It’s rare that I meet someone who doesn’t have a sweet tooth. Some of us struggle more than others with sweet cravings. How do we choose to indulge our sweet tooth (or not to) in a healthy way? Here are four mindfulness strategies:
Mindful Pause
Oftentimes, we crave sweets because of some underlying thought or emotion that drives a desire for something comforting. When the craving hits, taking a mindful pause allows us to become aware of our emotions, senses, and actions. We may be frustrated, stressed, tired, or bored and looking to escape those uncomfortable feelings. Unfortunately, we all know those feelings won’t disappear by eating chocolate (although that would be awesome!). Yet our brain seems to think it will work every time. A little mindfulness and a full toolbox of ways to soothe yourself without food can go a long way when it comes to managing that sweet tooth.
Sort Through the Craving
Ask yourself, do I really want this, or is my primitive brain just craving it because it’s there, free, tempting, etc? If we always follow that primitive drive to indulge, we could end up far from our goals. Having a way to sort through a craving can help. I like to ask myself questions to gather more information. How bad do I really want this? Willt his craving pass pretty quickly? Is this craving for something special and unique? Does this help me meet my needs? Is it going to make me feel good or lousy? Is the experience going to be worth it? For instance, the candy from a jar at work… although delicious, probably not very special. I might devour it as I walk to the water jug without actually experiencing it. But a melt-in-your-mouth s’more when you are on a family camping trip or a decadent homemade pie you only get once a year around the holidays that you sit down to savor with people who mean the world to you… those are the kind of treats that I call worth it. Simply putting a little thought into your decision can help you decide to pass or go on a sweet treat.
Give Yourself Permission
When food is off-limits, it gains power. It’s always your choice to honor a craving or ride it out and let it pass. When you take a mindful pause and sort through it, you can then consciously ask yourself if you still want that food. Give yourself permission to say yes without any judgemental thoughts (like I’m being bad or I’m cheating). Once you do, ironically, it will be much easier to say no if you want to.
Love What You Eat
Cravings can come on for various reasons, but being too restrictive or eating bland food can definitely trigger more cravings. If you aren’t enjoying your food, maybe it’s time to look at how to put more joy and flavor onto your plate. This is different for everyone. Perhaps this means adding a bit of honey and cocoa powder into your morning smoothie, making a flavorful sauce to go on top of your meat and roasted veggies, or ending your meal with fruit or, dare I say, chocolate sometimes!
Fruit, Vegetables and Chocolate
Incorporate some delicious AND nutritious treats in your routine for a more satisfying daily diet. Dietitians really have a knack for combining healthier ingredients like fruits and vegetables with their chocolate! So, in honor of #NationalNutritionMonth, here I highlight some tasty treats packed with healthy perks from real, quality food ingredients, including my own recipe for Chocolate Banana Nut Muffins.
“An ooey-gooey fudgy brownie bite filled with healthy fats and chocolaty goodness.”
And here is my latest creation. I had bananas that were past their prime so I baked these chocolate muffins. They aren’t overly sweet so they made a good breakfast or snack. But if you wanted to dial up the sweetness a notch, just add your favorite chocolate chips and/or try adding some whipped cream cheese icing and voila! Your muffin is more like a cupcake!
These muffins are a delicious for breakfast, snack or dessert. Each muffin has 3 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber. Add healthy fats with optional walnuts or bump up the fun factor with some dark chocolate chips.
Prep Time 15 minutesminutes
Cook Time 20 minutesminutes
Total Time 35 minutesminutes
Servings 1
Author Kristen Norton, RD, LDN
Ingredients
1 1/2cupwhole wheat flour
1teaspoonbaking soda
1teaspoonbaking powder
1/8teaspoonsalt
1teaspooncinnamon
1teaspoonnutmeg
2-3teaspoonscocoa powder
3ripe bananas
1eggwhisked
1/3cupbuttermelted
1teaspoonvanilla extract
1/3cupwalnuts or dark chocolate chipsoptional
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Fill a muffin tin with liners and spray with non-stick spray.
Whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and cocoa powder.
In separate bowl mash bananas. Add vanilla, egg, and melted butter.
Fold in flour mixture, and mix until smooth.
(Optional) Fold in walnuts or dark chocolate chips
How much sleep you get, how you wind down at the end of the day, the quality of your sleep, and how you wake up in the morning has A LOT to do with your weight and general well-being.
Don’t take it from me! Here is more information from Health Ambition on how our sleep patterns affect our weight and wellness.
-Our sleeping patterns affect our hormones, such as ghrelin and leptin, regulating hunger cues which control our appetite.
-Studies show sleep deprivation leads people to choose higher-calorie foods and an increased caloric intake for the day.
Improving sleep hygiene:
There are plenty of external factors affecting sleep patterns, and some that you can control.
