Many people have asked me what foods they should eat in order to cut down on
sugar cravings. And in past I've always had to say "I don't know."Now, maybe I can actually offer something more hopeful.
Kicking a sugar habit is no easy chore, especially since we're surrounded by stuff. Almost every packaged food or convenience product is made from sugar, (or white flour, which is about same thing).
We struggle to overcome initial reluctance to change, then we live through two weeks of mild withdrawal symptoms, and then we have to worry about relapse when we let down our guard on a stressful day.
Sometimes it just doesn't seem fair.
Dr. Ron Rosedale may have answer for us. He says that our sugar cravings are associated with a leptin insensitivity. Leptin is that hormone that researchers were very excited about a few years ago. They discovered that giving a small dose of this natural hormone to laboratory mice caused them to eat less, and they lost weight.
Researchers hoped that they could use leptin as magic pill that would help obese patients get thin again, like those mice. But when they started looking at humans, they found that overweight people often have more leptin than thin people - and obese people almost always have too much.
Eating too much highly concentrated carbohydrates over a long period of time can cause an insulin insensitivity that can lead to diabetes and other health conditions. According to Dr. Rosedale, it can also lead to leptin insensitivity, so message that leptin is sending out ("stop eating") is not being heard by overweight dieter. In fact, when we have a liptin insensitivity, we tend to crave even more sugar, even though our bodies are desperately trying to get rid of, (or store as fat), excess sugar we've just eaten a few minutes ago. And we go on craving sugar, even years after we've given it up - like cravings that many ex-smokers get when they're around people smoking.
