3 More Tips to Reduce Your Carbohydrate Cravings When You Have Type 2 Diabetes

First of all, slowly remove the offending foods. So what does that mean? Well, if you're the type of person who loves bread, who loves pizza, who loves pastries, who love sweets, all of those foods have carbohydrates in them that quickly reduce down to sugar.

They raise your blood sugar really fast. The insulin comes out, tries to get it down as quick as possible. And that downward shift of moving that blood sugar out of your blood stream is a problem. It causes moodiness and irritability and fatigue.  So what do you want to do? You want to eat more sugar to bring the blood sugar up. 

You want to break out of that cycle!

Look at everything you're eating and what you love to eat and slowly replace it with a better option. You can start with sweets. There are a lots of sweet things you can switch out that don't have sugar in them. You can use things with Stevia. Be careful about using foods like beets or carrots because they have a fair amount of sugar in them.

You can swap some things out like the pizza crust! They've got cauliflower pizza crust now, and other foods that are made with cauliflower that taste pretty good.  Be sure to read the labels.

There's a number of things, if you're clever and creative, that you can switch out for what you love.

It may not taste quite as good as the original, but it will still taste pretty good. And in your mind, it's the same thing. It's just like somebody else made it instead of you, or that you bought it from a different place than where you usually get it.

This is a slow process that can take place over time. And in this way, you're setting yourself up for success.

The second thing is to deal with your emotional eating. Emotional eating can be a problem because by definition, we're not really aware of what we're eating. A lot of emotional eating is driven by stuff deep inside us from way back in the past.

It could have been something from when you were a child and perhaps you were scared about something and your grandmother gave you some cookies and that made you feel better. So that's something you may turn to as an adult that you may not really remember. So when you feel stress, you go straight to that food or foods.

The best thing to do here is to start paying attention to when you've got your hand on the refrigerator door and you're pulling out fudge or maybe ice cream or something else.

Ask yourself: What's going on with me right now?  Because with emotional eating, you're not pulling out kale and brussels sprouts, right? It's usually sweet stuff that's going to get you into trouble.

So wake up and pay attention to this behavior, because most of the time it's unconscious, we're not really aware of it.  Then start to separate the food from the feeling. That's going to be a process over time. There's probably going to need to be some intervention somehow. Journaling is a good way to start that process. Doing that can really help you get off the blood sugar, high and low rollercoaster.

The last thing I want to offer up is not for everybody. This is about considering doing a vegetable juice fast. Yeah, I know.

There are some rules around it, and I'm not going to get into a lot of detail here.  For one thing, if you have diabetes or any health issue, you must talk to your physician first, before you consider doing anything like this.

Particularly if you're on medication and especially insulin, because if you go on a vegetable juice fast, your carbohydrates are going to go way down. So your insulin dose will have to change. So definitely talk to your physician first.

I'm talking about maybe three or four days not anything longer than that. There's a lot of preparation you should do beforehand. Get rid of the offending foods in your home first and have the food that you're going to eat after your fast already prepared and ready for you. It'll make a huge difference.

You're going to feel really hungry and really uncomfortable for the three or four days that you're on the fast. You're going to be thinking about food - a lot. And the last thing you want to do after a fast is binge on unhealthy or even healthy food. You definitely don't want to do that.

Your system has been dialed down, your enzymes are dialed down. Some of your muscular function is dialed down and you want to be able to gently bring that back up. Otherwise, you're going to feel really terrible.

I suggest that you take a fast from the world at the same time. I would do it over a weekend where you have some private time if that's possible. You know, no television, no work, no social media, internet, nothing like that. And I would be cautious being around  friends and family who are eating. It's very tough to be on a fast when others are eating.

And of course, you want to be very careful about what you eat afterwards. So I usually eat something really light, like a small piece of cooked broccoli, or a little bit of split pea soup, just a tiny bit. You'll be filled up very fast and you want to very gradually increase your intake.

You'll need much more information than what I'm giving you here, but it's something to consider because it resets your appetite and your taste buds. And for me, when I've done a juice fast, when I'm done, I can't stand the thought of chocolate or sugar or anything like that. So it really does work. But it's not the most comfortable thing to do.

If you have questions about a fast, your diet, or about your type two diabetes, definitely click here and sign up for a free health chat and I'll see what I can do to help you. 

Thank you so much for listening.

Dr. Elaine

Schedule a free Health Chat: https://calendly.com/drstewart/healthchat

This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the medical advice of your doctor or healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider for advice about a specific medical condition.