Why shouldn't you skip breakfast?
Although many people refuse to eat in the morning, preferring to increase the calorie content of food closer to dinner, scientists have long proven that breakfast is the most important in energy nutrition. Therefore, first, let’s figure out what importance a morning meal has for a person.
First of all, breakfast is a boost of energy. The opinion that during sleep the human body is in a sleeping state is erroneous. At night, the body's processes slow down, but do not stop completely. Accordingly, in the morning he needs to restore spent energy reserves, as well as stock up on reserves for the coming day until noon.
Secondly, breakfast helps control appetite and is the basis for normal weight. The most effective way to lose weight or maintain existing weight is proper nutrition, which is based on small but frequent meals. Prolonged fasting is an additional stress for the digestive system, disrupting normal metabolism. The body will soon try to compensate for the missing calories many times over in order to stock up on resources in case a similar situation occurs again.
Thirdly, a proper and timely breakfast is a fundamental contribution to physical health and psychological balance. After all, healthy and nutritious food is the basis for the formation of immunity of the whole body. It also helps to concentrate on further work, prevents stress, and improves mood.
Sweets are a body need
The debate about the pros and cons of eating sweets has been going on since ancient times. Some people cannot imagine their life without dessert, while others exist calmly and happily without such whims. However, this topic directly or indirectly concerns each of us.
Scientists have found that an obsessive desire to eat something sweet may indicate a lack of certain vitamins and substances in the body. Most often, this symptom indicates a deficiency of vitamins A, B and E, as well as microelements such as magnesium, calcium, glucose, phosphorus, sulfur, tryptophan, chromium, carbon.
If the human body senses a deficiency of a certain substance, it will send certain signals to the brain and try to compensate for the deficient material from sources available to it. Accordingly, the subject at a subconscious level will choose products in which the missing element is greatest.
So, if you can’t wait to eat chocolate, chocolate candies or any other dessert, it means that your body is sorely lacking magnesium. In this case, one of the symptoms of this problem is caffeine addiction.
If you abuse carbonated drinks, you should think about whether you have enough calcium in your diet. Its deficiency can be eliminated by daily consumption of legumes, cheeses, sesame seeds, and broccoli.
How to get rid of sugar cravings
Refined sugar is very harmful. Most people don't realize it, but it is the cause of many serious diseases. Therefore, you need to try to pull yourself together, show your willpower and stop eating sweets, or significantly reduce your consumption. In this article we will look at ways that will help you cope with this task.
Reduce sugar gradually
Decisions like “starting tomorrow I’ll stop eating candy”, as usual, end unsuccessfully. So start changing your diet gradually.
Instead of the usual 3 spoons of sugar, throw in 2, then 1 . Eat not a whole cake, but half - you will enjoy it, but will reduce the amount of delicious food you consume.
Give yourself a “sweet day” : choose a certain day of the week when you can eat whatever you want and as much as you want. But at other times - taboo! This way you will trick your brain a little. You give him the instruction that you can eat sweets, buns, cakes, but not now. At first, this day will be very long-awaited, but gradually, as you approach it, you will begin to notice that the craving is no longer so strong.
Observe the frequency of meals
Your diet should consist of 4 to 5 meals . This will help you maintain normal blood sugar levels. In addition, you will be able to avoid feeling hungry, and therefore you will not want to quickly snack on something, such as a sweet bun or a chocolate bar.
Increase the amount of chromium in your diet
A large number of different components are involved in the body's metabolic processes, including such a biologically significant element as chromium. It is responsible for stabilizing the amount of sugar in the blood and regulating carbohydrate metabolism. Therefore, its deficiency can lead to increased cravings for sweets.
The daily requirement for chromium for an adult is 50 - 70 mcg, for athletes - 200 mcg, for children 11 - 35 mcg. To increase the level of this microelement, it is recommended to increase the amount of food containing it.
What foods contain chromium?
