The following information was taken from Dr. Janet Lang’s 2008 Balancing Hormones in Menopausal Women Seminar.  It has been reprinted with permission by Lang Integrative Health Services, LLC copyright 2008, All rights reserved.

This will help for all kinds of cravings including caffeine, alcohol & nicotine.

1. Don’t skip breakfast.
2. Eat protein and complex carb every two hours. Avoid refined carbs and sugars which cause exaggerated ups and downs in blood sugar levels and promote sweet and carb cravings.
3. Follow a Low Carbohydrate Mediterranean-Type Diet.  I have a handout for more details. You can also supplement with Gymnema if necessary.  This is an herb you can order from me.
4. Think of your metabolism like a fire that needs fuel to keep burning.  The fuel is blood sugar.

Proteins and fats are the logs for the fire, carbs are the kindling.  When you have trouble getting the fire started (as with low energy, and/or low mood) you crave the kindling.

Refined carbs and sugars are like paper on the fire.  They get the fire going quickly and lift your energy and mood, but it goes back out just as fast allowing energy and mood to drop.  Alcohol is like gas on the fire; caffeine, nicotine and other stimulants are like sparks that stimulate the fire to burn.

Refined carbs include most commercial white/wheat and enriched flour products such as white bread, pasta and white rice, as well as most other commercially prepared breads and baked goods.  Sugar-laden foods include candy, ice cream, cookies, regular and artificially sweetened (diet) sodas, alcohol, high-fructose drinks, as well as most packaged foods labeled “low fat”, including low fat milk.  All these foods and drinks share another quality – they are all quite addictive.

When you keep stoking your fire with paper or stimulants, the rapids ups and downs in fuel/blood sugar cause corresponding rapid ups and downs in energy and mood.  This is in turn causes the abnormal ups and downs of the hormones insulin and cortisol, which are attempting to manage the unstable fuel/blood sugar levels.

Refined carbs and sugars have been stripped of fiber and most of their nutrients.  They are now anti-nutrient foods because to burn then for energy your body must supply the nutrients that were removed.  Nature packages foods with the nutrients required to run the biochemical energy cycles inside the cells that break down the food and turn it into fuel and energy.  The refining and processing of foods destroys or removes the majority of nutrients.  A single food contains dozens and sometimes hundreds of nutrients and phytonutrients.  Six or so imitation nutrients are added back to refined foods and they are labeled enriched or fortified.  If someone steals $100 from you and gives you back $6, do you feel enriched?  Fortified?  Or perhaps mugged?  When you eat refined carbs, sugars, sodas or enriched and fortified foods, you are being nutritionally mugged.