This is Diana Walker – all excited about my news today!  I absolutely love Dr. Oz, and guess what?……

This morning I was contacted by one of the Producers at the new Dr Oz Talk Show

- see also — Dr Oz Launches New Show

The Producer contacted me since I have written my Craving Secrets Ebook and am a Cravings Coach.

I won’t be a guest ON the show — no, no!! I’m definitely not ready for that! — but I was honored to be consulted regarding this upcoming show.

Taping is on Tuesday — and the Producer will inform me when the show will go live – and it will be awesome to know that I had a little bit to do with it, all in the background!

Anyway — I will not go into details regarding the show – but it will have something to do with Sugar Cravings — so be sure and listen to my Podcast that I did earlier, and I’ll certainly let you know when I know the time that the show will be aired.

Click here to listen to the original Cravings Coach Podcast
Podcast #5 – Why Do I Crave Sugar?

Transcript of The Cravings Coach – Episode #5 – Why do I crave sugar?

Click here to listen to the original Cravings Coach Podcast
Podcast #5 – Why Do I Crave Sugar?

MALE ANNOUNCER: Welcome to THE CRAVINGS COACH PODCAST with Diana Walker, your Cravings Coach. This podcast is available 24/7 at The Cravings Coach. If you want more energy, clearer thinking, and the wisdom to make healthy lifestyle choices, then this is the show for you. Diana will help you understand many of the challenges related to healthy eating. She’ll also provide natural solutions to the problems we all encounter in today’s fast-paced society. Let’s go from craving junk food to craving healthy food. Now, here’s your host, Diana Walker.

DIANA WALKER: Hi, this is Diana Walker, The Cravings Coach. Welcome to Podcast #5. Today we’re going to put the emphasis on sugar. I know that this is a craving for many, many , many people. And it’s no wonder, because it’s in so many things and it is an addictive kind of a substance. So, do you find that you are craving sugar? If so, I’m going to give you a few ideas of substitutes for sugar and ways to help overcome that craving.

I want to discuss a background on sugar. A hundred years ago only six pounds of sugar per person, per year, was eaten. And now it’s 150 pounds per person, per year. That’s like half a pound a day. That is a lot of sugar. So why do we eat so much?

There’s three main reasons that I’ve come up with in my research and in my own personal experience. Number one is we’re looking for quick energy. Number two, it affects our mood. You all know that it actually temporarily elevates our mood. So, this is because it works on the neurotransmitters in the brain. In particular, dopamine is a neurotransmitter and really what that means is it releases chemicals that allow us to feel pleasure. So in other words, endorphins, many of you have heard of that. If you’re a runner, you get the feel-good feeling of the endorphins being released. There’s many other things in life that will release endorphins and one of these is when we have sugar.

And the serotonin level is temporarily increased. So when you’re binging on sugar, starches or simple carbohydrates, that can raise your serotonin and you have this feeling of well-being, but it drops you down really, really quickly. So in other words, simple sugars, anything that is white almost, almost anything that’s white, but particularly white sugar I’m talking about right now. But white bread, even white rice, is a simple sugar. So these temporarily raise your mood, that’s number two.

So we’ve got number one, quick energy, number two, a better mood and number three is taste. That’s another reason why we eat so much sugar. We’re born liking sweet taste. Mother’s milk is sweet, right? So it is natural to want a sweet taste. But as I talk, you’ll see what sweet tastes we should create our taste buds to want to enjoy.

One thing I was really astonished at, a few years ago, was when I heard that sugar cane, if you were to eat the sugar cane from the fields, it would take three feet of sugar cane, to equal one teaspoon of sugar. So in other words, if you’re eating ten teaspoons of sugar, that’s like 30 feet of sugar cane. Can you belive that? It’s so processed, and it gets in our bodies. Our bodies are not really designed to be absorbing sugar the way that we are. When you think back that it used to be hundred years ago, only six pounds in a whole year, and now it’s 150 pounds or more. I think that figure is actually higher now, per person, per year. You can see how we’re overloaded, totally overloaded with sugar.   Weight management becomes impossible.

And this is just added sugars. This is not the sugars within your simple carbohydrates that so many people are addicted to, like donuts and all the other things that sound good and give us that temporary energy, they taste sweet, they even elevate our mood, but we pay for it. We really pay for it in the long run.   So with the sugar cane, if people eat a few inches of sugar cane, and chew on it, which was traditional I think, in some countries, you are actually receiving vitamins and minerals that are naturally occurring, and that helps you assimiliate the sugar into your body. This also explains why when we eat fruit we are actually getting a lot of nutrition and fiber and everything that else helping us, our bodies, to naturally absorb it. So that’s a different thing. That’s a natural sugar. Although, you can overdo it on fruit in our modern society because of the way it’s processed also.

