One important observation I made over the years is that when you start cleaning up your diet, cravings often will come up, especially if you cut sweet foods out of your diet. There’s no easy fix here.
For me, one of the best things I did was grow some Stevia. Every time I’m in the garden, I break a piece off and chew on it. It’s so sweet it’s almost sickly how sweet it is. That has helped me with my sugar cravings
I have also found that a tiny bit of honey is a great thing to add to the diet. It really stops you from wanting sugar in general.
Gradually changing your diet helps reduce cravings. By eating more fresh food while slowly pulling out sugar bit by bit, you will have no sugar left in your diet after about six to twelve months.
Your taste buds can change, but they change slowly. People often say to me, “What’s a sweet substitute? What can I have that’s not sugar but will satisfy my cravings?” There is no real substitute for sugar. Nothing gives the brain that kind of rush that sugar does.
Some people find the herb Gymnema helpful. This is a very bitter herb. If you love sweet stuff, once you start putting tiny little bits of bitter in the mouth, incredible things happen. Over several weeks and months, the bitter taste desire becomes stronger and stronger, and the craving for sweets starts getting less and less. Eventually, you will find yourself loathing sugary foods and loving bitter ones.
Bitter foods do the opposite of sweet foods. They stimulate digestion. They help to inhibit parasites and candida. They improve fermentation. They improve how beneficial bacteria work in your intestine. Many bitter foods contain starches that are a great breeding ground for the beneficial bacteria, lactobacillus and bifidobacteria. Bitter foods can detoxify the body. Sweet foods encourage the slowing down of the stool while bitter foods speed it up.
Here’s an interesting tip: you can include bitter and sweet together initially and slowly pull the sweet back more and more and more until only bitter is left. You could do that with salad dressing. You can get some liquid stevia or even a little bit of warm honey. You can mix that with lemon juice and olive oil and slowly but surely, you take the honey away. Eventually, you’re left with only the bitter ingredient. It works very, very well. I can assure you, once you like bitter foods, you’re not going to be that interested in sweet foods anymore.
Sources:
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28835408
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30791346
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/how-to-break-the-sugar-habit-and-help-your-health-in-the-process
- https://www.medicaldaily.com/how-deal-sugar-cravings-428294
