I heard it a lot yesterday while I was seeing patients.

The holidays presented several opportunities for many of you to re-engage your sugar habit. One piece of See’s candy leads to another piece, and eventually before you know it you are craving sugar so bad even the greatest will power can’t find fight it.

Well, I have GREAT NEWS for you! Craving sugar has NOTHING to do with willpower. Nothing!

See, we’ve been taught that dieting is all about deprivation and mental strength. And while some of that may be true, the real trick to losing weight and staying healthy is getting your body to stop craving these harmful foods.

Sound to good to be true? Well, it’s not.

The key to kicking the sugar habit lies in your gut and your hormones. If you want to stop craving sugar, you have to repair these two systems. Here are my top 3 favorite ways to repair those systems and kick your sugar habit for good:

1. Train your body to be a fat burner, not a sugar burner. There are only two ways your body burns energy; from sugar or fat. Feed it sugar and it will use that as it’s energy source, take away sugar and it will burn fat as it’s energy source.

How best can you do that? The fastest path is to go cold turkey for three days. If you can stay off all refined sugars or anything that turns to sugar (breads, pastas, cookies, cakes, crackers) for three days, your body will have no choice but to switch its energy source to fat. This is exactly what the 15-Day detox is all about. Turning your body into a fat burner.

2. Repair your gut. I know I sound like a broken record, but so much of our health relates to our guts. If you have more bad bacteria than good, or have any yeast in your system you will crave sugar no matter what you do. If you are one of those people that feels like you were born with a sugar addiction, it might be you were born with too much yeast in your gut.

Here’s how this works. In order for the yeast to stay alive it has to have you eat sugar. That’s what it lives off. The more sugar you eat, the happy the yeast is and the more it grows. The more it grows, the more you crave sugar. If this is you, you are going to have to kill the yeast in order to finally kick the sugar habit. Kiling yeast has many steps to it. I will be going over those steps at our Reset Dinner on Jan 7th at Family Life Chiropractic. Email me if you want to know more.

3. Eat more good fat. The more good fat you eat, the more it will stabilize your blood sugar and balance the hormone insulin. You should be looking to get 40% of your food everyday coming from good fat. Avocados, raw nuts, coconut oil in your smoothie, and organic butter are all good fats that will help you lose weight. When insulin is balanced, you will stop craving sugar.

Hope that helps! Stop beating yourself up for craving sugar. It’s not your fault. Repair your gut and your hormones and your sugar cravings will disappear.

Motivated to lose weight and repair your health for good?

Dr. Mindy