If I Wanted to End My Sugar Cravings for Good, Here’s Exactly What I’d Do
I have been hypoglycemic for twenty years. I have tried most things. I have white-knuckled my way through restriction phases that made me miserable and taught me nothing. I have over-researched, over-supplemented, and over-complicated what is, at its core, a structural and nutritional problem with a structural and nutritional solution.
Here is what I know now that I wish I had known at twenty-two. These are not theoretical suggestions. These are the five things I actually did and that I walk every client through in the Sugar Reset Method.
Step 1: Get Bloodwork Done First
Not to diagnose. Not to scare yourself. To personalise.
Most nutrition advice is generic because most nutrition advice does not know anything about you specifically. It does not know that your magnesium is low, or that your fasting insulin is elevated, or that your thyroid is working harder than it should. It cannot tell you that the reason you crave sugar at 3pm might be a cortisol pattern rather than a blood sugar pattern or both at once.
Bloodwork tells you. And when you know what is actually happening in your body, you can build a plan around the reality rather than the assumption.
The markers I look at with every client in the Sugar Reset Method: fasting glucose, fasting insulin, magnesium, zinc, ferritin, thyroid panel (TSH, T3, T4), and a full CBC. This is not an exhaustive list, your health history shapes what we look for but it is the foundation. It is what allows me to build a personalised Metabolic Balance meal plan rather than handing you a template and hoping it fits.
Do not start a nutrition program without knowing what your body is actually doing. Guessing is expensive. Bloodwork is information. Information is the beginning of everything.
Step 2: Three Meals a Day, Five Hours Apart
This is the intervention that surprises clients most because it seems too simple to matter, and then it absolutely does.
Every time you eat, your body releases insulin. Every time insulin is released, blood sugar rises and then falls. If you are grazing throughout the day a handful of almonds here, a protein bar there, coffee with oat milk at 10am, a small snack at 2pm you are creating a constant background hum of insulin release and blood sugar fluctuation. Your body never gets a window to stabilise. The craving signal never fully quiets.
Three meals, roughly five hours apart, changes this completely. In the window between meals, insulin drops. Your body taps into stored energy rather than constantly relying on new fuel. Blood sugar has the space to regulate rather than spike and crash. And by the time your next meal comes, your body is genuinely ready for it not desperately hunting for quick glucose.
The first week of this structure is often the hardest. Your body will ask for food between meals because it is used to being fed constantly. Drink water. Remind yourself that hunger between meals is your metabolism working the way it should. By week two, for most clients, the pattern shifts noticeably.
Step 3: Protein First at Every Single Meal
This is the one rule I never skip. Not once. Not for any meal.
Before the vegetables. Before the fruit. Before anything else on the plate. Two bites of protein chicken, eggs, fish, lentils, whatever your plan includes before you touch anything else.
Here is why this matters biochemically: when you start a meal with protein, your body releases glucagon, the hormone that counterbalances insulin. Glucagon signals the liver to release stored glucose in a controlled, steady way rather than in a spike. It slows the absorption of everything that follows the carbohydrates, the natural sugars, the starchy vegetables. And it sets the tone for the next five hours.
Starting a meal with carbohydrate, fruit, or sugar even the natural sugars in a smoothie or juice, does the opposite. Blood sugar spikes fast. Insulin rushes to compensate. The drop that follows is what drives the craving.
Two bites of protein first. Every meal. This is a habit change that costs nothing and takes no extra time. It is also the one my clients most often say changed everything in the first two weeks.
Step 4: Fix Your Sleep Before You Fix Your Diet
This is the step people most often want to skip because it feels separate from the food conversation. It is not separate.
One night of poor sleep raises blood sugar the next day. This is documented, measurable, and consistent. When you are sleep-deprived, your cells become less responsive to insulin, meaning your body has to release more insulin to do the same job. Elevated insulin drives cravings. It also drives fat storage, particularly around the abdomen.
Cortisol also rises with sleep deprivation. Cortisol raises blood sugar. We are back to the same cycle, this time triggered by how you slept rather than what you ate.
I am not going to give you a list of sleep hygiene tips here, you have read that list before. What I will tell you is this: if you are working on blood sugar stability and you are consistently sleeping fewer than seven hours, the dietary changes will work much more slowly, if at all. Sleep is not a lifestyle luxury. It is a metabolic tool.
In the Sugar Reset Method, the four pillars of health — nutrition, sleep, stress management, and movement — are taught together because they are not separate systems. They are one system. You cannot optimise one while ignoring the others and expect full results.
Step 5: Grow Something
This is the one that raises eyebrows. And it is the one I have seen make the most unexpected difference.
Even a pot of basil. Even a tray of pea shoots on the kitchen counter. Even a single chive plant on the windowsill.
When you grow something, your relationship with food changes. You pay attention differently. You notice the smell of soil. You watch something grow under your care. You harvest it and put it on your plate and something shifts, something that is hard to name but that shows up consistently in how people eat and how they feel about eating.
This is not hype. It is documented. Therapeutic horticulture, working with plants as a healing and health-supportive practice has a growing body of evidence behind it for stress reduction, mood improvement, and sense of agency. And those things matter enormously for blood sugar, because cortisol( the stress hormone) is one of the most powerful drivers of blood sugar instability there is.
I spent fifteen years as a horticulturalist before I became a nutritionist. The connection between what is happening in your soil and what is happening in your body is not abstract to me. It is the foundation I built Nutritional Gardens on. And it is why growing something however small is a genuine part of the program, not an optional extra.
All Five Together
Bloodwork so you know your actual starting point. Three meals, five hours apart. Protein first, every time. Sleep as a non-negotiable metabolic tool. And something growing in your kitchen.
These five things together, done consistently over fifteen weeks are what the Sugar Reset Method is built on. Not a detox. Not a cleanse. Not the elimination of anything. A personalised, lab-based, sustainable reset designed specifically for your body.
The cravings do not disappear because you restricted yourself into compliance. They disappear because you built the conditions under which the signal no longer has a reason to fire.
If you want support doing all five of these things in a structured, personalised way, that is exactly what the Sugar Reset Method is. Fifteen weeks. Built around your bloodwork. Real 1:1 support from a nutritionist who has been living this for twenty years.
Book your free discovery call:
Or DM me RESET on Instagram and I will send you the free blood sugar starter guide.
Sarah Seguin is a Certified Nutritional Practitioner, Metabolic Balance Coach, and Horticulturalist. She is the founder of Nutritional Gardens and the creator of the Sugar Reset Method.