Jeremiah Farias (00:00.142)
Do you get to the end of your day and all of a sudden you experience an extreme craving for something sweet? You feel like you’ve eaten well all day and for whatever reason these cravings still come about and it’s very hard to overcome them. If so, this video is for you. We’ll review where these cravings might be coming from and how we can overcome them. Hi, my name is Jeremiah Farias. I’m a functional registered dietitian and I help adults suffering from blood sugar dysregulation issues. Conditions like diabetes, pre -diabetes and low energy levels. I hope you enjoy today’s content.

Late night sugar cravings are very common in those with diabetes and without diabetes. Many of whom I work with one on one come to me with this issue and in a relatively short period of time, I’m able to help them completely eliminate their sugar cravings or for us others, it can take a bit of time initially, the cravings subside and then in the long run, they’re able to experience complete relief from them. Many have the view that experiencing sugar cravings is a sign that your body is addicted to the sugar.

And because someone is experiencing sugar cravings, it means that there’s something wrong with you, there’s something wrong with your body, and it’s something that you need to work to overcome. This might be controversial, but I disagree. If you’re someone who believes that we do not need carbohydrates, and carbohydrates are the reason for diabetes and other chronic conditions, you may not like what I’m about to say. I believe that the cravings for sugar are our bodies communicating to us that our carbohydrate needs are not being met.

Just as our body craves salt or salty foods to indicate that we need more salt and to meet our sodium needs, I believe that craving for sugar is communicating to our body it needs carbohydrates. The body is intelligent and so often we think that it is broken. So we shouldn’t be surprised if we go our entire day without eating carbohydrates or eating very, very little carbohydrates because we’ve been told we should that we get to the evening and all of a sudden,

this craving for sugar, sweet things comes about and it feels almost impossible to overcome it. That’s because our body doesn’t want us to overcome it. It’s sending us a signal. There are those who say that carbohydrates are non -essential and they’re right. We can produce glucose through a process called gluconeogenesis. However, just because our body can produce glucose through this means doesn’t mean that we should rely on it.

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The process of gluconeogenesis turning things like proteins and fats into glucose, it actually is relying on counter regulatory hormones. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol and another hormone called glucagon, which operates very similarly to these stress hormones and chronically relying on these counter regulatory hormones to meet glucose needs throughout the body comes with consequences.

Just because the body can create its own glucose doesn’t mean we should rely on this process to meet glucose demands. So it’s interesting that the body will still crave sugar as a way to encourage us to consume carbohydrates if it’s capable of supposedly meeting its own glucose needs. I feel like it highlights the body’s preference of meeting glucose needs is not to break down our own tissue to produce it and meet those needs.

but instead to consume carbohydrates from our diet, exogenously versus producing it endogenously. So why would our body want us to consume carbohydrates versus just make it itself? So the process of gluconeogenesis is energetically expensive and wasteful versus just using glucose directly from consuming the carbohydrates in our diet. So from a standpoint of not wasting resources,

it makes more sense to consume the carbohydrates. That’s number one. Second, carbohydrates play an important role in our overall health, namely through their influence on thyroid health and function and the suppression of those counter -regulatory hormones I’ve mentioned before. There’s some great research highlighting that the role carbohydrates play in supporting active thyroid hormones, therefore overall thyroid health. And I’ll point to some of these mechanisms. So carbohydrate restriction,

appears to impair thyroid function by lowering the conversion of T4 to T3. You then, as a result of the lower conversion of T4, inactive thyroid hormone to active thyroid hormone T3, you’re gonna see lower active thyroid T3. You’re also gonna see an increase in a marker called reverse T3, which is often seen elevated due to stress. Next, by restricting carbohydrates, you’re also reducing insulin levels. Insulin is a hormone that does

