Dr. Lori Shemek is back again to share information about Sugar Freedom. Dr. Lori is the best-selling author of books such as The Ketogenic Key, Fire Up Your Fat Burn and Beginner’s Guide to Intermittent Fasting. Dr. Lori is a certified nutritional consultant and weight loss expert who spreads awareness of the negative effects of inflammation.
Do you feel chained to sugar and its ill effects? If you eat sugar every day or excessively and want to reduce its intake for better health, a less acidic, more alkaline body, you are ready to win the battle against the sweet stuff! Cutting down on sugar can stop bloating and fatigue, along with shifting your body into a fat-burning mode (as opposed to a fat-storing mode).
Implement These Tips to Achieve Sugar Freedom
1. Use the Sugar Freedom Trifecta Plate
We all need guidelines to ensure success and the Sugar Freedom Trifecta Plate is going to help you. The best part? You are going to be adding to your plate, not taking away. You will be adding delicious healthy fats, clean lean protein, and healthy fiber.
Every plate should have protein, fat and fiber – the trifecta.
Adding these three food groups (the trifecta) will prevent fluctuating blood sugar swings that happen quickly with the wrong foods. Foods such as sugar, excess carbohydrates, white flour products, chips, and processed junk foods can send your blood sugar crashing. What do you do when your blood sugar plummets? You go in search of that candy bar to bring your blood sugar back up as the body always needs to maintain balance. This is a key component of the sugar addiction cycle.
Add in healthy proteins such as chicken, wild fish, whole eggs, and grass-fed beef or lamb. Add in those healthy fats like nuts and seeds, creamy avocados, and coconut. Then add the fiber! Avocado is an excellent choice, as you not only get the great healthy fat but the high fiber as well. All varieties of veggies are a key fiber choice, especially leafy greens, along with chia seeds and nuts.
2. Engage in Interval Training
Interval training is a form of exercise that is done in short bursts and effectively triggers an endorphin and dopamine response, exactly like sugar. However, sugar’s lasting effects promote inflammatory health conditions, including weight gain down the road.
Interval Training Can Boost Metabolism for Over 24 Hours
Exercise, in general, promotes the “happiness” neurotransmitter, serotonin. When you have plenty of serotonin, you are less likely to have cravings for sweets. However, interval training or burst training has many benefits compared to traditional longer cardio.
It helps use up those fat-storing enzymes such as lipoprotein lipase (LPL) that essentially locks the door of our fat cells – think fat storage. Use interval training with any form of exercise such as walking, running, biking, elliptical, your own body weight, and more.
A Basic Interval Training Example
- Go as fast as you can for 30 seconds
- Go back to a slow to moderate pace for 90 seconds
- Repeat 8 times.
- That’s it!
3. Eat Something Sour
Eating anything sour such as lemon juice or apple cider vinegar can help quash sugar cravings by taking your sweet tooth away. Lemons, in particular, prevent fluctuations in blood sugar levels. One major benefit is the citric acid in lemons slows the conversion of carbohydrates to sugar. Lemons also contain the soluble fiber pectin that forms a gel in the stomach, preventing hunger and cravings. Just squeeze the juice of a lemon into Tyent alkaline water.
4. Add Supplements
Adding specific supplements will powerfully reduce sugar cravings without relying on willpower alone. This is that one time (with physician’s approval) taking supplements will make a robust difference. The correct supplements make the whole process of crushing sugar cravings so much easier!
Here are my top sugar freedom supplements:
- L-glutamine (500 mg twice daily): This amino acid will stop sugar cravings in their tracks
- Chromium picolinate (400–600 mcg daily): This will balance blood sugar, kicking sugar cravings to the curb within three days in most cases
- Alpha lipoic acid (250 mg daily): This will stabilize blood sugar levels, so you don’t get the munchies or get hungry a few hours after eating
5. Reduce Stress
So many people are stressed with work, family, and other obligations. They reach for food to soothe frazzled and anxious nerves. When you are stressed, you raise the stress hormone cortisol which lowers the feel-good neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. This, in turn, will send you right to carbohydrates and sweets.
The hormone cortisol is also a fat-storage hormone, particularly the most inflammatory form ~ belly fat.
The key takeaway here is to practice stress reduction every day. To combat stress effectively, we need to activate the body’s natural relaxation response.
Examples include deep breathing (such as the 4-7-8 technique below), a warm bath with lavender essential oil, massage, yoga, meditation or guided meditation specifically for stress reduction, or the best stress reduction technique – exercise.56
We need to get moving to manage stress. Exercise is important in every facet of your health and will boost your feel-good endorphins, making you more resilient to sugar cravings.
6. Get Crucial Sleep
Do you know what happens when we lose just one night of quality sleep? We become more insulin resistant, the “feel-good” neurotransmitter serotonin is lowered, and the stress hormone cortisol (belly fat hormone) is raised. You are also left hungrier the next day and it’s not for broccoli, but for high carbohydrate, sugar-laden foods. Once you get started on that cycle of using carbs such as sugar to increase energy, it will wreak havoc with your weight and health.78
Make time for sleep. Incorporate 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night. If you have trouble falling asleep or wake up during the night, use this highly effective breathing 4-7-8 technique. It will put you back to sleep right away and make a powerful difference in reducing your sugar cravings.
4-7-8 Technique
- Breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds
- Hold for 7 seconds and exhale for 8 seconds
- Repeat 6 times or as often as needed
These six tips have been shown to crush even the most powerful sugar cravings. Follow them and you will begin to feel optimal health in no time.
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