Learn how to stop craving carbs all the time

Food is heavily tied in with emotion and when we have some kind of emotional cue with food or our surroundings and things like we would end up having all of our cravings kicking in and this especially happens around holidays. So in this article I will give some tips on how you can stop craving carbs.

1 . Exogenous Ketones

The first one is the best one when it comes to regulating appetite and they have a really powerful play there. It's a kind of natural mechanism and if we're in a 'starvation mode' we're actually producing ketones then it would make sense that they would appetite suppressing, why would our body send us a cue to eat more when we're starving. So exogenous ketones can help out with that and I wouldn't be saying this if there wasn't science to back it up. In fact, the Journal of Obesity found that if you ingested a ketone drink there is a huge increase satiety but also a big decrease in Ghrelin hormone levels about an hour after consumption. But not only that there's also an increase in something called 'Peptide YY (PYY)' and 'Glucagon Peptide 1 (GLP-1) which are basically chemicals activating in your body so that you don't get as hungry and that you are up regulating specific things so that you don't feel like you need those afternoon carbs. So that's what you could achieve with exogenous ketones, however supplements are not essentially the best way to do things and not best thing to rely on. 

2 . Soluble Fibre

The next one is soluble fiber (e.g psyllium husk) which everyone can implement and utilise easily. I know this has been repeated so many times before in other articles and recommendation but let's find out something new about this type of fibre. In fact, what soluble fibre does is that because it ferments in a certain way in your gut it turns into what are known as short chain fatty acids which are the end result. Now short chain fatty acids are what you bacteria in your gut break down the fibre into and then those chain fatty acids act as a signalling device and that's called 'Histone Deacetylase (HDAC) Inhibition agent'. So basically they make it so that your genes can express better and what that ultimately means is that if you're trying to make a change and establishing healthier habits, soluble fibre is gonna help solidify and cement those cravings and they significantly enable you to combat cravings because they become an additional fuel source for different tissues. So what the signal to your brain says it's all good and no need for food and this is how you can stop craving carbs.

3 . Resistant Starch 

I would also recommend to try and mess around with resistant starch and it comes down to the same thing. One of the short chain fatty acids is Butyrate which is a very popular one which is produced from fibre break down, but when you look at resistant starch it's even more profound. Resistant starch in fact is a type of carb that does not break down, it's kind of like fibre except it's not a fibre and it's actually a carb. So if you eat white potatoes or sweet potatoes they have a good amount of resistant starch in them.

So what you do is you heat them and then you cool them, so if you were doing low carb and you had small amount of carb like sweet potato and cooked it up and put it in the fridge and ate it when it was cold, it would be very hard for your body to digest. So what happens is it sits in your gut and it ferments and the microbes in your gut act on it and they start breaking it down into once again those short chain fatty acids that help fuel cells that send a signal to your brain to no crave the carbs so much which is very cool! There a study in the Journal MBIO that found that just a small amount of resistant starch ends up increasing Butyrate 29% and that's so significant which cannot be done by eating just a regular fibre and it's only coming from resistant starch. Now if you're doing super strict Keto and you don't want small amount of sweet potato and you don't want any grains or starches, you can also eat some artichoke that contains something very long- chain inlulin which is going to have a similar effect. You can eat artichoke at night and it would help you stop cravings carbs the next day. 

4 . Thylakoid Containing Foods

Tylakiod is a type of compound that is in most keto-friendly leafy greens, so we're talking about Swiss Chard, Bok Choy, Kale and stuff like that. What tylakiods do is they activate various mechanisim within the body like CCK. There is a study in the Journal of Appetite showed that consuming tylakiod supplement in a research setting ended up resulting in carb and sweet cravings decreasing 36%. So having foods that are rich in Tylakiods have a proven clinical effect thoes sweet and salty carb cravings. 

5 . Chromium 

A new study published in the Journal of psychiatric practice demonstrated that 600 mcg chromium has an effect on spesific brain receptors that have an overall effect on our overall carb cravings too.  

6 . MCT oil 

Studies that had a look at comparing MCT oil compared to other oils found that resulted in a later appetite suppression much higher than that of the other oils. So why is this ? One can argue that it's ketone production but what if someone's not in ketosis then MCT is not gonna magically create ketones so maybe it's just a unique fat. What we do know is that MCT oil has a thermic effect meaning it elevates the core body temperature and it's also absorbed really fast that it triggers adrenaline and norepinephrine spikes which are known for readucing your appetite. 

7 . Include something Bitter in your diet

Cosuming a little bit of something bitter like Kale or whatever causes a response that kills your cravings for carbs and that's a scientific fact. What that does is it increases the levels of Cholecystokinin (CCK) which is normally secreted when we start the digestion phase. So basically the bitter response triggers this and tells your brain you just ate food. 

8 . Diversify Your Gut Microbiome 

Different deficiencies in your Gut Microbiome are going to cause different cravings and the best thing you can do is to level the playing field by taking in some probiotic foods, some probiotic fibres like we've talked about diversifying that gut biom. The less deficiencies that you have across different categories the more evenly spread your are, the less crazy craving you're gonna have.   

The Bottom Line

So by combining all these together like ketones, soluble fibre, psyllium, consuming resistant starch like cooled sweet potato or white potato or very long chain inulin coming from artichoke, and thylakoids in deep leafy greens and chromium you'll most likely be able to get rid of your afternoon carb cravings.  

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