EP. 8- How to manage your cravings for bread, pasta & more! ALL ABOUT FLOUR + processed foods & WHY you should ditch them to get to your goal weight.

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Do you ever get cravings?

Do you know what happens in your body when you consume flour?

Are you a carbie?

I have a formula to Lose the Last 10 Pounds, which you can check out in Episode 6 of the podcast.

Basically, this formula gets rid of stuff your body doesn’t need, including sugar, flour, dairy and processed foods. Except for in your weekly joy eat.

In Episode 7, I dived deep into sugar. In this episode, it’s all about flour!

What is flour?

Flour is a powdered substance created by grinding grains, which removes the nutrients and the fiber.

Bread. Crackers. Pretzels. Pasta. Noodles. Bagels. Muffins. Breakfast Cereals. Pizza. Baked Goods.

They all contain flour. A lot of them include sugar too. Sugar and flour have a lot in common when it comes to what happens in our bodies when we consume them. They’re both keeping you from getting the results you want, which is getting to your goal weight. They’re both highly concentrated, highly refined, engineered foods.

Read your labels!

Flour isn’t only in cupcakes and bread. It’s in just about every processed food. Remember, just like with sugar, you have to check what ingredients are actually in the product so you know what you are putting into your body.

There are alternative nicknames for sugar, like brown rice syrup, cane syrup, dextrose and high fructose corn syrup. There are also nicknames to label flour: un-bleached enriched flour, corn starch, modified corn starch, cornflour.

What Flour Does to Your Body

There are four main things that happen in your body when you consume flour:

1. It throws off your hunger signals
2. It triggers your insulin
3. It causes inflammation and weight gain
4. It activates your dopamine reward system

If you’ve listened to episode 7, these will sound very familiar.

Flour, just like sugar, throws off your hunger signals because even a small amount of it is very calorie dense because it’s a highly refined, concentrated substance. However, it has no nutrients, so it doesn’t keep you full and it confuses your body into asking for more food to get enough nutrients. That’s why people can be both obese and suffer from malnutrition. They eat a lot, but they’re not eating the nutrients their bodies need to thrive.

Also like sugar, flour spikes your insulin. Remember, insulin puts you in fat-storage mode. This is the opposite of what you want when you are trying to reach your weight loss goals. It doesn’t matter if you’re actively losing weight or in the maintenance phase, eating flour spikes insulin, which causes weight gain because it causes your body to store fat.

Flour also causes inflammation due to your body getting no nutrients. In fact, your body actually uses nutrients to process flour, making it more depleted, so flour is an anti-nutrient.

Lastly, just like sugar, flour activates your dopamine reward system, which reinforces highly addictive behaviors. That keeps the craving cycle going because your body is literally seeking the little high it gets from consuming flour. So it’s really important to retrain your brain, your taste buds, and your behaviors in order to get to your goal.

Changing your behavior and managing cravings

My best strategies and techniques for changing your behavior, managing cravings and eliminating flour from your diet revolve around the Last 10 Formula (episode 6).

Focus on whole foods: veggies, protein and healthy fats that fuel and nourish your body. When you do this, you are giving your body great nutrition, keeping you satisfied and full.

As for cravings, don’t use pure willpower. White-knuckling through don’t work long term. Here are my steps to successfully manage your cravings:

1. Make a plan. Build your plate around The Last 10 Formula and plan what you are going to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
2. Expect that you will have cravings. They will happen because it’s what your body, brain and taste buds are used to. It will not be easy or comfortable but just let the craving be there.
3. Remind yourself that it is just a craving. A craving is just a feeling and you’re going to be okay. You’re going to survive and stick to your plan anyway. The feeling is going to pass.
4. Instead of reacting or responding to the craving by eating the food that you’re craving, consciously choose not to have it.
5. Focus instead on how much more you want the result that you are wanting, which is to get your goal. Focus on how much more you really want that result more than the food.

This will slowly retrain your brain, your behavior, and your taste buds. Eventually, not having flour will become your new normal.

Own your choice

Ask yourself: would I rather eat this [blank] that I’m craving, or get to my goal?

This puts it back into where you’re intellectually actually choosing what’s more important for you, rather than going for the instant gratification.

Own that choice so you can retrain your brain, your taste, and your behaviors to get the long-term results you desire.

Stay tuned for the next episode, where I do a deep dive into Dairy.

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