Anyways, sugar gives you a spike in energy, but then it drops you down low. Then it makes you more tired than before. I’m sure most of you have experienced that mid-afternoon when you’re just … you want to lay your head down, your eyes can hardly stay open. If you’ve had sugar, or bread or various other things that we have so much an overload of in our society. The human body actually only requires about two teaspoons of sugar in the bloodstream at any time.

Complex carbohydrates, like vegetables and fruits and legumes and grains, are wonderful. We need complex carbohydrates. The old-fashioned word for that is “starches.” So even potatoes and things like that, those are wonderful for us. I don’t see anything wrong with that. I don’t like it when people say we shouldn’t have a banana or we shouldn’t have all these things that nature has provided for us, because I do believe that we need to have them, but in moderation. And also, it depends if we’re already diabetic or having some health challenges, then you have to really, really cut back. But if you’re healthy, you should be able to include complex carbohydrates in a very good amount.

What we need to avoid are the simple carbohydrates. Those are the white sugar, the table sugar, the honey, even the natural fruit sugars. Even molasses, maple syrup, all these things that you may be thinking are very, very healthy for me, like the honey and the molasses.

There are so many hidden sugars.

• A fruit yogurt with sugar in it, an 8oz yogurt, has 8 teaspoons of sugar. That’s way too much.
• A cup of ice cream has six teaspoons of sugar.
• A cola drink, a 16oz cola drink, has 12 teaspoons of sugar.

Look at our kids. Our kids are drinking one, two, three, four sodas a day. Can you believe how their cells are saturated with the sugar? No wonder their brains arent’ working. No wonder there’s many that are out there tired and always wanting to reach for the candies and everything that they’ve grown up on.

That’s why it’s so important when they’re young to give them as much vegetables and plants as grown. And hopefully they’ll get addicted to that, instead of to sugar.

I want to continue with a grouping here, that I’ve outlined. I would never, ever recommend artificial sweeteners. That includes aspartame and Splenda. Splenda makes it sound like it’s such a wonderful product, when you see the advertisements on TV. But it is artificial, it is fake, it should never be in our bodies. And there’s many bad side effects. Guess what? Aspartame has been proven to increase our appetite and our serotonin levels, you remember I was talking about our serotonin levels, which is our “feel good” levels, goes down. And it causes sugar cravings. So those three things alone, increasing our appetite, decreasing our serotonin and making us feel down and depressed, and causing sugar cravings, should be enough cause for us to never, never touch aspartame and Splenda.

Number two, white sugar causes dental cavities, obesity, diabetes, arthritis, cancer, and your metabolism is compromised. It disrupts your digestion and it affects your brain. So those two things should always be avoided. And even brown sugar. If you think that’s better for you, it isn’t. It’s just white crystalline sugar with a thin coat of molasses stirred back in. So this includes turbanado, and florida crystals, and sugar in the raw. There’s many ways that they trick you into thinking that you’re getting healthier substitutes for white sugar. But brown sugar is not a good substitute. That’s my never list. Artificial sweeteners, never. White sugar, never. Brown sugar, never.

In my seldom list is one, fruit juice concentrate. It lacks the fiber that would slow the digestion and smooth out the blood sugar highs and lows. Fruit has also been sprayed with pesticides. So when you have the fruit juice concentrate, you’ve got even more pesticides concentrated in there, if it’s not organice. So when it’s made into juice, you have more pesticides and it’s hard for your body to adjust, because it’s not really used to this. It really needs the whole fruit so that you have your fiber and your minerals and vitamins and everything in there. It’s better to have it closer to nature more often, than the concentrates.

Number two, honey is really not appropriate for diabetics. Honey affects the blood sugar in the same way as refined sugar. This is most commercial honeys. The bee keepers in North America have to treat their hives with pesticide, because of some mites. So it’s very hard to get good honey. If you can get organic honey, you will be getting some minerals and vitamins in there. So that’s still a good choice, but it’s not on my top choice list.

Number three is maple syrup. Don’t use that a lot, but it does have mineral content and use only 100% pure. Don’t use just sugar water that’s made to taste like maple syrup.

Well, I think that that’s enough information for today. I’m actually going to give you my better list and my best list on sugar, on my next Podcast. This is all about sugar, getting sugar out of our diet, and we’ll have more energy if we can substitute wonderful other things for our sugar consumption.

DIANA: So for this week, just be aware of your sugar consumption and cut out a soda, cut out a fruit yogurt. Think about how much sugar is in each of the products that you eat this week. I wish you a happy and healthy week. This is the Cravings Coach signing off. I would like you to go to The Cravings Coach and sign up for my newsletter and check out my podcasts and blog for the future. Thank you, great talking to you. Have a great week.

Diana Walker, Cravings Coach