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play a crucial role in blood sugar regulation. I’ve talked about it in a previous video on what is insulin resistance, but insulin, it gets a bad rap, but it’s responsible for a lot of functions in the body outside of just blood sugar regulation. One of those is insulin supports the conversion of T4, that inactive thyroid hormone, to T3. And so lower carbohydrates, lower insulin levels,

you’ll see an increase in a hormone called glucagon and glucagon impairs that conversion. Lastly, as it relates to the thyroid, so restricting carbohydrates, you’ll see an increase in those counter regulatory hormones that we’ve discussed, that’s just normal physiology. So an increase in glucagon and an increase in cortisol. Both of those are going to reduce T4 levels because they’re reducing inactive thyroid hormone, you then see a decrease in active thyroid hormone T3 and you also see an increase in that

other marker I mentioned, reverse T3. And as I previously mentioned, insulin plays more roles than just regulating blood sugar. So when one consumes carbohydrate, you’re going to experience a release of insulin. Insulin release actually stimulates the synthesis of an antioxidant called glutathione. It’s a mass for antioxidant of the body. Therefore, the carbohydrate consumption through its connection and signaling to insulin can have an effect.

on the antioxidant defense system of the body. In a moment, we’ll discuss how we can begin meeting our body’s needs for carbohydrates to get rid of late night sugar cravings. But first, I’m curious, have you heard this perspective before? The benefits of carbohydrates, the multitude of benefits that they provide our bodies, but also the concept that cravings for sugar are body signaling to us that we are not meeting our carbohydrate needs.

Let me know down in the comments. If you’re getting value from this content, please be sure to hit that like button. I would really appreciate it. And if you’re looking for practical information that you can begin implementing today to start improving your blood sugar metabolism, be sure to get my free guide down in the description, five steps to improving your blood sugar metabolism. So I argue if you are experiencing sugar cravings, especially at night, you’re likely not meeting your body’s need for whole food carbohydrates.

Jeremiah Farias (07:07.854)
Notice that I said whole food carbohydrates. I am not making the case to start consuming sugar sweetened beverages, cakes, pies, other processed sweet treats. Not only are those nutrient devoid, they come with a lot of other problematic ingredients. Instead, as I’ve mentioned in a previous video, which I’ll link to here, we want to prioritize whole food carbohydrates like fruits, tubers, and squashes. Tubers include potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, and cassava. And the squashes are the winter

dense squashes like butternut squash, acorn squash. These are coming with a lot more nutrients and additional benefits and this is why I prioritize these over any other form of carbohydrates. So how do we assess if we are meeting our body’s carbohydrate needs? We can start by taking inventory of our current meals and our diet. First, how many meals are we consuming? If we are having one to two meals, the best place to start is add an additional one to two meals.

If you’re someone who has one meal, let’s increase it by one. You’re at two. You stay there for a bit of time. And as you feel good, you can then add a third meal. And so anywhere from three to four meals is a sweet spot to aim for. It allows you many opportunities or plenty of opportunities to meet not only caloric needs, but other macronutrient needs and micronutrient needs. I had a previous video that I’ll link to above where I review

intermittent fasting or should we skip breakfast if we have diabetes or blood sugar metabolism issues? I think it’s relevant. You can check that out. So maybe you’re already having three to four meals or you’re having three meals with a snack. So you’re eating frequently enough and you’re giving your body an opportunity to get enough calories, macronutrients, micronutrients. However, are we having balanced meals? Do we have a whole food or a high quality protein source, a whole food carbohydrate source, a fat source and a non -starchy vegetable?