Get in a routine – Yes, I know it sounds boring, but I tried to get in bed and on my way to sleepy town by 10:30 PM every night. Preferably earlier! Each time you disrupt your routine – a.k.a. weekends – it can cause a jet lag like effect on your circadian rhythm.
Remove the blinking, glowing, distracting, and other light disturbances. I’m looking at you Wi-Fi router, digital alarm clocks, TVs, and glowing A/C adaptors. These subtle yet bright lights in the bedroom can affect our sleepy hormone levels and circadian rhythm. If you absolutely cannot move them I highly recommend adopting an eye pillow (or childhood “blanky,” like me!) to block out the light disturbances.
You don’t really need to know the time. If you must get up at a particular hour, set an alarm on the phone, and don’t bother looking at the time if you wake up unexpectedly in the middle of the night. Each time we look at the clock it starts a story in our minds about how “I didn’t get enough sleep, I must fall back asleep to get ‘enough’ sleep!”
Consider meditation. Meditation is a powerful tool for living a well-balanced life. It’s less about emptying your mind of all thoughts because that is unrealistic. Meditation is the practice of focusing your mind on one calming thought. I find it useful to focus on my breath or start counting backward from 1000. Yep, that can be considered meditation. So go ahead and count the sheep and let yourself enjoy a restful night, waking up feeling refreshed. No matter how many hours of sleep you got.
Food for thought:
Did you notice I didn’t include a specific number of hours to sleep each night? That’s because it’s different for all of us! I need at least 7 hours to feel great, but my hyperactive business lawyer can function normally with 5 hours of sleep.
Try an experiment next weekend: Go to bed when you’re tired, and wake up when your body wants to wake up.
How many hours did you sleep?
How can you improve your sleep hygiene this week?
Let us know how you’re sleeping in the comments below 🙂
I love TED talks! Have you discovered these amazing short videos that will inspire, educate, and entertain you for minutes (or hours if you go on a video binge!)? I just got done watching “How to get stuff done when you are depressed” by Jessica Gimeno, which has nothing to do with today’s topic EXCEPT that she has a very good point… We must be proactive, not reactive, in order to be our happiest and healthiest selves.
We know making healthy food choices is a heck of a lot easier when you have the right foods available. This was best demonstrated to me by Dyana, in Chapel Hill, who excitedly showed me her treasure box of snacks last summer. Many people have a drawer, locker, or secret stash of snacks at the office, but what I discovered at Dyana’s desk was unlike any treasure box I have ever seen.
Dyana keeps a collection of usual suspects, such as peanut butter to curb a sweet tooth moment and hot sauce for flavoring her meals at work. However, what Dyana keeps for her afternoon snacks includes smoked oysters, sardines in olive oil, and barbecued octopus! These may not sound like delicious options to you, but I offer the thought that these protein rich shelf-stable choices help keep her appetite under control, provide energy, and reduce the 4 PM sugar crash. Also, they are not the typical granola bar, fun sized candy, or other simple carbs that offer minimal nutritional value and typically leave us hungry within an hour.
Here are a few other Well-Balanced (and more widely preferred) ideas to create you ownyummy healthy treasure box:
Single serving tuna pack
Trail mix (almonds + Craisins = my favorite)
Bean dip, yes, it’s salty but offers some protein and fiber to fill the void
Fruit cups, in its own juice
Beef jerky
Sunflower seeds
Food for thought:
There are SO many options for the mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack. Before you reach for the same old crackers or bar, first decide “Am I really hungry?” Then, see if there’s a more balanced option in your treasure box!
The temptation to quit will be greatest just before I am about to succeed. -Chinese proverb
I am reading a very short book called, The Dip by Seth Godin. This is “A little book that teaches you when to quit (and when to stick).” At the beginning of the year, many of us felt called to make new habits and become healthier. Perhaps that included a gym membership, buying a few self-improvement books, or starting a clean eating plan.
Inevitably, real life keeps happening. No matter how good our intentions there is always a dip – where the fun fades and the journey feels HARD. The book is a reminder to pause and discern if it is the inevitable dip or a dead-end that is ultimately keeping you from succeeding.
In case you’re feeling like some of your new healthy habits are not working here are 3 steps to take to move through the dip.
When those negative thoughts start to invade your brain say to yourself “cancel, cancel, cancel!“
As the meditation and hypnosis expert Chel Hamilton reminds us, use your inside voice – inside your head that is – or else people might start to look at you funny. The benefit of “cancel, cancel, cancel” is you stop negative thinking in its tracks instead of following those thoughts down the dark hole of despair.
Focus on the positive – Clearly, being healthy is important to you.
Take a moment to pat yourself on the back for at least 3 to 5 healthy choices you made in the past week. This action step will redirect your negative thinking, allowing you to reinforce the positive truths and behaviors.
