The Sugar Smart Diet: Stop Cravings and Lose Weight While Still Enjoying the Sweets You Love (11 page)

Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow isn’t here yet. Today is what you have to work with. Setting an intention—a personal goal or hope for the day—each morning can help you make the most of this unique 24-hour slice of your life. It opens you to the opportunities for joy, growth, and wisdom that are unique to you and that help you place sugar in the right context: a pleasure, to be savored mindfully in healthy amounts.

It took me a while to learn the importance of setting a daily intention. I figured it out one morning at 5 a.m. As was my habit, I was checking my e-mail while waiting for my coffee to brew. (I can get a
lot
of e-mail overnight!) This particular morning, I had a lightbulb moment: Why was I starting my day with a slew of other people’s to-dos at the top of my own to-do list? Then and there, without realizing it, I set my first daily intention: to spend that 5 a.m. quiet time on
me
.

Now, as my coffee brews, I read, meditate, do yoga, or just think about my personal priorities, from big-picture goals to what I need to accomplish that morning. My daily intention can be as practical as, “Today I will order that book on Amazon I’ve been meaning to read,” or as lofty as, “Today I will not let fear motivate me—I will move toward bringing more joy and happiness in my life.” This hour of “me” time has made a real difference in my life—every day.

Beginning in Phase 1, you’ll set an intention before you begin your day. I’ll explain how in
Chapter 7
, but for now, know this: You’ll come to rely on those few minutes, which are completely and entirely all about you and your success.

We can almost hear you now: With what 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 an
oasis 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!

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 not
only 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 restricted sleep (4 hours). The scans were performed as the researchers showed their volunteers pictures of both healthy foods (fruit, veggies, oatmeal) and unhealthy foods (candy, pizza). The reward regions were more active when the volunteers were sleep deprived than when they were well rested—especially when the sleepy subjects viewed the pictures of the candy and pizza.

Worse, the parts of your brain that usually put the brakes on cravings aren’t as active when you’re tired, research conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, found. Scientists had 16 people rate their desire for various foods—once after a night of normal sleep and once after 24 hours without sleep—as they administered brain scans. The volunteers expressed a stronger preference for junk food when they were deprived of sleep. But the scans didn’t just show more activity in reward regions. They also showed less activity in regions involved in decision making. The upshot? When you’re tired, you may be drawn to sugary, fatty foods partly because your ability to process information and make sound decisions is impaired.

If there’s anything humans should know how to do perfectly, it’s sleep. However, our tech-heavy, stress-laden lifestyles can make it hard to do what should come naturally. Each phase of the plan offers simple ways to slide into the restful slumber you deserve—every night.

Exercise has a positive effect on appetite and blood sugar metabolism. But I know how tough it is to fit a workout into a busy day. That’s why I worked with the
Prevention
fitness team to create a workout that was convenient, pleasurable
(nothing too sweaty or grueling), and effective at helping to shrink a sugar belly. The Sugar Smart Workout in
Chapter 12
combines cardio exercise, strength training, and yoga for a triple whammy attack on blood sugar and cravings.

If you’re plagued by strong sugar cravings, getting more active may help deactivate them. According to a study published in
Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism
, the more you sit, the greater your appetite—even if your body doesn’t need the calories. In fact, sedentary subjects felt 17 percent hungrier than those who moved around during the day, possibly because inactivity spurs secretion of ghrelin.

Moderate exercise also helps keep muscle cells sensitive to insulin. Even better, strength training builds muscle density—stronger muscles that use more glucose. And, like cardio, strength training aids weight loss.

Even if you don’t want to follow the Sugar Smart Workout, any physical activity that you actually enjoy will help get sugar off your brain—and belly. Brisk walking and tai chi both rev metabolism as they quiet and divert the mind. If you’d rather swim, cycle, do yoga, or dig in your garden, that’s fine, too. The point is: The more you move, the faster your sugar belly will melt away.

You don’t remember this, but from the moment you were born, you associated sugar with comfort. Held to the breast, newborns derive comfort from skin-to-skin contact, sucking, and mother’s milk, rich in lactose and naturally sweet. (Even if you were a bottle baby, you got the sweetness of lactose in your formula.)

The link between comfort and sweets is primal—and persistent. Rewarded with candy while growing up? You may still treat yourself to dessert for a job well done. Handed cookies so you’d stop crying? You may unknowingly have linked sweets to being soothed. Do you associate sweets with periods in your life when you felt safe and loved? You may try to re-create those positive feelings
every time you pick up a fork. Did you push back the confusion and loneliness of adolescence with candy bars? Are you doing it today, to push back those same feelings? You may not know the answers to these questions, yet intuitively know they’re worth exploring.

We’ve all read enough magazine articles to make at least a hazy connection between how we feel and what we eat. But the first step to breaking that emotional connection to sugar is to become aware of the feelings that drive you to it. Not after the fact—
the very moment
you reach for sugar. To get a split second of clarity as your fingers close in on your coworker’s candy dish:
Why am I reaching for this
?

Years ago, in college, I took part in a cognitive behavioral stress-eating study. All the participants were asked to keep a food journal and to write down the feeling that accompanied every decision to eat. I followed those instructions to the letter.

Keeping that diary showed me that I ate a lot of doughnuts—something I already knew. But why? On paper, the reason fairly leaped off the page: Each and every time I’d eaten my favorite doughnut, I’d been stressing about exams.

Later in the study, the leaders taught us a slogan: “Stop. Slow down. Think.” I did that, too, and learned to recognize the rush of stress that made my brain switch gears from fretting about exams to plotting a doughnut run to the local Italian bakery, which specialized in extra-thick frosting—the kind so sweet it makes your teeth hurt and your eyes bug out. More important, I learned to respond to my desire for sugar with a question: “Do I
really
want this, or am I just feeding my stress?”

That phrase, from decades ago, is still embedded in my brain. So today, when I reach for something sweet, it’s because I’ve stopped, thought, and consciously
chosen
to indulge in the pleasure that a sweet treat offers. And then I savor every bite.

In each phase of the Sugar Smart Diet, you’ll learn emotional coping strategies to help you do just that. Whether or not to eat a doughnut isn’t about need. It’s about a decision. On the road to sugar freedom, making a conscious choice about sugar, regardless of how you feel, is an important milestone.