Now, if you’re coming from a low carbohydrate diet, you’re presently on a low carbohydrate diet, and you’re experiencing these cravings for sugar throughout the day or at the end of the night, that’s the reason why. Your body’s telling you we’re not meeting our needs. And then you might think, well, I’m restricting my carbohydrate intake because I’ve been told I need to do that to improve my blood sugar control, my blood sugar levels. I have diabetes or pre -diabetes, or I’ve been told I need to

Jeremiah Farias (09:35.026)
reduce carbohydrates or avoid carbohydrates in order to lose weight. I’m here to tell you, you do not have to. You can improve and reverse your diabetes and your blood sugar control and lose weight, lose body fat, improve your body composition while consuming carbohydrates. And this is controversial in the especially low carb, namely the low carb space, but I’m here to tell you that it is in fact.

possible and we’re going to talk about how to go about incorporating, reincorporating carbohydrates so we can start optimizing our health and get rid of our cravings. So let’s talk about how we can begin reintroducing carbohydrates if previously we’ve been restricting them. So we want to go very slowly. The reason we want to go slowly is we want to give our body time to upregulate metabolic processes that are responsible for oxidizing or using glucose in the cell.

And before we get into how we go about reincorporating carbohydrates, it’s also important that the removing of carbohydrates from the diet to improve blood sugar, diabetes, it actually doesn’t get to the root of the issue. So if you have not addressed the issues that were causing that cellular energy dysfunction, your cells ability to use the glucose, we’re not, we haven’t addressed those things. We would want to do that. And so.

I have a previous video that talks about what I believe is causing diabetes and some foods, namely excessive amounts of polyunsaturated fats. I’ll link to both of those videos. You wanna check those out and you wanna make sure that you are considering those things as you’re reincorporating carbohydrates into the diet. Because carbohydrates aren’t the issue. Glucose isn’t the issue. It’s the cell’s ability to use the glucose. When we are considering those factors,

and we want to start reincorporating carbohydrates, let’s say we’re having three meals per day. And you’d want to pick one meal. It doesn’t matter which meal, but I actually can make a case that maybe we want to start with breakfast and we’d find a whole food carbohydrate source and get around 15, anywhere from 15 to 25 grams of carbohydrates. Add that with some protein, some fat and some non -sorgy vegetables preferably, but a bare minimum having some protein.

Jeremiah Farias (11:57.806)
with those whole food carbohydrates. And you’d stay that and do that for a week. Don’t touch any of the other meals just to cook that one meal. And then after a week, you can add another serving of carbohydrates to another meal during the day. And again, in the context of a balanced meal. You do that until you now have carbohydrates for sufficient amount of carbohydrates at each meal. And not to say that 15 to 25 grams is a sufficient amount of carbohydrates.

You start there and you can increase carbohydrate intake by about that much until potentially you’re getting around 60 grams of carbohydrates per meal. Again, that’s a general number. It’s not specific to you, but just to give you some ideas, it can vary on how much carbohydrate one person needs at any given meal. So once you’re in a place of having balanced meals with sufficient amounts of all macronutrients,

you’re going to start to see and experience a reduction in those cravings. You might notice it even sooner once you even start adding some carbohydrates back into the mix. One thing that I wanted to point out though, if you are following or previously following a low carbohydrate or a ketogenic diet, being mindful of your fat intake when you’re adding carbohydrates back into the mix. You’d want to start to reduce your fat intake if you were actively adding a lot more fat to.

your diet. If some of these steps are feeling a bit overwhelming for you and you’re wanting some more tailored guidance, you can schedule a free 30 minute discovery call that I offer. And in this discovery call, you can learn about working with me, how I can help you reach all of your health goals, improve your blood sugar metabolism. And so the link to that is going to be down in the description. I am credentialed with a variety of insurance companies. If you’re wanting to see if I’m credentialed with the insurance company that you have, and if you can use your insurance to work with me, that link will also be down in the description below.

So as I previously mentioned in the video, as we’re increasing our whole food carbohydrate sources, we want to make sure that we’re also not consuming foods or doing things that negatively impact cellular energy production or the cells ability to use glucose and turn it into energy. One of the primary culprits, there’s many, but one of the huge culprits in our diet now are excessive amounts of polyunsaturated fat. So I’ll be linking to that video that you can check out next because that’s an important piece.

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