Product | µg/100 g |
Hazelnut | 170 |
Brazilian nut | 100 |
Poppy | 98 |
Beet | 40 |
Dates | 29 |
Pear | 27 |
Poppy | 98 |
Corn oil | 52 |
Broccoli | 22 |
Oats | 26 |
Jerusalem artichoke | 18 |
Radish, radish | 11 |
Prunes | 11 |
Beans | 10 |
Please note that ascorbic acid promotes the full absorption of chromium, so foods containing vitamin C should also be included in your daily diet.
Consume sufficient amounts of the amino acid tryptophan
An important element that significantly reduces cravings for sweets is a good mood. When a person is full of positive thoughts and positive energy, he forgets about delicious food.
Happiness hormones are responsible for a good mood. In our question, we are most interested in serotonin. This hormone is produced from the essential amino acid tryptophan, which is obtained from food. If your diet contains few proteins containing this organic compound, then less joy hormones will be produced. This means your mood will be worse, and you will crave sweets more often.
The daily norm of tryptophan is 1−2.5 g.
What foods contain tryptophan?
Product | mg/100 g |
Peanut | 750 |
Almond | 630 |
Cashew | 600 |
Pine nuts | 420 |
Sunflower seeds | 300 |
Pistachios | 300 |
Peas, beans | 260 |
Buckwheat | 180 |
Wheat | 180 |
Oatmeal | 160 |
Dried apricots | 150 |
Dates | 75 |
Prunes | 69 |
Greenery | 60 |
Find a healthy alternative to sugar
Pastila , honey , dried fruits (pineapple, bananas, coconut, dried apricots, dates, persimmons, apples), nuts , dietary desserts and fruits will help you get rid of the desire to eat something tasty
Get into the good habit of cooking yourself. This way you can control the composition of the treat. To sweeten, use spicy spices, fruit puree or natural sweeteners. Buying them is not a problem now thanks to the popularization of a healthy lifestyle.
At first, it is recommended to prepare vegan and raw food desserts. They contain only healthy plant ingredients. With the right combination of products, you won’t even be able to distinguish them from your usual delicacies. Gradually, your body will begin to cleanse itself of toxins and harmful bacteria, as a result, addiction will significantly decrease.
Start leading an active lifestyle
A good and very effective way to stop eating sweets is to start doing physical exercise and doing what you love. Pleasant activities bring pleasure and distract from thoughts about sweets and buns.
You know very well that movement and hobbies contribute to the production of joy hormones, so your mood will not need additional “stimulants.”
It is possible to stop eating sweets, but for most people it is quite difficult. As mentioned above, the craving for tasty food is equivalent to a drug, and therefore you should show willpower. Otherwise, following your desires, you can get obesity and various serious diseases.
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What half of the day is best to eat sweets?
Since early childhood, we have been taught that eating sweets can cause harm to the body. However, this makes sense when eating too many sweet foods, and if you eat such foods correctly and in moderation, you can also benefit from them.
However, there is no unanimous opinion regarding what half of the day to eat dessert in order to get the maximum benefit from it. Some people believe that it is best to eat sweets in the morning. Others, on the contrary, recommend not to do this.
Let's look at the arguments that justify why you can eat sweets in the morning:
- In the first half of the day, human metabolism is at its maximum, which allows you to quickly digest high-calorie foods.
- The calories you eat will be spent throughout the coming day and will not be deposited as excess weight on your waist.
- A sweet breakfast will help protect against overeating, since carbohydrates are quickly absorbed and send a signal to the human brain about satiety.
- A morning dessert can put you in a good mood and activate brain activity for the entire working day, this is confirmed by reviews from lovers of tasty treats.
Causes
Bone Wide does not encourage you not to eat sweets at all. You must understand: a priori there is NO bad food . All food consists of carbohydrates, fats and proteins, and the fact that one product has more calories than another does not make it worse! Why do we personally not recommend eating sweets and fast food? Yes, because it is very difficult to control yourself when in contact with such products, and because they are usually of low quality, because the primary task of the corporation (especially McDonald's) is to reduce the cost of products by reducing quality. However, this does not mean that you do not have the right to eat such food, it’s just that everything should be in moderation.
