Deconstructing Cravings

Often peo­ple embark on cre­at­ing a health­ier lifestyle only to become stymied by crav­ings for foods deemed “unhealthy.”  They strug­gle with crav­ings until they relent only to be plagued by guilt over the inabil­ity to hold out against their desires.  How­ever, the guilt and sense of fail­ure are more detri­men­tal to their new lifestyle than any craving.

Crav­ings com­mu­ni­cate our needs

We have been con­di­tioned to ignore the sig­nals from the body indi­cat­ing what we need to thrive.  What we fail to con­sider is the body is infi­nitely intel­li­gent and pow­er­ful. Crav­ings are the body’s attempt to cre­ate bal­ance.  Every sys­tem in our body is designed to keep us in bal­ance so we can thrive and grow.  Just as the res­pi­ra­tory sys­tem will force us to breathe if we hold our breath, the body is con­stantly striv­ing to cre­ate bal­ance within itself in order to flourish.

Our diges­tive sys­tem is impres­sive in its wis­dom for nour­ish­ing our bod­ies.  There are more nerve end­ings in the diges­tive sys­tem than in the entire spinal col­umn.  These nerve end­ings are con­stantly eval­u­at­ing the con­di­tion of our body, deter­min­ing what it needs and send­ing sig­nals to us to improve our func­tion­ing.  Our con­scious mind then inter­prets the sig­nals.  This is often when we begin resist­ing because the crav­ings vio­late what we have been told is healthy for us.

The value in the craving

What is more ben­e­fi­cial to our sys­tem is decon­struct­ing crav­ings to under­stand what it rep­re­sents in our lives.  Do we need more sweet­ness and love?  Are we choos­ing crunchy foods because we are har­bor­ing anger and need to bite down?  Is salt sig­nal­ing our bod­ies to con­sume more water?  Are we lack­ing nutri­ents the body needs to grow?

At one point in my life I led a strict veg­e­tar­ian diet.  Most often I was sat­is­fied by my food choices.  For a period of time I could not see a com­mer­cial for a spe­cific fast food burger or drive by the same restau­rant with­out crav­ing a cheese­burger.  This com­pletely went against my beliefs and val­ues.  How­ever I could not deny the mouth-watering effects of think­ing about a cheese­burger.  When I started to under­stand the causes of crav­ings I knew my body was sig­nal­ing me to get more pro­tein into my diet.  Once this became clear to me I was able to sat­isfy my crav­ing through a health­ier option than a fast food burger.  My crav­ing disappeared.

Crav­ings sig­nal our body to pro­vide what it needs.  Some­times these nutri­ents can be obtained by food.  Often they come from a more emo­tional need requir­ing exter­nal nour­ish­ment in the form of self-care and love.  In our high stress times, we for­get that we are not designed to main­tain a fast paced life going from the stress­ful work­place to com­pli­cated home dynam­ics.  Fre­quently doing it on lit­tle sleep and with foods lack­ing in real nour­ish­ment.  The result is we end up con­stantly giv­ing of our­selves rather than to ourselves.

The body’s infi­nite intelligence

The body, mind, and spirit work syn­chro­nis­ti­cally to cre­ate har­mony within our being.  When the sig­nals are ignored by our con­scious mind our body tries to be cre­ative and starts crav­ing the foods we enjoy to sat­isfy itself.  If we con­tinue to ignore these sig­nals then ill­ness devel­ops.  Ill­ness is merely the body’s attempt to bring atten­tion to an imbal­ance in our lives.  Our cul­ture is ram­pant with dis­eases directly related to lifestyle.  More than 75% of health care costs today are for treat­ing chronic dis­eases caused by unhealthy choices.

We can set all the goals we like in an effort to obtain the “per­fect” life.  Until we begin to under­stand how to nour­ish our bod­ies men­tally, phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally, we will be unsuc­cess­ful in our attempts to power through the desires of our bod­ies, which indi­cate what we truly need.

Today rather than using your willpower and sta­mina to fight the crav­ings, try to rec­og­nize what your body is ask­ing for.  Ques­tion where you might be out of bal­ance in your life.  Are you eat­ing enough vari­ety?  Is there some­thing cre­at­ing stress in your life you are not attend­ing to?  Is your body depleted on any level that could be caus­ing you to crave some­thing?  Are you drink­ing enough water?

Crav­ings are intel­li­gent mes­sages from your body.  What is your body try­ing to tell you?