Cut Your Craving for Carbs
by Jo Robinson

A craving for carbohydrates is one of the most common symptoms of the Body Blues. For many women, it’s also the most troubling. While other symptoms of the syndrome can be very annoying, a craving for carbs leads to weight gain. And being overweight is the bane of so many women. It makes us feel less attractive, drains our energy, and compromises our health.

Why do we prefer carbohydrates above all other foods? There are two basic reasons: 1) Carbs boost our mood, and 2) They are the quickest way to raise our blood sugar.

Boosting Mood
Perhaps the main reason that women prefer carbohydrate snacks is that we want to banish unpleasant feelings such as fatigue, irritability, anxiety, boredom or loneliness. When we eat sweet or starchy food, a signal is sent to our brains that releases a burst of dopamine, the body’s main reward chemical. (To give you some indication of dopamine's power, it is the same potent chemical that is triggered by having sex, winning the lottery, or using illegal street drugs.) The more we like a given food and the more time we spend eating it, the greater the surge of dopamine.

If we choose the right snack—namely one very high in carbohydrates and low in protein—we stimulate the production of another feel-good substance: serotonin, the chemical that is enhanced by taking antidepressants such as Prozac and Paxil. Thus, a tasty, high-carbohydrate snack gives us both a shot of dopamine and serotonin, an unbeatable combination. So what if we had a hard day at the office and come home to a messy house? Those cookies make it all better.

At least for an hour or so. Then, to our dismay, the good feelings begin to fade. Once again, we feel tense, tired, and irritable. The chemical boost lasts for a very short time. Time for another high-carb snack. Ultimately, our craving isn’t for the carbohydrates themselves but for the way we feel during and after eating them. And the price we pay for using food as medication is that we begin to pack on the pounds.

A longer lasting and healthier way to get rid of bad feelings is to take part in the LEVITY Program. As our University of Washington study demonstrated, the program will help you feel energetic, calm, and high-spirited for much of the day. Why eat junk food when you're feeling terrific? As one study participant told us, "For some reason, I found myself craving healthy food. It didn't require will power, it just happened!"

Boosting Blood Sugar
Wanting to feel better is not the only reason we seek out the carbs, however. Sometimes we over-indulge in sweets because we have allowed ourselves to get too hungry. Being famished makes us feel exhausted, irritable—almost panicky. And the fastest way to feel normal again is to boost our blood sugar levels. Sweets and refined carbs do this the quickest. But although the response is fast, it is not instantaneous; it can take ten or fifteen minutes for the doughnut or candy bar to have the desired effect. Meanwhile, those awful feelings persist. Instead of waiting them out, we keep on eating, consuming far more calories than we need.

The way out of this dilemma is to keep from feeling too hungry in the first place. If you’re beginning to feel even a little bit hungry, eat a small snack that is relatively high in protein and/or fiber. This type of snack keeps your blood sugar from spiking and crashing. Good choices are a high-fiber protein bar such as Kashi GoLean, string cheese, a small dish of cottage cheese with fruit, a hard-boiled egg, a whole apple (with skin), popcorn sprinkled with parmesan cheese, or a small cup of bean, chicken or beef soup.

As you may have noticed, there are two times of the day when you are most vulnerable to feeling extra hungry. The first is an hour or two before dinner. Thanks to new research, we now know why this is. Our stomachs produce a hunger hormone called "ghrelin (GREH-lin)” that sends out a strong signal to eat. Once we've eaten, the level falls back down and food no longer has such strong appeal. Look at the chart below, and you will see that the hunger hormone peaks before breakfast, lunch and dinner, but it spikes the highest from four to six in the afternoon. We feel hungry before every meal, but, thanks to the ghrelin, we can feel ravenous just before dinner. Feeling ravenous invites carbohydrate cravings and overeating.

To keep this from happening, eat a healthy snack about one to two hours before dinner. You’ll feel much more relaxed awaiting the meal. Once the meal arrives, you will eat more slowly and moderately. Overall, you will consume fewer total calories even though you've added a snack.

Take another look at the chart and you'll spot the second high-risk area—from about 3 to 4 hours after dinner until bedtime. As you can see, the hunger hormone does not go down and stay down after the evening meal. It falls down and then starts climbing again. If you go to sleep around 10 or so, your hunger hormone will be at moderate levels and will not prompt you to head for the refrigerator. But if you stay up later, you will have ghrelin levels higher than you did before breakfast and lunch. Regrettably, there is no scheduled meal at this time of day. In fact, our culture tells us it's "wrong" to snack after dinner. Lacking a socially acceptable way to stave off the hunger, we are more likely to turn to forbidden foods. Having broken one taboo, we might as well break another. And there we are eating too much leftover pizza, pasta, doughnuts, cookies or ice cream.

The way to stop gorging on empty calories at night is to eat a nutritious late-night snack before the hunger hormone turns you into an irrational eater. Plan your snack in advance so that it’s just as easy as reaching for the leftover Pasta Alfredo.

So, in summary, how do you cure your craving for carbs? First and foremost, make the LEVITY Program an ongoing part of your life. Second, eat a healthy snack at the first signs of hunger. Within two weeks of beginning the program, you'll be in control of your appetite and making great strides in your efforts to attain and maintain a healthy weight.

(Cummings, D. E., J. Q. Purnell, R. S. Frayo, K. Schmidova, B. E. Wisse, and D. S. Weigle. "A Preprandial Rise in Plasma Ghrelin Levels Suggests a Role in Meal Initiation in Humans." Diabetes 50, no. 8 (2001): 1714-9.)