Food Cravings, Getting In Touch With Your Bodies Signals

Food Cravings, Getting In Touch With Your Bodies Signals

By Millie Barnes

What and how to eat are two of the many questions concerning health that we deal with on a day to day basis. I should say that these are two of the questions we SHOULD deal with. However many of us do not stop

 and ask ourselves; we eat on automatic or the way we grew up eating. Most of us never stop and really examine our diet objectively! We please our palate as opposed to building health.  Now I’m not saying you can’t do both!  But lets step back a few minutes and look and the way we need to plan our diets.

Our bodies are continually giving us information. We are far more intuitive than we think. But our vision has been clouded along the way; by our emotional ties that we have to food, by the fact that we crave the foods we are allergic or sensitive to, because our culture is obsessed with food , because we all get in food “ruts”. We make compromises for convenience , for social reasons. We are brainwashed by the food industry, we are bombarded by commercials that give us false information.  These things get in the way of us making healthy choices.  But the main reason we continue to make poor choices is because we have a high degree of toxicity. Very few of us know what it feels like to live in a body that is running at top form. By the time we are 30 or 40, most people have various aches, pains or symptoms that they think are inevitable as we move into the middle years of our lives. But these symptoms are our bodies way of letting us know that we need to make changes, not take medications to mask the symptoms!

Another reason we have food cravings is because most of us do not meet our nutrient needs.  We do not nourish ourselves well. When we do not take in enough nutrients and calories that the body can burn efficiently, then we crave sugars, empty carbs, caffeine. The reason is your that your body wants high energy. We resort to artificial forms of energy or sweets or carbs and sugars when we are not getting energy from a healthy diet.  But when we get the energy we crave from these sources it only lasts short term. Then we pay a price later in the day and on a day to day basis. We feel tired all the time because we are not building health overall. We are exhausted at the end of the day, physically and mentally. So, what do we do? Do we get out and take a walk, run, bike, lift weights, practice yoga? Of course not! We are worn out. We collapse in front of the television. And the next day we begin this vicious cycle all over again.

If you look in the dictionary, the word nourish means to promote the growth of. In other, words it doesn’t just mean food. Growth encompasses the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual areas of our life. Unless we are addressing all of these parts of ourselves,  it is difficult to be really tuned in to what our body is telling us. Most of us wake up, stumble to the kitchen , and grab some form of caffeine to help us get out of the fog we feel. In reality, if we are nourishing ourselves well, we should wake up at dawn raring to go, experience high energy all day while enjoying mental clarity and emotional poise. This in turn, allows us to achieve the objectivity to make choices about our day to day habits that affect our health and energy.

 But all of this is impossible when we live in a body that is full of toxins; medications, food additives, preservatives, food dyes. In other words, all the non-food items plus the food items that we should not consume because they are not good for us. These items interfere with the absorption of vitamins and minerals, they also use a lot of the calories we consume as the body tries to detoxify. And most importantly, all of these things cause a break down in our immune and digestive systems, clogs our arteries, causes a build up of toxins in our tissues and joints. So it is not surpassing, looking at all these factors, that we are out of touch with what our body is trying to tell us. 

When we begin to follow a diet that gives us more energy and  better meets our nutrient needs, many things begin to happen. We begin the process of returning to health. We begin to detoxify the body, we lose weight, energy increases dramatically, allergy symptoms abate, digestion improves. You stop having those energy fluctuations all day, you are not worn out at the end of the day. You feel an overall sense of well being. You are able to step back and ask yourself what you should eat that day based on how you want to feel, that day and the next.

OK, you say, how do I get started? There are two approaches. Dive right in or make slow steady changes. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Diving right in means that you detox faster, feel better sooner and the food cravings go away faster. But it’s a little more challenging emotionally. Slow and steady means you begin removing the things that aren’t good for you (pasturized dairy, junk food, sugar, processed food) and increasing your intake of healthy fats and proteins, vegetables and seafood.   Eat more salads.  Change from tea, coffee and soft drinks to vegetable juices and water.  This will help you detoxify the body faster and protect the kidneys.

Begin exercising regularly. This too speeds the process of healing and greatly increases your energy level. Have more fun, stop and smell the roses, go walk on the beach, try yoga.  Live as if you aren’t guaranteed tomorrow. These things, too, help us heal. All of these things  will help us achieve balance. You will begin to crave foods that make you feel better, not the ones that that please your palate for 10 minutes and then have to be paid for in less energy and more weight.

And last, but not least, have fun with it. Keep the focus on the benefits of making these changes, not on the foods you are giving up. Results come quickly. You should notice that within a week to ten days you wake up easier, feel happier, your body feels lighter, you have less bloating and your skin looks better. Your taste buds begin to change, you’ll actually begin to crave the foods that are causing you to feel better. Smoothies or mangoes will satisfy your sweet tooth better than processed sweets that are high in fat. Fried food will begin to lose it’s appeal. The old way of eating will seem too heavy. Think of making these changes as an experiment. Give it your best for 4 to 6 weeks. You will be thrilled with the results.