Do you ever get terrible food cravings that you know are detrimental to your health? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! This post features five reasons why people have food cravings that destroy their health. This is something that I’ve battled with the majority of my life. Even before my injuries and having to go through a lot of issues, I was a sugar-aholic.
After I got injured and was dealing with so many issues from chronic pain, brain fog, and having my digestive system shut down, I had all these cravings.
Here are five common reasons for food cravings and what we can do about it.
1. Unstable blood sugar
After studying over 100 dietary theories, my mind went to the consistencies in all these dietary theories.
One of those things was to stabilize our blood sugar. This makes sense because usually when we have cravings and we’re having issues with weight gain or having unstable energy, our glycemic levels, glycemic loads, and blood sugar is really all over the place. So we have these peaks and valleys all day long and this causes a lot of different issues, especially with cravings and inflammation. We have to learn strategies on how to stabilize our blood sugar and this will really help with the cravings.
2. Not getting enough sleep
This is really because of two hormones. Leptin is released when we’re full and it suppresses appetite. Ghrelin is released when we’re hungry.
When we don’t get enough sleep, leptin goes down and ghrelin goes up and we feel hungry. This is something that we really have to get on top of, especially when it comes to cravings.
3. Chronic stress due to cortisol
When we have excess cortisol in our body, it really creates this up and down unstableness and a lot of constriction in our body which causes cravings. We want to relieve that constriction that the stress is causing from a lot of acids as well as tension. We gravitate toward sugar and foods that give us that dopamine and serotonin release. That’s something we really have to look at and also look at stress reduction to really help with cravings.
4. Areas of life are out of balance
If we have an area of life that’s not doing well like our career or relationships, a lot of times what we’ll do is use food to cope with that issue. The highlight of the day is eating, because all your senses are stimulated and it’s exciting. You have control over it. We have to look at these areas of life and pay attention to them. Are we taking action to really shift that so that we can have a flow and we’re not all over the place? This can really affect us.
5. Yin-yang imbalance
This comes from macrobiotics. When you eat a very high salt or animal protein diet, you’re going to crave sugar and something sweet like alcohol or coffee, which is very expansive.
The salt, animal protein, and different foods like that are very constrictive and we want to be in the middle path. The middle path is eating more vegetables, more beans and legumes, and having some sweeter vegetables. If you do eat animal protein, have a small amount, but don’t be out of balance, because we’re going to have the polar opposite and we’re going to have these cravings.
This really affected me. I know for me since I had such bad sugar cravings, whenever I had salt or was out at restaurants and I ate too many constricting foods, I had all these cravings That’s something to look at and to play with, because it’s all about you experimenting.
It’s all about moderation. What is the middle path? You can do these little things so that it’s sustainable.
What food cravings do you struggle with? Leave a comment and let me know!
