How to reduce the craving for carbs and sugar while maintaining the high Fat and protien diet

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(Deepanshu Jain) #1

Please help. I get a lot of craving for sugar and breads.

(Ron) #2

From a personal experience, I just kept reminding myself why I came to Keto in the first place. Then I would ask myself what alternatives were available that might be better to achieve those goals? Since I couldnā€™t answer that and knew what the old way of eating had done to my body over the years, it gave me the strength to continue on. This forum was a big part of that and I got a lot of encouragement from the people on it that helped tremendously.
As for cravings, since keto depletes salt reserves it is suggested to up your salt intake, so I bought some Himalayan Pink rock salt and would stick one under my tongue whenever I got a craving. It seemed to help.

#3

A great piece of advice from DClawdude on Reddit, which I strive for, but too often fail at:

This is a mindset issue that only you can choose to solve.

There is no magic bullet to starting or restarting or continuing.

Ultimately you build discipline and commit, or you donā€™t. Control and motivation are not about willpower really, they are about discipline, creating a new normal, and also goals. The scale itself is often not enough motivation, and motivation can only get you so far versus discipline.

As you have noticed, motivation is fleeting and can be affected by external factors. But discipline and building something into your daily habit can help ensure success even when you donā€™t feel ā€œmotivatedā€ in a given moment to continue as youā€™ve been going.

Discipline is basically building good habits and sticking to them. You have to ask yourself what is more important to you: being less fat in a month or having a candy bar now? What is going to provide more long term satisfaction?

Frankly there is always an excuse to cheat. There is always an upcoming holiday or birthday or graduation or quincenara or bar mitzvah or other celebration or someone decided to just bring cookies to work or you go out to dinner and order a sandwich instead of something else. There is always an excuse, if you want it bad enough you will just not make excuses.

Which is not to say it isnā€™t difficult, it IS to say that committing is what is necessary especially when you are in an environment where others eat other things.

Stress happens, keto or no. Iā€™m a busy person, I manage to plan, meal prep, and keep keto. I go out with friends when stressed and keep keto. Donā€™t let stress or being busy be your excuse.

With regard to emotional eating, if youā€™re doing that, develop other/better coping strategies that actually address the underlying feelings. ā€œEating your feelingsā€ is just a bandaid and does not actually get to the deeper issue.

A lot of people also say that thinking, ā€œI no longer eat thatā€ is a more helpful mindset versus ā€œI canā€™t have that.ā€

If you cheat and fail, reflect critically on why it happened, donā€™t go into a shame spiral - make a plan for the next time the situation comes up, because it will, and think about a better way to handle it.

Committing to changes that improve your health can be hard. Being fat is also hard. Choose your hard and stop making excuses. You have to want it, nobody can want it for you. Commit or donā€™t - itā€™s your body and only you have to live in it.

(Linda ) #4

I think also its important when starting, to make sure your using lots of fats to keep you full so that ultimately the cravings disappearā€¦ But Its prob a good time to pick a replacement for those comfort foods your missing so that when you are stressed or something in life happens you still have something in your life you can turn toā€¦whether it be a sugar free soda if it doesnā€™t spike insulin, or coffee and cream or something similar that can help so you donā€™t have addiction transfer from sugar to something worse. Like giving up smoking often leads to eating junk foodā€¦

#5

That dude is one of the few over there that I typically DONā€™T disagree with.

(charlie3) #6

Iā€™m 2 years in to this. Two days ago my first cheat since Christmas. A traditional summer time thing. Absolutely a record for me. I have some unfair advantages. I live alone, donā€™t drink, am rarely in social situations with food temptations and Iā€™ve learned how to get out of the grocery store with only the things on the list. Even that is not enough. The only carbs in the house are non starchy vegetables. I put 2 HB eggs in my daily salad. I have to buy the exact number of eggs needed to avoid snacking on them. So I have a meat meal and a salad meal and worked hard to make both fun to eat. I still have fond memories of the awful things I used to eat but some how give in less and less often. Iā€™m still improving after 2 years.

#7

How long have you been eating keto? Are you only restricting carbs? ā€¦Or are you also trying to restrict calories, eat only organic, cook all your own meals for the first time, start a new exercise regime, or place other types of challenges upon yourself?

My personal experience has been that if my only goal is attempting to restrict carbs, while also allowing myself other types of comforts and indulgences (such as eating ā€˜lazyā€™ processed foods, not worrying too much about exercise, eating as many calories as I want in fat and protein), then this really helps to counteract the feelings of deprivation and craving that can come with starting keto. Pretty quickly, you can get to a place where youā€™re in the keto groove and then naturally have less hunger, less interest in sweet foods, and more energy for food prep and exercise. (I personally have less cravings when I eat a slightly higher number of carbs, but then I am ok with not always being fully in ketosis, so your mileage may vary depending on your own reasons and goals. Perhaps I would have less ā€˜relapsesā€™ if I was a little more strict.)

Good luck!

#8

I have found that if I do IF (18/6) I can allow myself some artificial sweeteners.
I think that with OMAD, one could even allow for 25-30g of carbs/day instead of 20g
From time to time I eat what is called ā€œprotein breadā€. It also has very few carbs.
But I lose weight slowly. I am OK with it as long as the scale goes down. Might be the sweeteners in some foods, might be also because I am a couch potato.
I had a hard time with my sweet tooth, but I always kept them keto.
When not doing IF-
What also helped me is to use almond milk with a bit of erythriol or stevia and vanilla extract- with or without sugar free cocoa. I like that on ice.
Also I made myself some chaffles with sweeteners and vanilla extract and cinnamon. They were quite yummy.
The latter 2 options kept me losing weight albeit maybe a bit more slowly. But I find with IF, I can also lose weight in spite of eating some keto sweets. I just could not really do IF before I was fat adapted. Because that kills my appetite. Thankfully.

