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Stop Those Sugar Cravings
By: K. C. Avnayt
Recent research has proven that addiction to sugar is more dangerous than even addiction to smoking!

Its pretty obvious that to cut sugar out of your diet, you just have to say NO to anything that you know has sugar in it. These sugar-foods are usually tea or coffee, processed food items, canned food (canned fruits as well) candies, colas, and most fruit juice cans as well.

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The big problem is not so much how to say No, but how to deal with the sugar craving that follows if you say no, especially if the food or drink item in question is one that is part of your lifestyle. The following tips are very effective and if you commit yourself to following them, you will find yourself balancing your weight naturally, becoming a lot calmer and clear headed, sleeping better, digesting food better, while most skin and hair problems get healed as a side-effect of having cleaner blood .

1) Go to sleep early

Our bodies require sugar and carbohydrates more in the first and second parts of the endocrine cycle, ie. between 3-4am - 12noon. During this time, our brains are more alert and because the brain uses glucose to work, the body in general wants and uses up more sugar or carbohydrates than during the remainder of the day. After noon, the body's use of sugar lessens and if we are healthy, our craving for sugar should also lessen. However, if sugar has become a part of our daily lifestyle, we continue taking it in and storing it up or passing it through the system unnecessarily right through the evening and night.

The fact is, the more awake we are through the night, the more sugar we are unnecessarily keeping and storing in the body, the harder it is for our heart to keep the blood - which is heavy with sugar - circulating, the harder it is for our pancreas, liver, kidneys and endocrine glands to maintain chemical balance in the body. This shows up in fat piling up, disordered sleep cycles, and the side-effects could be depression, insomnia, weight-gain along with various other nervous system, liver, kidney and heart problems.
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The easy way to get around this is to go to sleep early - as is natural. When we are asleep, the energy in our body gets diverted away from waking processes that require sugar and carbs (like brain work) to long-term strength development processes like bone cell development, skin and hair regeneration, hormonal gland balancing and so on. Our heart rests as our nervous system stops being frenetic, our digestive organs calm down as there is no new batch of food to work on, and so on. This is an indispensable REAL effective method to prevent diseases like arthritis, osteoporosis, infertility, clinical depression - all of which are ultimately hormonal imbalances usually caused by making our bodies work outside of or beyond the natural waking time.

Sugar cravings can increase as the night sets in, as the body needs more sugar to work beyond the natural working hours. Going to sleep early can help your body adjust to nature's way again, and in a week or two you'll have benefited more than just decreasing the sugar levels in your blood.

2) Do not linger in gatherings or places where sugar filled drinks or foods are served.

This is just plain commonsense isn't it? The more you hang out in places where everyone else is having sugar filled foods and drinks, the higher your chances are of having them too. Sometimes its a part of social bonding and you might be forced to overlook the negative effects of sugar on your body as you try to fit in with the moment. Remember what's more important. Your body, your health, is the basis of your life here, and none of your sincere friends and family can help you if you don't take care of your body's needs first.

3) Eat your meals on time.

Every time you feel hungry - and that is usually around your meal-time, stop whatever you're doing and have something decent to eat. Whatever food is traditional to you is the best for you - this is food that your grandparents or parents cooked at home for you during your childhood, that you really enjoyed.

If you don't have your meals on time, as you get more and more hungry, your body starts craving for simpler and simpler ways to get sugar to meet the immediate glucose demands from your brain. This means you start craving sugar more and more. To avoid this scenario, simply eat around the times you know you'll be hungry. Don't wait to go crazy with hunger before you eat, because this means you'll be popping sweet things into your mouth just to keep yourself going while you prepare or get your next meal.

This is also a great way to lose weight. This is because we humans tend to pile on fat as a response to food insecurity. If the body isn't sure that its going to get its next meal in time, it'll store up as much fat as possible within the body to use in emergencies. If you eat on time regularly day after day, you body will realize it doesn't have to hoard up fat anymore, and this helps you lose weight. This allows the heart to work better as it doesn't have to pump blood around a such a large body anymore. This goes on to clear up skin and hair problems and so on.

4) Face your emotional pain.

Sugar cravings are in most cases, you saying, "I don't want to really face the bitterness of my pain right now. I want to get charged up and focus on something else." While that is a valid response in some situations, in most cases it is not.

There is only one way emotional pain ever leaves us - and no it is not with time, you know that by now! Emotional pain leaves us when we acknowledge it. We don't even have to do something about it, all we need to do is become aware of it.

In my experience working with emotional causes of physical illnesses (also called psychosomatic disorders) I have found that most people with sugar cravings have un-understandable emotional pain. This is because the memories of what actually caused that pain have gotten buried inside somewhere, and all that's left is this unexplainable feeling of pain. Its hard because if you don't know what's causing your pain, what can you tell other people? What words do you use to share? And then you don't want to come across as a sad depressed sob story, you'd rather be a cheerful positive active person. For all this you need high amounts of sugar - naturally.

This deep emotional pain can be released by acknowledging that it is there, to yourself. The next step is to notice the situations and people that make you feel pained. These are valuable clues to help you heal. The next step is even more important. You have to be brave.

You see, 90% of the time, hidden emotional pain happens because we are afraid that acknowledging the pain we have, or the incident/s that caused it will shake up and upset our lives and self-identity. We just don't want to have to go there. That area is sacrosanct. That person cannot be spoken of or thought of that way. That person's reputation or happiness is more important than my own painful experience. That thought of mine is evil and I should not be thinking that way.

Push aside all those inhibiting thoughts. You are a child of God, a valid part of creation, absolutely deserving of your right to emotional awareness. LIFE after-all IS experience and every living being has the right emotional awareness. This is nature's way. Face your emotional pain. You can only benefit from it. Nature will support you as you heal yourself truly.

5) Raise your body awareness - do the feet stimulation exercise.

Our awareness of our body, or the quality of the connection between our mind and our body, determines to what extent our lifestyle will match the natural needs of our body. For example, a person who is constantly involved with work might ignore the need of her body to exercise and only a few years later realize she had ignored her body's needs all along. If she had been more in touch with her body she would have naturally been more physically active and not found herself in the current situation today.

The same principle applies to sugar cravings, or addictions of any sort. If you are in touch with your body, you'll find yourself going against yourself to have sugar, rather than pacifying your body.

To become aware of your body, there is a simple foot exercise that greatly helps those with sugar cravings. You sit in a chair and lift your feet off the floor. Then in one go you bang your feet down onto the floor taking care to put the entire foot down. You will sense vibrations coming up from the soles of your feet up into your legs. Keep going, bringing your feet down once every second and a half or so. You do this till you feel the vibrations all through your body.

Every time you find yourself craving for sugar, rush to a chair and do the foot exercise, or just jump up and down wherever you are, or alternate feet on the floor. After you have felt the vibrations from your feet going all through your body, you'll find that you now want to have something else other than the sugar food or drink. You might actually be hungry for something protein filled or vitamin filled instead. This is because you've come a little more in touch with your body's real needs.

Do this exercise regularly to keep your circulation going, heal varicose veins, balance out weight and hormonal issues, to stay more alert in waking hours, and sleep better in the night.
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