How to manage sugar cravings, according to a dietitian

It is possible

Struggling to get through the day without a sweet treat? Here are the best dietitian-approved tricks to curb your cravings.

Whether it is straight after a meal, after dinner, or each afternoon from about 3 pm, cravings, especially for sweet food can bring many a healthy, balanced diet undone.

While there may be a behavioural component that drives cravings over time, there are also a number of ways that you can actively take control of cravings, and help end the often unnecessary and undesired intense drive for sweet, highly processed foods.

Focus on protein

Carb-heavy diets, which contain a high proportion of breads, cereals, rice, fruits and milk via tea and coffee can mean that our overall intake of protein is relatively low.

The Protein Leverage Hypothesis suggests that humans are programmed to keep consuming calories until their protein requirements are met. This means that your desire to seek out more sweet food may simply be because you need more protein.

Focus on getting 20-30g of protein at each meal and snack, and you may find your cravings significantly reduced.

Carb-heavy diets, which contain a high proportion of breads, cereals, rice, fruits and milk via tea and coffee can mean that our overall intake of protein is relatively low. Image: Pexels.

Minimise the sweet food

Have you ever noticed that once you start to eat something sweet – chocolate, biscuits, cake, ice-cream that it becomes increasingly difficult to stop?

This is not just you, rather, extremely sweet food can drive the brain to seek more of the same pleasurable stimulus. For this reason, keeping well away from sweet foods, especially throughout the first half of the day, can go a long way in keeping daily cravings under control.

This means skipping the milky, sweet coffees, pastries or sweet biscuits throughout the morning, in favour of savoury options such as plain crackers, nuts or plain dairy like Greek yoghurt.

This means skipping the milky, sweet coffees, pastries or sweet biscuits throughout the morning, in favour of savoury options such as plain crackers, nuts or plain dairy like Greek yoghurt. Image: Getty

Create a new routine

Much of our eating behaviour is determined by the habits we have developed over time.

For example, if you always visit the vending machine after lunch, or grab a banana bread when you order coffee from a particular café, chances are you will continue to do so when found in the same situation. For this reason, if you are trying to take control of sweet cravings, avoiding the scenarios in which you usually indulge the cravings will make it much easier to develop brand new habits that do not involve a sweet treat.

Go a different way to work; take savoury snacks to work, and avoid co-workers who also tend to reach for the sweet food, because out of sight and mind is key in the early stages of establishing a new regime that includes less of the sweet stuff.

Go a different way to work; take savoury snacks to work, and avoid co-workers who also tend to reach for the sweet food. Image: iStock

Get minty

Not only can peppermint help to neutralise cravings in general, but once you are chewing on some sugar-free gum or a mint, anything sweet will seem far less appealing. This means that reaching for the peppermint tea in favour of milky coffee and coffee, or ending each meal with a stick of gum or a mint will likely help distract from any cravings experienced immediately after eating.

Know the low-cal options

While incessant cravings can be annoying, sometimes you are best to accept that you enjoy sweet foods, and enjoying them in portion-controlled sizes means that you can learn to keep your intake controlled, rather than binging.

As a general rule of thumb, seeking out chocolate, ice cream or other sweet options in portion-controlled serves of 100 calories or less will mean that you can enjoy a little sweet food, without overdoing it. Even better, combine the sweet food with something savoury, for example, a little dark chocolate with Greek yoghurt or a slice of cheese after the dessert, and you will find it is easier to stop after a single portion.

Originally published as How to manage sugar cravings, according to a dietitian