Your Cravings Have Astounding Intelligence

We see food cravings as our biggest downfall... the lesser side of ourselves that doesn’t see the important ‘big picture’ of having our perfect body.

We see cravings as self-sabotaging and totally irrational.

They speak to us and we think “I just ate lunch, why do I want more food?” or “why do I crave something sweet after every single meal?” 

They can be exhausting, confusing and can burn a hole in our pocket because we end up spending extra money on snacks to graze on throughout the day because we just can’t seem to hit the spot.

Not to mention when we crave food, the majority of us don’t crave celery and carrots. Usually it’s for something salty, fatty, or most likely, high in refined sugar... which spikes your blood sugar and leaves you always craving more.

It’s very important you know now that you can’t beat your cravings.

Even if you have developed the strongest willpower in the world. Eventually, once the special occasion you were trying to get your body into shape for passes, you will enter the binge-eat-limit-repeat cycle again.

It’s like pulling back an arrow and stretching it far back behind you. The further you pull back, the further the arrow is going to fly when you let go.

Think of your cravings and willpower like this arrow.

The more you resist temptation and limit yourself, the further your cravings will take you on a binge-eating epidemic once you decide to let go.

So today I have a little information about these cravings so you can understand what’s really going on.

This will help you to understand that your body is a very complex bio-computer and will always tell you what it needs. The problem is, the message can easily be misconstrued.

The Body Never Makes a Mistake

The human body is designed to do nothing but keep you healthy and functional. Your lungs always continue to breathe, your heart doesn’t miss a beat and if the lights go off your eyes will adjust to the darkness. Your body will always remain a perfect temperature of 98.6° Fahrenheit (37°C) and you can eat a bunch of unhealthy food or drink a lot of alcohol and the digestive system and liver know what to do with it. These are just a few of the incredible things your body is doing for you on a day-to-day basis. It’s pretty remarkable when you take the time to appreciate it.

So if your body does all these incredible things, why would it self-sabotage and try to make you eat foods that are going to make you feel sick or gain weight? The truth is when we have a craving, we are actually in need of something as the body is out of balance. It’s important to understand what the body is actually asking for.

Deconstructing Cravings – Where Do They Come From?

Not Maintaining Nutritional Balance – Most fad diets are based on eliminating one (or more) of the 3 macro-nutrient food groups (fat, protein or carbs). The problem with this is that by eliminating one of the groups from your diet you are creating micro-nutrient deficiencies somewhere else as the human body needs all three groups to survive. So by eliminating one all together it will lead to some pretty extreme cravings.

If you are suffering from uncontrollable cravings it’s likely you have a deficiency, so looking at your diet is important to see where you need to find more balance. The quantity of protein, carbs and fat you need in your diet to feel satisfied will depend upon a number of factors like gender, age, weight, activity level and metabolic type. Finding the perfect balance will lead you to feel full for longer and satiated without cravings.

Bio-Individuality: 

Bio-individuality means that we are all biochemically different from one another, so we all have different nutritional needs. If we can’t tell people what music they should like or how to style their hair.. what makes us think we can tell someone to be on a specific diet as it will be successful for them? We are all different human beings with different needs and desires. 

The only way to work out what truly works best for you is through experimentation. No one is going to be able to tell you a specific diet is going to be right for your body. If a diet is not suited someone they will likely experience experience a lack of energy, poor digestion, lack of concentration and intense food cravings.

Our bodies are intelligent vessels that are biochemically programmed to crave certain foods based on a variety of different factors. The following can all play a role in the type of food you crave:

• The climate you live in and the season of year.
• Your demographic (gender, age, weight).
• Your exercise level and daily movement.
• Ancestry – have you ever felt your body excite or feel comforted when you go home and eat home-cooked food you grew up with? This is because it is familiar for your ancestral bio-chemistry and your cells know how to process and digest it.
• Your metabolic type and how you metabolise carbs vs protein and fat.

As you can see, each of our bodies is extremely unique and there will never be ‘one size fits all’... and that’s the beauty of it.

Listen To Your Body

So hopefully now you understand whenever you are having cravings, your body hasn’t made some random mistake. It is simply asking for something else as your meal hasn’t provided.

Deconstructing your cravings and understanding why they’re there is what’s important. It’s all about creating balance where something’s not quite right in the system.

At the end of day we are mammals and all mammals are guided to what they need to eat. Deconstruct your cravings and eat plenty of wholesome foods from all three macro-nutrient groups and experiment what works for you. Let your cravings guide you and you will feel more empowered about your food choices as oppose to letting your cravings run you into self destructive binge eating. 

Put down the box of chocolates and tune into your cravings.

What does your body need?

With love,