Identify the trigger – What was the situation that caused your mind to spin into doubt or frustration mode? For me, it tends to be that I am overtired, too self-absorbed or caught in the comparison trap.
By identifying and recognizing your triggers, you empower yourself to redirect and overcome negative thinking.
Food for thought:
Remember, the darkest hour comes just before dawn, but that morning light is coming.
When your journey doesn’t seem to be taking you where you want to go, be gentle with yourself. These things take time and consistency.
Last week I talked about treating yourself when the time is right. Today, I follow up on something I mentioned at the end of that blog. I said that I didn’t want to struggle with the sugar dragon every night, aka my sweet tooth. Well, my friends, this is something I am still working on, but I have a secret weapon. I invite you to use this awesome mindful eating tool that can help you manage your cravings. I will also share some strategies that have helped me cut out a lot of sugar.
What Causes Cravings for Sweets?
Many things can trigger cravings. It can be a result of an unbalanced diet. For example, not eating an adequate amount of protein or fat at meals can result in late night snacking. Lucy talks about this in her account of how she broke up with sugar here. Cravings can also be habitually or emotionally driven.
Here we will discuss the habitual and emotional drivers of cravings and share a mindful eating tool for keeping cravings in check. Sugar cravings can be fierce and unrelenting, that’s why I like to refer to my sweet tooth as the sugar dragon. It creeps in your head and demands sweets. It breathes down your neck until it gets something yummy and sweet.
Think about the times your cravings usually occur. Cravings hit when you’ve sat at a desk way too long. Maybe they come when you are alone and bored on the weekends or when you are frustrated, stuck, or exhausted at the end of the day.
We may not recognize these feelings at first, but when the sugar dragon pops up it’s often because something is going on underneath the surface, making us feel vulnerable or uncomfortable. Cravings hit during the times when we feel bored, lonely, tired or vulnerable. In an effort to protect ourselves, our brain will try to divert us from those uncomfortable feelings.
Sugary treats are often readily available at any turn, easy to obtain, only take a minute or two to eat, and they make us feel good almost immediately (although only momentarily). No wonder turning to sugar in one form or the other is a natural habit to pick up. It feels so good that our brain decides we should do that more often. The only trouble is using sugar as a solution isn’t going to help you in the long run.
How do you manage or stop cravings?
To conquer cravings and formed habits, we must retrain our brain. Breaking the habit and fighting the cravings takes awareness and intention. The mindfulness tool below will help you with those two things. Next time the sugar dragon taunts you, instead of immediately complying take a moment to stop and gather some DATA (Describe, Accept, Time, and Assess)…
Describe the moment to yourself. Where are you? What are you doing? What just happened? What are you feeling? What do you need? What are you thinking? What story are you telling yourself?
Accept it all for what it is and sit with any discomfort. When doing this, treat yourself like you would your best friend. That means no shaming, blaming, or demeaning yourself for anything. Know that it is okay to be feeling this emotion and show yourself compassion.
Take time to turn away from the craving and if uncomfortable feelings are under the surface think about what you truly need to process those. You could journal your thoughts, do some coloring, go on a walk, call a friend, tidy up a room, pray or meditate. You can come back to the craving in 10-20 minutes.
After taking time away, you can now assess your craving and make a deliberate decision rather than an impulsive one. You might still choose to eat something, or you might notice that whatever you did to turn away from the craving lessened the desire to fix the problem with sweets. Perhaps you realize you simply need some sleep, to talk through your feelings, to show yourself some compassion or choose a non-food way to self-soothe.
My challenge to you is to try this tool this week. I’ve done this exercise a few times throughout both of my whole30 experiences and continue to use it when cravings arise. I’ve learned a lot from pausing before reacting. Let me know how it goes for you and what you learn from implementing this mindfulness tool for managing sugar cravings.
What other ways can you stop sugar cravings?
Here are five other ideas to help you cut back on sweets and sugar.
Be sure you are getting enough protein and healthy fats at each meal.
Include fruit in your meal so you can end on a naturally sweet note
Drink a tall glass of ice water perhaps with lemon or a chilled glass of coconut water. Sometimes hydration can ward off a sweet tooth.
Brush your teeth. Often times, we crave sweet food because we can still taste our dinner. A clean mouth feels excellent and can signal that you are done eating.
Don’t keep desserts in the house or at eye-sight, especially if you are an abstainer – read more about this inAre you an abstainer or moderator?
Dyana keeps a collection of usual suspects, such as peanut butter to curb a sweet tooth moment and hot sauce for flavoring her meals at work. However, what Dyana keeps for her afternoon snacks includes smoked oysters, sardines in olive oil, and barbecued octopus! These may not sound like delicious options to you, but I offer the thought that these protein rich shelf-stable choices help keep her appetite under control, provide energy, and reduce the 
