Shannon -

Do you have trouble with the smells in the bakery giving you cravings?

I first found out about low carbing when I did a web search on "insulin" and "smell" after noticing that my blood sugar responses to food seemed to happen faster than I would expect to be able to process the food. (I would be blood sugar shakey, then have just a bite of something low carb and start feeling a physical sense of relief really fast.) I'm not sure there's any hard data on the effect of smell on insulin levels, but there was some speculation that looking at and smelling carb rich foods could trigger cravings in people who were prone to cravings.

I work in a big food factory and the smell of yummy carbs (pizza!)is in the air all day. It has a lot less effect on me since I started on CALP, as long as I make sure I eat enough to prevent cravings and only expose myself to craving inducing carbs once a day (during my CALP reward meal). I need to be very careful about hidden sugars in meats, and eliminating caffeine and restricting Nutrasweet until dinner time also helped.

I honestly think that folks with strong carb cravings can trigger them with the smell and sight of carbs, and need to be extra careful to make sure they are not hungry when going into those situations. As you can probably guess, I better not skip breakfast! I guess I have to choose to eat a few extra calories as a trade off for preventing cravings - and in the long run I save calories by preventing unplanned eating or binging.

Lynda