3 SHOCKING Reasons You Are Having Cravings & How to Make Them Stop

If you feel like your sugar cravings come out of nowhere… this episode is going to be a game changer.

Because it’s not about lack of discipline.
It’s not about “being addicted to sugar.”
And it’s definitely not something you need to just push through.

In today’s episode, I’m breaking down 3 unexpected reasons behind sugar cravings that most people completely overlook, and how your body is actually trying to help you, not sabotage you.

We’re diving into how your energy balance impacts cravings and why your body will ask for quick energy (aka sugar) when it’s running low.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn:

•  Why not eating enough can lead to intense sugar cravings later in the day 
•  The connection between lack of sleep and increased cravings (and why willpower feels nonexistent when you’re tired) 
•  How your menstrual cycle (especially around your period) naturally increases your need for more food 
•  What your cravings are actually telling you about your body’s needs 
•  How to respond to cravings in a way that supports your energy instead of fighting against it 

This episode will help you stop blaming yourself and start understanding your body so you can finally feel more in control around food without relying on willpower.

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WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SEISMIC SHIFT? 

CLICK HERE: Seismic Shift

Seismic Shift is my group coaching program for women. In this program, you learn how to build healthy habits you can actually stick to. We do this through eliminating your cravings, shifting your mindset, and making healthy actually feel simple (because it is!). 

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💌 Connect With Laura:

1. Website: Health Coach for Teachers & Busy, Working Women
2. Instagram: LAURA B. | Teacher turned Health Coach | Podcaster🎙️ (@laura.b.healthy) • Instagram photos and videos
3. TikTok: Laura B. | Health Coach (@laura.b.healthy) | TikTok

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Connect & Next Steps:
If this episode resonated with you, make sure to share it with a friend or tag me on Instagram so I can hear what stood out to you most!

And if you’re ready to stop fighting cravings and start understanding them, this is exactly the work we do inside Seismic Shift.

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Keywords:
sugar cravings, emotional eating, binge eating, stress eating, food noise, cravings at night, why am I craving sugar, lack of sleep and cravings, hormone cravings, period cravings, not eating enough, energy balance, hunger cues, healthy habits, sustainable weight loss

