Does it continually happen to you that you feel very anxious and to calm anxiety makes you want to eat sweet? This situation occurs to many people despite the fact that they are aware that doing it so often can be harmful to their health, yet they have the feeling of not being able to avoid it. The problem, apart from being an attack on your health, is that after having satisfied your craving by eating a slice of cake, chocolates, candies, etc. It is the guilt that you generate for having done it.
But why does this happen? And how can you remedy it? In this Psychology-Online article we are going to talk about the Causes and Treatment of Sweet Eating Cravings. We will explain to you, in detail, why this event occurs, as well as its causes and what is the appropriate treatment to eliminate it.
Some of the main causes why anxiety to eat sweet can appear in a person, are the following:
Drop in blood sugar levels
One of the reasons why some people may experience sweet cravings is that they are used to eating 3 times a day. So if you stop eating one of these foods, the body will experience a drop in levels. blood sugar, causing the brain to rapidly send a signal to the body telling it to
Being exposed to high levels of stress and anxiety
Have you noticed that the more stressed you are, the more that anxiety to eat sweets appears? When we find ourselves living situations that generate a lot of stress and anxiety, our body begins to need glucose excessively. Why is this happening? This is because when we are too stressed, for example when we have moved to live in another city or country, when we have changed jobs, when we have many personal problems, etc. our brain begins to produce a hormone called cortisol, which is in charge of making us react when we are faced with dangerous situations.
If we are constantly producing cortisol and our body and mind are almost all the time in a state of alert, We tend to expend a lot of energy, which causes our body to need glucose, which is the one that will provide us with that energy the fastest necessary.
By consuming sugar our reward system is activated
Our reward system kicks in when we do activities that we find enjoyable. One of the activities that we find enjoyable is eating our favorite foods, mainly foods that contain simple carbohydrates, such as sugar. So the pleasant taste that sugar produces, causes our brain begins to release dopamine, the so-called happiness hormone.
Especially when we find ourselves experiencing negative emotional states, which is when we most need consume a type of food that causes the release of dopamine in us and therefore improves our state of spirit. What happens is that the pleasant effect produced by the consumption of sugar is very short, so we will quickly feel the need to eat sugary foods again to increase dopamine creating a vicious cycle of which it is increasingly difficult leave.
Going on very strict diets
People who undergo very strict diets, especially when they are used to eating what they want without measure and from one moment to the next they want to start eating too much restrictive, it is very likely that they end up abandoning it and that they feel the need to consume foods that are extremely pleasant to them, like sugar and quickly replenish the energy they needed when they stopped consuming the foods they were accustomed.
This begins to produce a vicious cycle since when consuming those foods that they considered prohibited, such as sugar, they feel a great guilt that causes them to start the same diet again or a more strict one and fall back into the same diet again situation.
Extreme boredom
When we are very bored and we do not find what to distract our mind, on many occasions we tend to fall into states of anxiety and despair, which leads us to want to fill that momentary emotional void that we feel with some food, especially with those that we like more and give us pleasure, as in the case of sugar, which, as we saw previously, causes us to release dopamine.
In Psychology-Online we offer you a anxiety and stress test so that you value your current state of health.
The treatment to control the anxiety to eat sweet depends on the individual situation of each person and has to do with the causes that are originating it. It must be taken into account that we have described some of the main causes that can originate it, however they can There are many more and it is necessary for each person to learn to identify them, if they cannot do it themselves, it is recommended that go to a professional so that he can help her.
The most appropriate professionals who can help you and offer you an appropriate treatment according to your case, is the doctor, the nutritionist and / or the psychologist. Here are some tips that can be helpful to many people in control cravings for sweets:
- Distract your mind. You must take into account that the anxiety that you may be feeling at some moments is transitory, it will not last long. In fact, an episode of elevated anxiety generally lasts about 1 minute, so that time can be easily programmed to intentionally focus your attention on something else so that after a while those anxiety levels decrease considerably.
- Identify your real emotions and needs. It is necessary that every time you begin to feel the need to consume sweets, you take a little pause and identify what is really happening. Why may you be feeling anxiety about eating sweets at those times? Have you eaten less than usual? Are you anxious about a specific situation? Identify what is happening with you at that moment, become aware of it and try to solve what happens to you in another way without having to consume candy.
- Do exercise. Exercising causes our brain to release dopamine which, as we saw earlier, increases our happiness and emotional well-being. This will allow us to have greater control of our thoughts and actions, in this case aimed at consuming sweets and anxiety will decrease notably.
- Eat a healthy and balanced diet. A healthy diet does not have to be a very strict and highly restrictive diet, but quite the opposite. A person can have a healthy diet daily and eat several times a day, the important thing is the quality of the food we eat and how beneficial it is. If we eat what we really have to eat, we will have enough energy throughout the day to carry out our activities everyday life and we will not need food such as sugar that, as we have already seen, momentarily provides us with need.
- Improve the quality of your thoughts. Thoughts directly influence our actions, so if our thoughts are negative and are focused on wanting to carry out actions that are harmful to us, we must modify them. For example, if your thoughts are of the type: "I can't stop eating candy", "I have to eat candy otherwise I can't be calm", etc., it is It is necessary to change them for more positive ones, for example: “I have control over what I eat” or “I am calm right now, I don't need anything more".
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