Sweets in themselves are not harmful, but they have a strong effect on your willpower. The problem initially begins in childhood ( Sweet addiction: why do you always want sweets? ) - for us, sweets are something forbidden, unusual, a reward and a way to pamper ourselves.
Only caviar can compare with this. Rarely does anyone treat sweets calmly, like some oatmeal or an orange. Many people note that after eating sweets, willpower immediately decreases and you want to let go of the brakes.
Let's learn not to do this!
Reasons why you should give up sweets in the morning
Let's look at the arguments that justify why you shouldn't eat sweets in the morning:
- Dessert will not be able to provide a sufficient energy supply to the human body for the upcoming part of the working day, since fast carbohydrates tend to be consumed instantly.
- Sweets are not suitable for a separate meal, which contradicts the following rule: “Sweets should not be consumed with other foods during the same meal.”
- An early dessert can push you to overeat during the day, since tasty treats provoke a sharp jump in insulin.
A few facts about sugar
Sugar is present in every person's diet every day. It is added to almost all dishes, both sweet and non-sweet. It serves as a convenient preservative for various berries and vegetables, jam, and even meat.
The set of products that contain sugar is usually divided into three groups:
- 100% – sugar, honey, starch directly;
- healthy – fruits, some vegetables;
- unhealthy – cakes, sweets, chocolate, sweet pastries.
The most common types are:
- fructose;
- sucrose;
- glucose.
Useful properties of sugar
- Sugar is a source of such important elements for the functioning of the whole body as carbohydrates and glucose.
- Promotes the production of the happiness hormone - serotonin.
- Eating delicious sweet food helps improve your mood from a psychological perspective, which has nothing to do with your hormonal picture.
The most interesting thing is that sugar in its pure form does not contribute to excess weight gain, unless, of course, you consume it in exorbitant amounts. Fruits and vegetables containing sugar supply the human body with essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals. The high concentration of fat in some desserts adds calories to sweets.
To eat or not to eat?
One of the diagnostic signs of depressive disorder is changes in eating behavior. In humans, approximately a quarter of mood disorders are associated with obesity. Psychologists have experimentally shown that in obese women, photographs of high-calorie foods activate the reward system. Images of low-calorie foods do not have this effect. In women of normal build, photographs of ice cream and cakes excite other neurons that are not associated with the reward system. Overweight people evaluate high-calorie foods differently than healthy people; they have the wrong motivation.
Sugar beet
The desire to eat stress is understandable, and there would be nothing wrong with it if people pleased themselves with something safe, lettuce, for example. But there are few of these, not salad, but fatty, sweet food that lifts our mood. It is from such food that we get pleasure, we feel a taste for it.
Harmful properties
The harm of sugar is as follows:
- promotes an increase in insulin levels;
- synthesized into fat deposits;
- satisfies the feeling of hunger for a relatively short period of time;
- promotes the accumulation of glucose in the body, which threatens the development of certain chronic diseases;
- causes food addiction;
- negatively affects appearance and leads to excess weight.
Recently, scientists have discovered many new manifestations of harmful effects on the human body:
- Sweets can lead to infertility.
- Sweet lovers are more likely to get thrush.
- May cause intestinal cancer.
- Goodies have a negative impact on the brain and mental abilities.
- It is not recommended to consume a lot of sugar during pregnancy.
Detect and overcome
Food addiction is somewhat similar to drug addiction, but food, unlike drugs, is vital. You can try to influence the neural circuits that cause addiction to drugs, but doctors do not dare to fight food addiction in this way, for fear of disrupting normal eating behavior. Therefore, solving the problem of sweet tooth addiction is more difficult than solving the problem of drug addiction.
However, specialists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently found that different neural circuits are responsible for normal nutrition and sugar addiction. Researchers developed a sugar addiction in mice by training them to seek out sucrose in a specific location following auditory and visual cues. The mice learned quickly - they really love sweets - and rushed in search of sucrose, even when they were full. This behavior is called compulsive. The mice did not always get sugar: sometimes insidious experimenters gave bitterness instead of sweetness, and sometimes they gave nothing. As a result, scientists were able to identify the neurons active during an unhealthy desire for sugar and the usual search for food, and it turned out that these were different cells. Researchers believe that they can try to look for substances that selectively act on these cells, a cure for sugar addiction.