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey ladies, and welcome back to another episode of the Isn't She Powerful podcast. I am so excited to have you here today. I am going to be talking about three unexpected reasons why you are experiencing the cravings that you are. Not only is this topic one of my absolute favorite topics, of course, you know that. I've been I just talk and yap forever about cravings and food noise and how to make it all go away. But also, I just recently was a part of an event and I was a speaker. There were 13 women in this room hearing what I was speaking about. And I looked around as I was talking about this and I just saw light bulb, light bulb, light bulb. Like you could see it in people's eyes that they were like connecting dots, and they were just like, oh my god, like you could just tell that they were finally understanding things that had been challenging them for years. So with that, I decided I needed to bring some of the most shocking things to you guys in a podcast episode so that you can connect these dots, you can have those light bulb moments, and so that you can finally begin to understand why you struggle and why you've been struggling for so many years with these cravings and food noise, and finally how to make it go away for good because that is what I'm all about making it all go away. Because it is possible for you. It's so possible. So, with all of that, let's dig into this episode. Welcome to the Isn't You Powerful Podcast. I'm your host, Laura B, health coach, educator, and founder of the Be Healthy Lifestyle. I'm here to bring you all of the health education and motivation so that you can sign off each week feeling equipped and empowered to tackle all of your health folders. Come along with me as I teach you the basics of healthy living so that you can help everyone in your life say, Isn't she powerful? Okay, the first thing that we are going to talk about, the first unexpected reason why you are having these cravings, is because of a lack of sleep. And you maybe did not see that word coming there. A lack of what? A lack of good quality meals, a lack of protein, a lack of fiber. Sure, those things do play a role, but those are expected, and these are unexpected reasons. So sleep is what we're gonna talk about. If you are not getting enough good quality sleep, you are 100% going to crave more sugary and carb-heavy foods throughout the day. Let me explain to you why. Our bodies get energy from two places: our sleep and our food. And if you are not getting enough of your energy from your sleep, your body is going to send you signals to get more of your energy from food. The easiest thing for your body to convert into energy is high carb foods. Low fiber, high carb foods. So things that do not have a lot of fiber in them, but are sugary, potato-y, starchy, have a lot of those really simple carbohydrates. Why is that? Your body can take that food that's high in sugar and it can convert it into energy at the snap of a finger. So whenever you didn't get enough of your energy the night before from sleep, your body's like, okay, that means that we need to get some energy right now. It's not thinking about the fact that in two hours, that little spike that you just got in energy from eating sugar, that's gonna be gone away, and you're gonna need to eat more sugar so that you can get that spike in energy again. Your body isn't thinking that way, it's just thinking in the here and now. Here and now, I need more energy. So here and now we're gonna send her signals for sugar. What you need to do as the human operating the body is to know that eating that sugar is only gonna give you a quick burst of energy. It's not gonna give you sustained energy. And since your body needs sustained energy that it didn't get from the sleep, you need to eat foods that are going to give it that sustained energy. That would be protein and fiber. You need to have meals that are full of protein and fiber. And what you need to do whenever you, if you wake up in the morning and you realize that you didn't get good quality sleep the night before, maybe you were up multiple times, maybe you were restless, maybe even though you were asleep, your brain was very active and you're just not feeling very uh you're still feeling very tired, you're not feeling very awake, then you need to go into the day knowing you are probably going to be hungrier that day, and you need to preemptively eat more protein and more fiber to make sure that you keep the cravings at bay. That is your responsibility as the operator of the body. Okay. So the illustration that I gave the women that I was speaking to the other day that made some light bulbs click was I want you to think of your body and your energy as a battery. And every single night when you go to bed, you are it's like putting your phone on the charger. You do that every single night when you go to bed, right? You put your phone on the charger and you expect when you wake up in the morning that it will be fully charged. It's been charging all night long, and that is what you are doing. You are getting in the bed, it's like putting your body on the charger. When you wake up in the morning, your body is going to feel fully charged. Here's how that happens: 50% of that charge, 50% of your energy in this battery is coming from is coming from your sleep. The other 50% ideally comes from your food. However, if you are not sleeping well, maybe you were up all night with your child or your husband snores or you have a lot on your mind and you just weren't able to get to sleep as as well as you would like to be able to, if that is the case, then your the amount of charge that you were giving your battery during the night is way less than 50%. Let's say it's 20%. That means that the other 80% of this battery is going to have to come from food because no matter what, your body is going to make sure that it gets to 100% every single day. So it ideally wants 50% from sleep, 50% from food. But if you are not giving it 50% from sleep, it's going to compensate and get more from your food. And it's going to send you signals from the time you wake up telling you, hey, we need more food today because we didn't get enough energy from sleep last night, and our battery is really lacking from where it should be. So that's what's going on inside of your body when you don't get enough good quality sleep. I want you to start paying attention to the correlation between your lack of quality sleep and your cravings. I want you to start noticing some patterns. Are you recognizing that you on the nights you don't sleep well, your cravings are a little bit more intense than on the nights whenever you do sleep well? Start paying attention to that because the knowledge and the pattern is power for you. Because once you understand the pattern, you can make the next move accordingly. The next unexpected reason why you have cravings. This isn't necessarily an unexpected time to have cravings. I want to talk to the women who are still in their monthly menstrual cycle. You get a period at least, you know, in some sort of regular fashion. You still get a period, is the people that I'm talking to here now. Think about how many times when your period is about to start, that those couple days leading up to your period or the days right after your period starts, your cravings are a little bit more intense than on the other days of the month. That is not because of something is wrong with you, or it's just something that women have. It's not because of your hormones, it's none of that. It is because as women, our bodies need about two to three hundred more calories per day during our periods than otherwise. Why is that? Because think about how much your body is doing during this time. Not only is it