So you’ve decided to lose some weight but you cannot give up on your favourite sugary snacks such as biscuits and chocolate? Temptation seems to be everywhere, including your work. So how on earth can you lose weight when you just cannot resist sweet treats?
Here are some tips and ideas to help you achieve your weight goals
Don’t buy the junk in the first place
If you want to lose some weight you need to eat fewer calories and that means eating less sugary treats or giving them up altogether.
The first step is to stop buying any refined carbs (chocolate, sweets, etc.) that you normally just cannot resist when you are at home. This is a really important thing to do otherwise all your efforts will fail pretty quickly. Some people just cannot resist temptation especially those with a sweet tooth.
Dealing with the temptation at work
Removing temptation from the office where you work may be a little bit more difficult and that’s because you have no control of what treats will be available to eat. People will always bring things like biscuits and homemade cakes to the office and in some cases, you even get treated by your manager. Not to mention treats from your clients or when you have a charity day. No wonder it’s so easy to eat more sugar when working in the office than you would want to. But what can you do about it? How can you resist?
First things first. It’s going to be easier to resist temptation when you are not starving so make sure you start your day with a healthy breakfast or alternatively, bring breakfast with you to work.
If you want to snack on something or feel like having something sweet, ignore all the biscuits, and reach for things like dates, some fresh fruits or raw nut and fruit bars. Of course, you have to bring these healthy snacks to work and have them in your drawer at all times.
Also, make sure that your lunch is reasonably healthy and filling so that you don’t get sugar cravings in the afternoon. For example, you could have a filling homemade lentil and carrot soup with a slice of wholemeal bread or smoked salmon or chicken sandwich with lots of salad.
If you still feel a little bit hungry afterwards you can have a handful of nuts or a bag of popcorn to fill up that hole.
Of course, life wouldn’t be fun and enjoyable if you always resist your favourite sweet treats, so create a rule for yourself when you let yourself have something sweet at work at least once a week. This will be your reward for being good most of the time.
Make sure you get enough sleep
Many people suffer from insatiable sugar cravings and that’s often what’s stopping them from losing weight as they just need to have that sugar, no matter what. You’d be surprised but sleep has a lot to do with your sugar cravings. The lack of it actually.
It’s unfortunate that when we don’t sleep enough, this affects our hormones, in particular, a ghrelin hormone. This is the hormone which increases our appetite so when we are sleep deprived we want to eat more and are especially attracted to refined carbs and sugar-laden foods.
To reduce your sugar cravings, you absolutely must make an effort to sleep more. When you will be rested, your cravings will be reduced and you will be more likely to stick to your healthy snacks and meal plan.
Drink more water
You may have heard it many times how important it is to drink enough water. It’s for a good reason as this will really improve your health. Not surprisingly, staying hydrated also plays an important role in keeping your sugar cravings at bay.
Don’t you feel like eating something sometimes but you are not really hungry? You just want to eat something? You could be dehydrated and you don’t even know it! When you get that feeling just have a big glass of water and see how you feel afterwards. This could be all you need to stop yourself from reaching for sugary snacks.
Are you deficient in certain minerals?
Your sugar obsession could be for many other reasons and you may not know it but you could be deficient in different essential minerals such as magnesium, chromium and zinc. All these deficiencies can manifest themselves as sugar cravings.
Since it’s difficult to tell what you are deficient in, the best is to get yourself tested at home and use a provider such as Medichecks to see what your body may be lacking.
Once you know what your body needs, you just need to make sure you improve your diet and you will be on the right path to get rid of your sugar addiction.
So these are some ideas what you can do to reduce your sugar cravings and start losing weight. Of course, diet is not the only thing that will help you lose weight. You should also try to be more active and pay attention to the amount of calories you consume daily. These come in a form of drinks as well so try to keep alcohol and juices to the minimum.
***
Image credit: Freepik
Petra Kravos is a healthy lifestyle blogger who runs Be Healthy Now. Petra is very passionate about health and loves helping people on their healthy living journey.
