The Sugar Smart Diet: Stop Cravings and Lose Weight While Still Enjoying the Sweets You Love by Anne Alexander, Julia VanTine Page A
Authors: Anne Alexander, Julia VanTine
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time? Well, maybe the time you spend shaking your fist at the heavens over traffic jams, schedule snafus, and other common stresses you can’t control. To lose weight and shrink your sugar belly, it’s vital to commit to everyday R&R. Otherwise, chronic stress may eventually gain the upper hand and grind your physical and emotional well-being to dust.
Chronic stress—a daily assault of stress hormones from a demanding job or a life in turmoil—grinds away every cell in your body. That wear and tear comes at a price. Numerous emotional and physical disorders have been linked to stress, including depression, anxiety, heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, digestive problems, even autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
You may also hit the cookies and ice cream pretty hard. When you’re stressed, your body releases the hormone cortisol, which signals your brain to seek rewards. Foods loaded with sugar and fat apply the brakes to the stress system by blunting this hormone. When you reach for food in response to stress, you inadvertently create a powerful connection in your brain. The food gets coded in your memory center as a solution to an unpleasant experience or emotion. Face that same problem again, and your brain will likely tell you, “Break out the cupcakes!”
While you can’t banish stress from your life completely, you can create anoasis of calm in your daily routine. Managing your stress requires that you find and maintain a balance between the stressful activities that drain you and the relaxing activities that refresh and renew your body and spirit. In each phase of the Sugar Smart Diet, you’ll discover stress-management techniques you can build into your day. These simple but powerful strategies don’t have to disrupt your busy schedule.
For example, if you like oranges, pick up a bottle of orange-scented aromatherapy oil or spray and treat yourself to a hit of “sweet” without the sugar. In a study published in the
Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
, participants who endured a stressful test felt much less anxious when they sniffed orange essential oil 5 minutes before the exam. Best of all, the effects followed them throughout the day. I’ve used scent as a stress buster for years—it works! I keep a few aromatherapy sprays at home and in my office drawer and choose depending on my mood: lavender for calming, tangerine to brighten my day, peppermint for energizing. Keeping a scented oil or spray at your desk can truly save the day. When you’re in crunch time, pause and take a deep whiff. Bam—the modern-day equivalent of stopping to smell the roses. We’ve got a ton more relaxation strategies in store. Small things can deliver such sweet rewards!
SUGAR SMART RULE # 6
Sleep more to eat (and crave) less.
One important goal of the Sugar Smart Diet is to restore metabolic harmony between the hormones ghrelin (an appetite trigger) and leptin (which signals satiety), along with insulin. When these hormones are working in concert, the result is fewer cravings and less propensity to store fat. But if you get less than the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sack time, you may be undercutting this goal. In a University of Chicago study, a few sleepless nights were enough to drop levels of leptin by 18 percent and boost levels of ghrelin by about 30 percent. Those two changes alone caused appetites to kick into overdrive, and cravings for sugary foods like cookies and bread jumped 45 percent.
Another reason to get to bed at a decent hour: Sleep deprivation may notonly make sugary, fatty foods more appealing, it may also lower your ability to resist them, according to two small yet intriguing studies presented at a 2012 annual meeting of sleep researchers.
In one study of 25 men and women, researchers at Columbia University and St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital used brain scans to compare activity in the brain’s reward regions after 5 nights of either normal sleep (9 hours) or
Chronic stress—a daily assault of stress hormones from a demanding job or a life in turmoil—grinds away every cell in your body. That wear and tear comes at a price. Numerous emotional and physical disorders have been linked to stress, including depression, anxiety, heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, digestive problems, even autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
You may also hit the cookies and ice cream pretty hard. When you’re stressed, your body releases the hormone cortisol, which signals your brain to seek rewards. Foods loaded with sugar and fat apply the brakes to the stress system by blunting this hormone. When you reach for food in response to stress, you inadvertently create a powerful connection in your brain. The food gets coded in your memory center as a solution to an unpleasant experience or emotion. Face that same problem again, and your brain will likely tell you, “Break out the cupcakes!”
While you can’t banish stress from your life completely, you can create anoasis of calm in your daily routine. Managing your stress requires that you find and maintain a balance between the stressful activities that drain you and the relaxing activities that refresh and renew your body and spirit. In each phase of the Sugar Smart Diet, you’ll discover stress-management techniques you can build into your day. These simple but powerful strategies don’t have to disrupt your busy schedule.
For example, if you like oranges, pick up a bottle of orange-scented aromatherapy oil or spray and treat yourself to a hit of “sweet” without the sugar. In a study published in the
Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
, participants who endured a stressful test felt much less anxious when they sniffed orange essential oil 5 minutes before the exam. Best of all, the effects followed them throughout the day. I’ve used scent as a stress buster for years—it works! I keep a few aromatherapy sprays at home and in my office drawer and choose depending on my mood: lavender for calming, tangerine to brighten my day, peppermint for energizing. Keeping a scented oil or spray at your desk can truly save the day. When you’re in crunch time, pause and take a deep whiff. Bam—the modern-day equivalent of stopping to smell the roses. We’ve got a ton more relaxation strategies in store. Small things can deliver such sweet rewards!
SUGAR SMART RULE # 6
Sleep more to eat (and crave) less.
One important goal of the Sugar Smart Diet is to restore metabolic harmony between the hormones ghrelin (an appetite trigger) and leptin (which signals satiety), along with insulin. When these hormones are working in concert, the result is fewer cravings and less propensity to store fat. But if you get less than the recommended 7 to 9 hours of sack time, you may be undercutting this goal. In a University of Chicago study, a few sleepless nights were enough to drop levels of leptin by 18 percent and boost levels of ghrelin by about 30 percent. Those two changes alone caused appetites to kick into overdrive, and cravings for sugary foods like cookies and bread jumped 45 percent.
Another reason to get to bed at a decent hour: Sleep deprivation may notonly make sugary, fatty foods more appealing, it may also lower your ability to resist them, according to two small yet intriguing studies presented at a 2012 annual meeting of sleep researchers.
In one study of 25 men and women, researchers at Columbia University and St. Luke’s/Roosevelt Hospital used brain scans to compare activity in the brain’s reward regions after 5 nights of either normal sleep (9 hours) or
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