Our inherent ability to enjoy high-calorie foods, combined with an excess of products that nature clearly did not count on, did not benefit us: it encourages us to feast unnecessarily and gain weight. But the more we know about the mechanisms of this scourge, the greater the chances of overcoming it.
Source: magazine “Chemistry and Life”
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How to lose weight without denying yourself pleasure?
Most people associate weight loss with certain dietary restrictions, but for many, giving up their eating habits is so difficult that it is sometimes impossible.
However, some women in their reviews claim that it is still possible to lose weight without denying yourself sweet foods. To do this, you need to follow a few simple rules:
- You should eat this food only before lunch. You can have sweets in the morning, because this gives a high probability that the calories received will be spent throughout the day.
- Do not eat sweets in the evening, and treats are especially strictly prohibited 3-4 hours before bedtime.
- Harmful treats can be replaced with healthier foods - fruits, berries, marmalade, candies, marshmallows, dried fruits, honey, jelly.
- Avoid high-calorie and fatty sweets (cakes, pastries), as these products provoke excess weight gain.
- Do not eat sweets and fatty foods at the same meal, so it is better to avoid dessert after the main course. It is recommended that the break between consumption of these products be at least 2 hours.
- Do not overeat: if you follow moderation, you can eat almost all foods. Accordingly, it is better not to eat a lot of sweets in the morning.
- It is better to get rid of the habit of drinking, especially sweetened drinks, as they supply the body with unnecessary carbohydrates and lead to excess weight gain.
- Artificial sweeteners and sweeteners should be avoided immediately. They not only do not contribute to weight loss, but are also dangerous to health.
- The best way to burn calories after eating dessert is movement.
Mice in sugar
Judging the quality of food begins with its taste. But animals also have another mechanism for regulating eating behavior, which depends not on the attractiveness of the product, but solely on its usefulness.
Duke University researchers wondered if the brain would be able to evaluate the nutritional value of a product whose taste it does not taste. If it is assessed, it means that the substances that are formed in the stomach and intestines during digestion also determine eating behavior. To test this hypothesis, the scientists used mutant mice lacking the TRPM5 protein. Mice with this mutation cannot taste the sweetness of sugar.
Mutant mice and animals with normal sensitivity were kept without water for some time, and then offered a choice of drinking bowls with water, 0.4 and 0.8 M sucrose solutions. Normal mice, having quickly tried the drink, choose sweet solutions, while mutants do not distinguish between water and sucrose. But if for several days in a row the animals are offered a choice of plain and sweet water, and a constant place is kept at each drinking bowl, after six days the mutants remember where the sucrose solution is poured and consciously choose it, although they do not feel the taste. Obviously, they feel what drink satiates them.
A Cambodian man carries palm sap, which is used to extract sugar, in Tuol, Cambodia.
Then sucrose was replaced with sucralose, a non-calorie but very sweet sugar substitute. In this case, ordinary mice prefer sucralose, but mutants do not care whether water or sucralose is used. The liquids did not differ in nutritional value, and the animals drank from both bottles with equal frequency.
The researchers concluded that the dopamine reward system in the ventral striatum responds not only to tasty food, but also to healthy food, even in the absence of a taste signal.
The baton was picked up by specialists from the City University of New York. Scientists were interested in how normal mice and mutants lacking TRPM5 would behave if they were offered several simple sugars that differ in sweetness and nutrition.
Mice with a normal taste system always choose sweet solutions rather than water. Normal animals rely on taste or a combination of smell and taste. Glucose and fructose are almost equally attractive to them, despite their different sweetness. Mutant mice, as one would expect, focus on the nutritional value of the solution. Glucose is the most attractive for them, the second position in the preference scale is occupied by galactose, then MDH, and only fructose is drunk by mutants who do not feel its sweetness more often than water.
Around the same time, the University of Southern California became interested in the difference in preferences between glucose and fructose. Only they worked with people.
