By Sussanna Czeranko, ND
Banish Cravings and Eat Abundantly.
When the New Year rolls around, resolutions old and new roll around too. Getting rid of sneaky pounds that somehow accumulated over the past year, for example, gets our attention again.
Dieting, though, has a way of starting off well and ending badly. For some is a merry go round from one diet to the next. Consider, though, what if you could eat whatever you want and banish forever those relentless cravings and look and feel fantastic?
To good to be true? Well, I’m here to tell you that there’s a new approach to this perennial challenge which means you can not only eat lots of healthy food, but also banish cravings and calorie counting at the same time.
Before we embark on this journey of enjoying food without dieting, let us review some basic
background ideas. Food is made up of protein, fats and carbohydrates. There is also a fourth food group
that gets overlooked: fiber. When we eat a “whole food” diet, we are consuming all these four food
groups. When we choose overly “processed food”, on the other hand, we are deviating from the
healthy diet that Mother Nature intended for us. Processed foods may be convenient, tasty, and
seemingly inexpensive, but they are invariably devoid of nutrients, vitamins, minerals and fiber, all
essential for life. What’s more, the processing removes natural nutrients and replaces these with
artificial ones.
Eating a diet high in processed foods frequently means that we crave eating more of these same
foods. There is no easy exit from the cycle of craving artificial foods. We find ourselves hungry often
and we crave more snacks and sweets.
Our bodies run on energy and the best source of energy comes from carbohydrates. Carbs consist
of starch, fiber, glucose, fructose, and sucrose. Glucose is a desired food for the mitochondria. The
mitochondria’s mission is to produce energy. There are trillions of these mitochondria in every human
body. When mitochondria are inundated with excess glucose, though, they self-destruct, making them
incapable of providing energy. When our cells are lacking energy, we face fatigue and exhaustion.
In her book, Glucose Revolution, Jesse Inchauspé explores many questions and assumptions about
controlling blood glucose. For so many, the answers to these questions illuminate solutions for the
veritable roller coaster of cravings and fatigue, weight gain and much more. She presents us with some
interesting conclusions that at first may seem to run counter to what popular diets and nutrition
counselling have long proffered. Among other insights she explains that we can eat almost anything,
but we have to eat our food in a certain way. Inchauspé explains that how we eat our food has more
impact on health than the kinds of food we eat. Weight maintenance is not about the calories or foods
that we eat; rather it is about how we eat those foods.
Carb consumption registers as glucose in the blood. Luckily, insulin is secreted to ensure that
glucose levels are not elevated. Insulin’s task is to pack excess glucose into fat cells for safe keeping and
storage. Elevated glucose or glucose spikes indicate that too much glucose is present in the body. Each
time insulin comes to the rescue, glucose is removed from the blood and bigger fat cells are made. The
solution is not to eat less; it is to decrease insulin levels by flattening glucose curves.
Here are some basic guidelines to eat more food than what you probably normally eat on any given
diet and at the same time reach your goal of feeling and looking fabulous! Let us review some ways that
you can flatten glucose curves and be surprised by the results.
1. Eat a savory breakfast. Our first meal of the day determines the pace for glucose spikes.
When we wake, our sensitivity to glucose is high and eating a breakfast with lots of carbs will
cause a roller coaster of glucose spikes throughout the day. Eat a breakfast with protein, fiber
and fat to stabilize satiety and energy.
2. Eat food in the right order: first fiber; second protein and fat; third starches; and last, sugar
[dessert]. Begin each meal with a vegetable dish, such as a salad, steamed vegetables which
are high in fiber. Fiber creates a mesh that slows down glucose absorption. Only 5% of North
Americans eat sufficient fiber.
3. Delay afternoon snacks. If you are craving an afternoon sweet snack, delay it and eat it at the
next meal for dessert. Drink a cup of herbal tea instead to caving into a craving. When the
glucose spikes are flattened, cravings vanish.
4. After eating a meal, move your body. Take a ten-minute walk and glucose will be used by
muscles instead of padding fat cells.
Having changed the order of ingesting your food will create important changes in your life. The first
is that you will lose inches, and that your clothing will fit more comfortably. Not only can you eat more
food than usual, but you can treat yourself to dessert every night. In my own experience, this
unexpected weight loss happened despite the pie that I often eat at the end of my evening meal. The
second change is that this diet will leave you with more energy. You will wake up easily, even when the
sky is still dark. The third benefit is that you will find yourself no longer giving into cravings
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