Overcoming Carbohydrate Addictions In Seven Days: Making Carbs Work For You, Not Against You

Many adults know they need to lose weight, either a little or a lot. Most adults also have carbohydrate cravings, often to eat a lot or a lot more. If there were just some way to squelch the carb cravings most of us have, weight loss would be a lot easier, but until recently that's been a lot easier said than done.

With Carbohydrates, The More You Eat, The More You Want

For many years, doctors and researchers studying weight loss did not really understand what it is that drives our appetites for sugars, sweets, and carbohydrates in general. Some researchers thought the primary causes for carbohydrate addiction might be genetic, that some people are just born to crave sweets. Others supposed carb addiction was primarily a matter of social conditioning, The real reason most of us crave carbohydrates, however, turned out to be a paradoxical process that nobody really expected.

It turns out that when carbohydrate addicts eat small amounts of "pure sugar," high-glycemic index food, our bloodstream glucose levels go down instead of up, compared to "healthier," lower-glycemic index food.

Investigators from Boston Children's Hospital in Massachusetts recruited 12 overweight or obese men aged 18 to 35 to participate in a study of the role of sugar in stimulating carbohydrate cravings. Unlike earlier studies that had looked at differences in the way the body responds to, for example, chocolate candy bars and broccoli, this study looked at differences in the way the bodies of overweight people respond to foods that look the same and taste the same and have the same number of calories, but have different amounts of sugar.

On one test day, the volunteers were given a 500-calorie shake that had a high glycemic index (87), that is, it contained a lot of sugar that went into the bloodstream quickly. On another test day, the volunteers were given a 500-calorie shake that looked and tasted the same, but had very little sugar and a lot of fiber, giving it a low glycemic index (31). With the second shake, any digested sugars entering the bloodstream more slowly. One both occasions the volunteers had brain scans and blood tests to measure the effects of their meal (or snack, from the perspective of an overweight person).

The surprising effect of consuming more sugar was that blood sugar levels went down instead of up.  In these non-diabetic men, the difference in blood glucose readings was about 0.6 mmol/L (9-10 mg/dl), which is just enough to stimulate hunger. The volunteers consistently reported that drinking the high-glycemic index shake made them hungry for more, while drinking the low-glycemic index shake left them feeling full.

See Also: Types Of Diets: Which Diet Really Works? Low-Fat And Low-Carb Diets

This Is Your Brain On Sugar

The volunteers' brain scans were also different after consuming the two different shakes. Drinking a sugary, high-glycemic index shake activated a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens, which is activated in addiction. The unexpected brain activation occurred in all 12 men participating in the study. From this the researchers concluded that easily digested carbohydrates, such as sugar, white bread, and instant mashed potatoes, activate pleasure centers in our brains that make us want to eat even more.

Seven Days to Beating Your Carbohydrate Cravings

Overcoming addictions to cake, cookies, ice cream,candy bars, bread, mashed potatoes, and other easily digested carbohydrates requires that you just say "no" to carbs. At some point, you simply have to stop eating carbs, so you can stop eating carbs. However, there are ways to do this that allow you to break habits gradually even though you "turn off" the stimulation to the addiction centers of your brain immediately.

Here are some diet hacks that allow you to eat familiar, carbohydrate foods without stimulating the brain centers involved in addiction.

• Cold food is digested more slowly than hot food. Hot instant mashed potatoes get turned into glucose almost immediately in your digestive tract. In some studies, they have a glycemic index of over 100, that is, they are broken down into glucose and enter the bloodstream even more quickly than pure glucose itself. (The reason for this is the way glucose is emptied out of the stomach.) Cold boiled potatoes in potato salad, in contrast, can have a glycemic index as low as 
• Mixtures of foods take longer to digest than single foods. A bento lunch box in Japan may have as many as 60 tiny servings of different vegetables and meats. The stomach breaks down all of them before eventually sending the mass of digested food into the small intestine. This takes time. This doesn't mean you should start going to all you can eat buffets and eating a plate of every kind of food, but it can help simply to get more variety in your diet.
• Fat and protein have a glycemic index of 0. Actually, about 30 percent of the amino acids in excess protein can be transformed into glucose very slowly, over 24 to 48 hours, but this process takes place in the liver, not in the digestive tract. Adding fat to your foods, eating your chips with dip, for example, and eating protein foods instead of carbohydrate food, reduces your carb cravings.
• Bitter foods accelerate digestion, while sour foods slow it down. Bitter foods stimulate a reflex action that causes your stomach to digest food more quickly. The reason we have this reflex probably is that most poisons in nature are bitter, so releasing more stomach acid  breaks them down faster and more completely. Sour foods, on the other hand, usually break down in ways that increase the release of bicarbonates into the small intestine. Acidic foods, ironically, are alkalizing, and slow down the release of glucose into the bloodstream. That's why vinegar is often used to aid weight loss.

See Also: Working Out Your Ideal Carb Intake

The bottom line to all of these recommendations is, if you can't give up your favorite carb foods yet, you can start eating them in a different way, and in different combinations. Doing this for as little as seven days can break the cycle of addiction and stimulation that keeps you carb-addicted, making it much easier for your to limit your total food consumption so you can lose weight with calorie restriction and weight loss.