The attention of researchers to fructose is not accidental. Since it has little effect on insulin and blood sugar levels, it is used all over the world as a sugar substitute for healthy eating. But insulin signals to the brain that there is enough food, so sucrose and glucose cause a feeling of fullness, but fructose does not - on the contrary, in animals it stimulates appetite. Less is known about the effects of fructose on human eating behavior.
Sweet tea in the morning: pros and cons
Tea is a tonic drink and, in principle, has no special effect on the body. However, if used incorrectly, it can even be harmful. Let's look at a few facts that will tell you how to properly organize a tea party with benefits for your health and figure:
- Green tea is considered healthier than black tea. It is recommended to consume large-leaved varieties of the drink, as this is evidence of the quality of the product.
- If possible, tea should be drunk without added sugar. If this is too difficult, then it is better to gradually reduce the amount of sweeteners to a minimum.
- It is best to drink tea in the morning - it will help you wake up. However, it should not be consumed immediately after a meal, but 20-30 minutes after it. You should not drink tea immediately after waking up or to satisfy your hunger, as this can cause gastritis.
- Tea should not be cold or hot, the most optimal temperature is about 50⁰C.
- You should not be overzealous with tea leaves, since a very strong drink will not only be too bitter, but will also lose its positive qualities.
Sweets from the point of view of proper nutrition
For some people, the phrase “proper nutrition” sounds scarier than “diet.” However, their difference is that the first does not require any restrictions in products. The requirements relate only to their quantity, quality and some other nuances. The main thing is that with proper nutrition you can lose more extra pounds than with some diets.
Many people who closely monitor their figure are concerned with the question: is it possible to eat sweets in the morning while losing weight? The answer will be unequivocal - you can and should eat sweets, the main thing is to adhere to several of the above-mentioned rules.
The benefits and harms of sweets for weight loss
Nowadays, views on dietary nutrition have changed somewhat, so it is believed that a person who is losing weight, by abruptly giving up some foods, causes his body to experience stress, which means that the likelihood of a breakdown with PN is very high. And it’s precisely for sweets, buns, muffins, chocolate, etc. that the craving is strongest. To the delight of many people with a sweet tooth, there are sweets that can be used to lose weight. Their use even brings benefits during a diet. When losing weight, treats show a positive effect in the following moments:
- provide glucose for normal brain function, thereby activating mental activity;
- increase the amount of joy hormone, suppressing stress and bad mood;
- Charge the body with additional energy, which allows you to burn more calories and move more actively;
- significantly help to last longer without other prohibited products and reduce the risk of failure with PP;
- have a beneficial effect on women's hormonal levels.
What sweets can you eat while losing weight?
However, despite such positive aspects, sweets during weight loss were strictly prohibited earlier due to the presence of not entirely favorable characteristics, such as:
- high calorie content;
- short-term satiation followed by an inducement to an even greater appetite;
- provoking a sharp jump in insulin in a person’s blood;
- promoting the appearance of caries, acne on the body and weakening the walls of blood vessels, and in some cases people may develop diabetes mellitus;
- contains food colorings and flavors that can complicate the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract or cause food allergies.
Note! Indeed, sugar helps with mental stress, and a person begins to think faster, but over time he takes such a “treat” as a reward for completing a task and after each snack he begins to want to sleep.
Is it possible to eat sweets in the morning while on a diet: reviews
There are many diets, so anyone who wants to lose a few pounds can choose the most convenient way of eating for themselves. Since it is most difficult for people to give up sweets, personal diets for those with a sweet tooth have been invented. One of the most popular is the chocolate one, the essence of which is that throughout the day you are allowed to eat only a bar of dark chocolate.
According to reviews from those losing weight, we can conclude that eating sweets while dieting is acceptable. The main thing, regardless of the chosen method of nutrition, is that daily energy expenditure exceeds the number of calories absorbed.
To summarize, it is worth mentioning that the best time of day to eat sweets is morning. However, this does not mean that it can be consumed in any order and quantity before lunch. To make food healthy and nutritious, it is recommended to adhere to certain rules.