing through your arteries and into your brain. Excercise is not just a distraction, it's a way of getting that much-needed energy into your brain so it can keep you alive.

3.  Sometimes the issue is in your pancreas.  This doesn't necessarily mean you've got diabetes, so don't panic.  Instead it may be having trouble doing it's jobs due to lack of the proper supplies to do it with.  Consider supplementing with GTF Chromium.  GTF stands for 'glucose tolerance factor' and chromium is a mineral necessary for normal carbohydrate metabolism.  If this is the issue, and you take even one dose, you'll likely notice a considerable reduction in those cravings by the next day!

4. Given the standard American diet (otherwise known, for good reason, as 'SAD') your pancreas may be just plain tired, having had to work so hard to deal with all those carbohydrates coming through all the time.  If this is the case, especially if your last blood sugar test was a little bit off, consider taking a daily dose of Gymnema.  It's an herb used in Aurvedic medicine in India for thousands of years, where it's know as the 'sugar destroyer.'  It's so effective that it can lower blood sugar in diabetics, and taken over the long term (18 months or more) has actually been shown to help regenerate pancreatic beta cells.  Those are the cells that make insulin.

5. Have you ever prepared some food and put it in the refrigerator for your future use, only to go to get it later when you're really hungry and found out it's gone?  (If you've had kids or certain guests, you'll know how that feels!)   In this situation, you may actually have uninvited guests in your body, helping themselves to your nutrition before you get a chance to reap its benefits.  I'm talking about parasites.  (I know, ew!)  But the truth is, most of us have them, and most of us don't know it.  Nonetheless, they can cause all manner of strange symptoms, not just food cravings, which they are really good at creating.  Things like arthritis, tumors, muscle aches, etc.  If this is going on,  you might consider asking your health practitioner to check it out.   Often this involves a stool sample.  That said, stool samples only show parasites sometimes.  Since this is the case, those who know it's possible to pick up a parasite very easily and not know it, often opt to do a parasite cleanse routinely.  (There are various ways of doing this, which you can find on the internet, or check with your health practitioner for options.)  

6. Still on the subject of uninvited guests, there's another kind.  It goes by the name of Candida, and it's a yeast that's a normal part of the flora of your G.I Tract.  However, if you've had or have leaky gut, or been on antibiotics chances are the yeast has bloomed and invaded through your gut wall and into the rest of your body.  (To check this out for yourself, fill a clear glass with water, then in the a.m. before drinking water or brushing your teeth, spit in the glass (don't disturb the glass after that.) The saliva should float for up to an hour.  If it sinks, forms icicle-shapes or globules floating in the water, that's considered positive for Candida.) Candida thrive on sweets, and they are very bossy!  When they want more sweets so they can make more babies, they will send you to the sweet cupboard before you even know what you're doing.  And if you succumb, you'll likely feel sleepy aftewards, but that's ok with them.  They're busy using that sweet you ate to make more babies.
Candida is considered to be a pre-cancerous condition, with breast cancer being the most likely outcome for women and prostate cancer for men.  So if your test is positive, work with your health practitioner to turn it around.

7. Last but not least, is the emotional aspect of sweet cravings.  The body can be very literal, and create cravings you interpret as wanting something sweet to eat when actually you're looking for emotional 'sweetness.' - in other words, affection, nurturing, appreciation, kindness, affirmation. Check to see if emotional needs are driving those cravings. Have you been experiencing negative messages, criticism, all work and no play, a non-existent emotional life?   If so, finding out what your emotional needs are and attending to them is what's up for you.      
                 **************************************************
Not certain what emotional needs are, much less how to take care of them?  If so, you're not alone. Few people have received a good emotional education, even though your emotional life is what determines all your outcomes! 

Your emotional needs will be with you as long as you're alive, with repercussion in your physical health, your self-esteem, your confidence, your relationships, your job successes and more, so it pays huge dividends to both know what they are and how to take care of them. 

You can learn all about them in the Emotional Development 101, 10 one-hour, once-a-week classes delivered to your inbox. Register by Sept. 15, 2014 at 5pm Pacific and save a full 25%, plus receive a free certificate!

Pamela Levin, R.N.
August 26, 2014

For lots of tips to support your better health and greater well-being of body, mind, spirit, emotions and relationships, and to request a topic you'd like covered, go to http://www.betterhealthbytes.com/ask-about-health.

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