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Sugar cravings before period
I have spent the last five months on a special diet, avoiding wheat, dairy products, sugar, tea, coffee, red meat, eggs, salmon, tuna and other foods. I am thrilled to have lost 1.5 stone in weight but I have noticed recently that I get a strong craving for sugary foods just before my period. How can I stop this?
Cravings for sweet foods are often the body’s signal that your blood sugar (glucose) levels are low says Helen Heap, a senior nutritionist with The Women’s Nutritional Advisory Service. The good news is that you can easily control this when you make the right dietary changes.
To stabilise blood sugar levels, you need to be eating foods which have what is called a low glycaemic index. This is a kind of score that is given to a food type according to the rate at which it is converted into sugar in the body explains Heap. For example, refined grains such as white rice and bread are converted very rapidly and so have a high score. When you eat these, your blood sugar levels go up too quickly creating a cycle where, because you’ve had this sugar “hit”, you then suffer intense sugar cravings.
Eating more wholegrains helps stop these cravings. Foods such as rye, buckwheat, brown rice and porridge oats all have a stabilising effect on blood glucose levels. For breakfast, Heap suggests a bowl of porridge with a banana, which will keep blood sugar stable until lunchtime. For lunch, have a brown rice salad, a jacket potato, oily fish or lean poultry. Include a little protein with every carbohydrate meal to slow down the rate at which carbohydrate is converted to sugar.
Sugar cravings can also be a sign of pre-menstrual changes and of underlying nutritional deficiencies. Many woman reporting the same symptoms are lacking in the B vitamins and both magnesium and chromium. The first two of these are involved in carbohydrate metabolism. Chromium enhances insulin function and is important because insulin is the hormone that regulates blood sugar levels.
*The Women’s Nutritional Advisory Service is on 01273-487366. The founder, Maryon Stewart, is the author of Beat Sugar Craving, published by Vermilion, £6.99. You can mail order this and the recommended supplements from the Advisory Service.