getting rid of way more fluids and substance than it has to get rid of in other days of the month, but also it's doing a lot of work. And so your body needs more energy to do that work. Again, where do we get our energy? From sleep and from food. So because it's doing all this extra work, it's asking you to give it more food to help with the energy required to do that extra work. So, what do we do with this information? We don't eat two to three hundred extra calories of sugar and junk food, of course. That would not be my recommendation, although that's probably what you're doing right now. You may even be eating more calories than that because it takes more calories of those types of foods to make you feel satisfied. So you may even be eating more than 200 to 300 more calories on your period right now. What I ask you to do with this information is start eating more protein and fiber in the couple of days leading up to your period and the first few days of your period. Just a couple hundred more calories worth of protein and fiber. Doesn't have to be anything substantial or anything crazy. Maybe one extra egg, maybe something just small, easy things that you can add a little something extra to your meals to help you feel more full, more satisfied, and get that calorie difference made up in good quality foods, things that are going to sustain your energy long term and not be just a little spike of energy here and there. Now, the third thing that I want to share here is undereating. This is the other big reason that I see why women struggle with cravings so much, but also it's just not something that we are correlating as often as we should be. Let me explain something. If you are not eating enough food to sustain your body, it goes back to the energy and the battery situation. If you aren't giving your bot your body enough calories, enough for energy for your body to sustain you all day long, then it's going to ask for more. It is going to beg you. It's going to send you signal after signal. You're going to have more crazy thoughts about food all the time. You are going to have more cravings for food all the time because your body is simply asking for what it needs to not just survive, but to thrive. It wants to let you go and do and be and all the things that you are asking for in life. It wants you to get up off the floor after playing with your kids. It wants you to run around and play in the yard. It wants you to be able to go and do everything you want to. But if you are not giving it enough food to do all of those things, to do the bare minimum things, it's definitely not gonna let you do those things. So with this information, you should be eating at least three meals a day. You should be eating a breakfast, a lunch, and a dinner. And I invite you to even eat a snack in the afternoons as well. About four hours is how long your meals should keep you full for. So a breakfast, then a lunch, then a snack, then a dinner, that's a pretty average day of eating for people who are eating enough food every single day, especially if in those meals you are eating protein and fiber at every single one of them. That is the lucky combo. So, with all of this being said, here's what you should be taking away. Number one, your energy is directly correlated to the amount of food that you are eating. And if you are not getting enough of your energy from your sleep, it's going to ask for more energy from food. Whenever you're on your period, you need more energy from your food or from sleep. Of course, you could sleep a little bit more and you might already do that. Some of you may even find that you are sleepier during your period or around the time of your period. You may find that that's your body trying to compensate for the energy that it needs as well. But two to three hundred more calories on your period, making sure that you are eating enough well-balanced meals throughout the day. And again, remember protein and fiber is the lucky combo. If you find that you slept really poorly the night before, go into the day knowing I'm gonna eat a little extra protein and fiber today. If you find that you are in a near your period, just starting your period, go into the day saying, I'm gonna eat a little bit more protein and fiber today. And if you are somebody who chronically under-eats, you always are eating little snacky things, you always are just picking at stuff rather than actually having a full meal, or maybe you skip meals altogether, or your eating is inconsistent. Some days you eat three meals, some days you eat one meal, some days you eat five meals. If your eating is inconsistent like that, make sure that you are having healthy, well-balanced meals that have protein and fiber to them, and you are having them consistently. Now, I've mentioned multiple times the idea of healthy, well-balanced meals, protein and fiber. And one of the questions that I got at the event that I spoke at was what are some protein and fiber options? If that is a question that you have, I really invite you to go over to Instagram, follow me there because I post a lot of recipes. And then also in my group coaching program, Seismic Shift, I've done some revamping to the program, and I'm actually having an episode come out next week talking all about what are the changes to Seismic Shift, what's it look like, how's it going to benefit you, and all of that good stuff. But in that program now, you are going to get loads of healthy recipes. These recipes already have the proper amounts of protein and fiber in them to make it a healthy, well-balanced meal so that you don't have to figure it out every single time you go to make a meal plan, every single time you try to figure out what are we going to eat this week. There's so many options there for you. And I'm telling you, they actually taste good because these are things that me and my husband eat all the time. So these are healthy, well-balanced meals that have the proper amounts of nutrition for you. I invite you to go down into the show notes, check out the link for seismic shift. The program has changed a lot. If you've looked at it before, go down and look again because the program is very different now. And you can use the code SPRING right now to get 25% off of your enrollment. So if you go down into the show notes, check everything out. Use the code SPRING to get signed up and join. I would love so much to get to support you in Seismic Shift. You can do that starting right now. So, with all of this being said, protein and fiber are the magic pills. Use those consistently and just practice bringing some awareness to the habits that you have around food. When are your cravings more intense? When is the food noise feeling like you are constantly being chased by a voice in your head? And when you experience those feelings and emotions, I want you to start pausing and I want you to ask yourself, what is happening here? Why am I feeling these cravings? Why do I have this food noise right now? What can I do to get rid of this right now? Most of the time, especially if it's something that is directly related to your energy levels, your period, you didn't get enough sleep, you've been under-eating, then what you need is something that has protein and fiber to it, a snack or a meal that has some protein and fiber. So, with all of this being said, thanks so much for being here for another episode of the podcast. I look forward to seeing you again in the next one. And in the meantime, make sure you go down into the show notes, check out the link for the new seismic shift. And if you are interested, I cannot wait to see you inside the program. All right, ladies, see ya next time. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see you again next week. And always remember the more you know, the more you grow.