Fight food cravings with a glass of water

When you are eating a lot of carbohydrates every day, eventually, you are starting to experience the hunger more and more often. That’s because of the sugars and starches (which the bad high glycemic index carbohydrates mostly are) are increasing your blood sugar level and that, in its order, making your pancreas to respond with the release of insulin into your bloodstream. The more high GI carbohydrates you eat, the more insulin will be released into your bloodstream in response. These are the basics that students who study nutrition in online school learn, and you can learn too.

The first purpose of the insulin as a hormone is to lower the blood sugar level by, figuratively speaking, commanding the cells to take and store those sugars (at that point sugars and starches from the eaten food are already broken down into glucose, which is now flowing through your blood vessels). The cells, including the fat cells, obey and the blood sugar level decreasing.

Nothing wrong with that in general. This is how our bodies work. As always, the devil is in the details. In this case, it is the speed and intencity of the whole process.

If you are eating a lot of sweets or white bread, or drinking a lot of sugary beverages, the blood sugar level is spiking high within, literary, minutes. The pancreas, upon detection of such an overwhelmingly fast and massive amounts of glucose, responds with a loads of insulin. The large amount of insulin, being released into the bloodstream, quickly stores all the glucose in the cells, reducing the blood sugar below normal level. That’s when you are becoming to feel the hunger again.

The people, who are eating a lot of bad carbohydrates such as high-fructose corn syrup sweets and drinks, white bread, rice etc., are riding this morbid insulinic roller-coaster all day long. They can easily ate a thousand calories piece of cake and feel hunger again in less than three hours.

And the worst part of it all is that such unhealthy nutrition practices are easily becoming a habit. That’s why when you are start the dieting (or simply just doing more healthy low GI meals), for the first time you are feeling hunger as often and even much more often than when you were overeating bad food.

Most commonly, the brain visualizes this hunger as the cravings for sweets. These cravings can be so intense, almost as strong as the cigarette cravings of the smokers, or the heavy drinker’s irresistible itch to drink a shot of vodka or a glass of beer on any occasion. Don’t let your own body fool you!

The sweets, bread, high GI carbs and glucose in general are not addictive. This is not an addiction that makes you crave for food, just a really bad and unhealthy eating habit.

However, the feelings are feelings, and you can’t just put them aside. If you can, my congratulations, you are the owner of the balls of steal (even if you’re not supposed to bear a pair by you gender), bear them with proud—you will overcome anything, absolutely anything, in this life. For the rest of us I have a cheap and dirty little secret up on my sleeve.

Water. Drink a lot of it. Just pure fresh water. Keep the glass of water on your computer desk, refill it regularly and make a few sips every time you put an eye on it. Serve a glass of pure water with every meal you eat. Keep a bottle of water with you when you are on the street, or at the gym, or driving.

It’s hard to overdose on the pure water. It is considered healthy to drink at least three litres of water per day, at least five litres in the very hot climate or when you do a lot of running or other intensive training. And it’s actually not that easy to drink five litres, you will hardly drink more.

If your tap water is not good enough for drinking without boiling it first, invest a little into the Brita filter. Believe me, it will be one of the most important and most profitable investment in your life.

Drinking water here and there not only prevent your body from dehydration when you are doing your exercises. It also will help you to actually eat less. As couple of glasses of water can satisfy your hanger for awhile. Of course, all these water will left the digestive tract in about 15 minutes, but for those fifteen minutes you will feel yourself full. A small victory is still a victory.

Also, do not forget that when you are doing something often enough, you are forming the habit. If you will fallow my advise, you will eventually replace the bad habit of snacking on every hour with the good habit of drinking pure water every hour.

Fight food cravings with a glass of water was posted by Vitali K. on 18th January 2012 as part of the Lifestyle section. Share your links or pictures with us by email: paradoxoff@gmail.com. Check the front page for the latest posts or use navigation links below: