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Conquer your cravings – and lose up to 7lb in 10 days!
According to diet expert Dr Penny Kendall-Reed, your urge to snack is simply due to a chemical imbalance – and with her easy healthy eating plan, you can silence those cravings for good!
If all your good intentions to eat healthily fly out of the window mid-afternoon, as one biscuit turns into an entire packet, you're not the only one. It's thought that a whopping 80 per cent of diets fail - and according to Dr Penny Kendall-Reed, it's due to a chemical imbalance in your body that makes you crave food.
"These food cravings are responsible for making you eat that oh-so-tempting double-chocolate cheesecake, even though you've just had a perfectly satisfying meal," she claims. "And the harder you diet, the stronger your cravings become. In your head, you know you don't need that snack - but you think, ‘Just one mouthful can't hurt...' Eventually you give in and your resolve to diet slides away down a slippery slope."
The good news is, there is a way to beat the cravings. "That voice in your head has nothing to do with your body needing more calories," explains Dr Kendall-Reed. "It's just your brain trying to persuade you to reward it with a sugar rush. Whenever the going gets tough - a stressful event, an emotional crisis, boredom, or even a new diet - it remembers the feel-good high it gets from food and conditions you to hunt it out. But by understanding these cravings and learning to recognise their causes, you can counteract them. You need to start satisfying your brain in other ways, in order to turn off those nagging cravings and diet without suffering."
Dr Kendall-Reed devised the No Crave Diet with her husband Dr Stephen Reed to help her patients lose weight and to prevent weight-related medical conditions such as high blood pressure, type-2 diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease. The eating plan is based on research into the way your brain controls hunger - it's about when you eat and what you eat.
When to eat
Grazing on sugary sweets between meals encourages cravings and impairs your ability to lose weight by affecting your blood sugar levels and hormone insulin levels. Insulin promotes the storage of food, especially sugar - when you eat, your body releases a rapid surge of insulin over five to 15 minutes, followed by a more sustained release for up to three hours. This is a biological throwback to caveman times, when the body needed to make the most of food while it was still available.
In addition, the liver slowly surrenders its stores of glucose between meals, to keep blood sugar levels constant.
Snacking disrupts this system by continually triggering the release of insulin, exhausting the pancreas (the gland that produces the hormone). As a result, it creates a lower, more prolonged insulin release that lasts well over the intended three hours, sending blood sugar levels crashing and causing low energy, fatigue, hunger and cravings about three to four hours after a meal. The liver also fails to function properly - as you bombard your body with sweet snacks, the liver loses the ability to release its own sugar stores.
Normally, your body can start to burn fat once insulin levels dip, three hours after a meal. But if your insulin levels are kept constantly high with naughty treats, it becomes almost impossible to shed that flab on your hips, tum and thighs. And that is why snacking is such a disaster when you're trying to lose weight.
If your insulin levels are kept constantly high with naughty treats, it becomes almost impossible to shed that flabWhat to eat
The No Crave Diet reduces hunger pangs by stabilising blood sugar levels through choosing the right foods, putting a stop to those relentless peaks and troughs that cause cravings. In just a few days, your brain will start to tell you when to stop eating, and in the long-term this diet should also reverse the ‘insulin resistance' that's widespread in modern society.
Getting the right nutrition is also vital in controlling leptin, the hormone produced by your body's fat cells to indicate they are full. The No Crave Diet helps to restore leptin sensitivity, which is disrupted by constant snacking. Another hormone reset by the No Crave Diet is ghrelin. This is released by the stomach when it's empty, so it's responsible for your hunger pangs and cravings between meals. But this diet is based around foods that are digested more slowly, resulting in a slower release of sugar into the bloodstream, so your ghrelin levels will drop and you'll feel fuller for longer - and less prone to nibbling on those biscuits!
The No Crave Diet rules
● You must only eat three meals a day, with no snacks or desserts.
● Eat breakfast within two hours of waking to kick-start your metabolism.
● Leave five to six hours between breakfast and lunch, the same again between lunch and dinner, and 11 to 12 hours between dinner and your next breakfast.
● Eat 1g of lean protein per 1kg of your weight with every meal, to prevent cravings for sweet treats.
● You are allowed limited amounts of dairy products, but no yoghurt, ice cream or butter - and stick to skimmed milk.
● You may eat up to two pieces of fruit per day, but no bananas.
● You may have one alcoholic unit a day.
● Make sure that you drink six to eight glasses of non-caffeinated beverages a day.
● Avoid all processed foods and artificial sweeteners - they promote insulin production as much as, if not more than, sugar! Use natural sweeteners instead, such as Stevia (£7.99 for 250g, available from www.naturallygreen.com) or Xylitol (£2.69 for 225g, from www.goodnessdirect.co.uk).
● Eat unlimited carbohydrates in the form of vegetables and salads and limited carbohydrates in the form of legumes.
● High-sugar carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, rice, potatoes and sweets are to be strictly avoided during the first 10 days as they promote cravings and prevent you from retraining your metabolism.
Your five anti-craving diet supplements
Choose from the following supplements, to enhance the effects of the No Crave Diet, depending on the area you want to focus on.
● Green tea extract: approx 300mg twice a day on an empty stomach to increase fat burning and decrease stress hormones. Green Tea Extract, 315mg, £4.64 for 100 capsules, Holland & Barrett.
● Calcium and magnesium: 500mg of each twice daily with food to cut fat absorption. Absorbable Calcium, £6.49 for 100 capsules, Holland & Barrett; Magnesium Orotate, £6.75 for 30 capsules, chemistdirect.co.uk.
● Malic acid: 500mg twice a day on an empty stomach to increase the rate of fat burning. Viridian Malic Acid, £5.30 for 30 capsules, healthstore.uk.com.
● L-carnosine: 500mg twice a day on an empty stomach to regulate the reward centres of the brain. L-carnosine, £29.99 for 90 capsules, 1stvitality.co.uk.
● B vitamins: 100mg once a day with food to increase fat burning and lower stress. Vitamin B Complex, £2.49 for 30, Boots.
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