#9

Time. Dig in, know the enemy, fight the enemy and put all you are worth into this battle of dropping the culprit.

Sometimes we have to pony up and dig in deep and go for it and say I WANT off sugar, and I will do just that.

Then the next smart thing to do is allow yourself to eat ALL ON PLAN foods, as much as you need at all times cause it gives you the confidence of, yea I can eat if needed and I donā€™t feel deprived.

well that is what worked for me, your mileage might vary on all this but at some point, if we want we must take action to achieve that desire :slight_smile:

(Jessica) #10

For me, totally immersing myself in keto info (reading here, watching YouTube videos, reading success stories, etc) keeps me motivated. After a couple of weeks I donā€™t crave the sugar anymore. In fact, it doesnā€™t really appeal to me so much. I do miss tortilla chips and dip, but itā€™s mainly the crunch. I dip cauliflower in ranch, or fathead bread in cheese dip and that helps.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

You can take a page out of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous: donā€™t swear off carbohydrate and sugar for ever, just donā€™t have any right now. Take things a day at a time. It can often be helpful to say to oneself, ā€œIā€™m just not going to eat this at the moment, but tomorrow Iā€™ll have all I want.ā€ Then when tomorrow comes, do it all over again!

Swearing off for ever, if one is an addict, is just setting oneself up to binge, but postponing the addictive substance for a while generally works quite well. As the A.A. literature points out, ā€œEven the worst alcoholic in the world can go twenty-four hours without a drink,ā€ and the principle applies equally well to any substance or addictive type of behaviour.

One trick I learned on these forums is, when looking at something tempting, to think ā€œpoisonā€ or ā€œdeath-food,ā€ which retrains my brain to look at that crap in a healthier light. Given what excessive carbohydrate and sugar intake did to my metabolism, they really are death-foods. Iā€™m lucky to still have all my fingers and toes, when you get right down to it.

(Jill F.) #12

The cravings do get better over timeā€¦ the less carbs you eat the less you crave them. However I definitely crave them when I am stressed. I feel that my brain used to equate I am stressed to carb heavy foods and it still wants those things under duress. It forces me to power through and not stress eat, which means I have to work through all of my emotions.

This is not an easy task for me! I have anxiety and a stressful job and I crave carbs emotionally daily, it is no longer my body craving them it is my mind. I have done keto about 18 months and reached my goal weight 11 months ago. The difference is now I try to work through the emotions rather than eat my way through them.

#13

I just ordered ā€œBitter dropsā€ online. It seems that if you take a few when the carb cravings start, they disappear. I will let you all know how they worked.
ā€œBitterliebeā€ is the site. I dont know if something like this exists in America?

#14

While the cravings do disappear after eating clean Keto or carnivore for awhile, the intense cravings in the beginning are a tough hill to climb. My own personal experience has taught me that when sweets and carbs were a temptation in the early days, grab the opposite thing and eat or drink. My list is as follows:
Diet Tonic waterā€¦bitter, yet tasty.
Dill pickles. I ate a whole 24 oz jar once when I was craving cake.
Black olives
Green olives
Green olives stuffed w bleu cheese
Marinated Artichoke hearts
Hard boiled eggs, cut in half, salted, smeared with a TB of soft butter, salted again.
Turkey baconā€¦GFS carried huge packs of pre-cooked turkey bacon - which is wicked handy for instant craving relief.

So the idea here is that when your mouth thinks it wants sugar, you hit it with something salty/bitter/savory, and it confuses the taste buds. After doing this a few times, the cravings subside.

Now that Iā€™ve been Keto (and carnivore, on and off and on again) for over a year, I can sip a diet cream soda for a sweet treat and not get carb-triggered. HTH.

#15

When I started keto, I had no cravings (except I wanted my daily little fruit) but I already did low-carb since long (I had no cravings at the beginning of my low-carb either but doing things gradually helped). Reducing carbs are great against cravings for me. I used ā€œketo daysā€ to come off from chocolate when I consumed it too extensivelyā€¦ I fell off the wagon much later, there can be so many reasons for thatā€¦
I can crave sweets and even sugary fruits galore but I need to eat carbs first.

To me, some fatty protein is the best to fight cravings. Especially fatty meat. It tastes good and satiates me so perfectly every urge to eat anything else disappear for a long time, itā€™s like magic. How did I do keto without meat before, I barely can imagine, it makes everything much easier. Especially if I seriously avoid carbs but meat helped me even in the presence of them.
I donā€™t call mine cravings but sometimes I fancy not the right things and I practically never resist temptation. But if I eat something better first, that may solve the problem before I could get seriously tempted and almost inevitably fail.

But I did various things during the last decade. Telling myself I can get that stuff later or next day (it didnā€™t work in the first years though, I am better now), persuade myself that I donā€™t want things my body complains about (itā€™s usually automatic, I am health-conscious and when I went low-carb, sugar and flour and heavily processed stuff immediately became non-food to me. it only lasted for 5 years and there were exceptions but still, it helped tremendously).
Sometimes one needs a replacement, similar or different. Mental battles ensue. We probably need multiple tricks, new habits and time can be our allyā€¦

(Jessica) #16

If you read around here enough, you will see that snacking is discouraged. This is sage advice EXCEPT right in the beginning when cravings might get you. When you start, I think you need to have a bunch of keto friendly snacks in your house so when you are pacing and looking for something to satisfy that craving, you have good choices.