By Jesse Cannone
Everyone knows the basic requirements for losing weight: diet and exercise. But did you know there’s a lot more to it than that?
If you’re looking to stop your cravings for unhealthy carbs and other foods and lose weight, look no further than mastering chemistry – your body chemistry, that is.
The chemistry of your bloodstream – specifically your blood sugar – must be carefully regulated if you want to curb the cravings and lose weight.
Because with high blood sugar, it’s practically impossible to lose weight and keep it off. But in a moment I’ll show you how simple it can be to get those blood sugar levels back under control.
Healthy Blood Sugar Levels Are Key to Weight Loss
Once you have high blood sugar, you become stuck in a vicious cycle: high blood sugar causes you to crave carbohydrates and simple sugars in large quantities.
Your body gets used to having a certain level of sugar in your bloodstream. When it dips, you go into a “sugar crash.” You suddenly feel like you’re starving – you may even start shaking – and you begin to eat anything in reach just to get rid of that craving.
And it’s usually not a healthy, well-balanced meal you reach for, is it? Instead it’s that handy bag of chips just waiting to be torn open and devoured or even a leftover bit of Halloween candy stashed in the back of your freezer.
You can probably guess that binge moments like these are a killer for your waistline.
But that’s not all. Once you’ve given in to your cravings, you’ve just added even more sugar to your bloodstream. So, not only are you overeating between your regular meals, but all that extra sugar in your body turns into fat – FAST.
Now here’s the good news. Once you’re able to control your sudden onset cravings, you’ll no longer binge eat pints of sweet, simple sugars. And then you’ll finally be able to really start losing weight and keeping it off.
Of course, the only way to do that is to regulate your blood sugar.
The Secret to Keeping Healthy Blood Sugar
Thankfully, this vicious cycle can be cured naturally.
Diabetes research over the past fifty years has made multiple breakthroughs regarding substances that naturally help regulate blood sugar. One of the biggest is chromium.
The human body requires this mineral in trace amounts to promote the production of insulin, which helps your body maintain normal blood sugar levels.
This is great news for your waistline. The sooner the sugar in your blood levels out, the sooner you’ll quit craving simple sugars that your body doesn’t need – and the sooner you’ll start to lose weight.
As you probably guessed, most people don’t get nearly enough chromium. The government’s listed Adequate Intake (AI) of chromium runs between 20mcg and 45mcg for adults (dependent on gender, age and conditions like pregnancy).
That’s actually a relatively low amount of chromium. It’s simply not enough for getting your blood sugar back under control. In fact, if you get more than 35% of your calories from simple sugars, your body is excreting most of your chromium as soon as you get it.
This means your body is having an even harder time getting your blood sugar back to normal. It’s just another part of that vicious cycle.
How to Get Enough Chromium In Your Diet Quickly and Easily
There are plenty of apparent ways to get your recommended (low) dose of chromium. A half-cup of broccoli has 11mcg of chromium. A cup of grape juice has 8mcg. Whole wheat, potatoes, and garlic are also good sources. You’ll also find most multivitamins have chromium in them.
But there’s a big problem with just eating these chromium-rich foods or even taking a multivitamin – and there’s little you can do about it.
According to the Office of Dietary Supplements, your intestinal tract only absorbs between 0.4% and 2.5% of the chromium you take in. If you look at the dose of chromium in one of your multivitamins, you’ll understand now why it’s nearly 200% or more of the daily recommended value.
Trying to get even the low daily AI dose of chromium the “regular” way through healthy foods or a multivitamin is practically useless.