6 Causes of Food Cravings
Does the thought of eating a better diet, for your health, worry you a little?
Perhaps you think it would be boring, or that you would just crave so much “bad” food it’s not something you could stick to?
It’s understandable but once you do make a start and are shown the right way to eat, then your diet can be so enjoyable and not a stressor in any way.
That said, controlling your cravings is really important. But just relying on willpower to avoid all the less than good foods you may crave is almost impossible.
Sure it may work for a short time but eventually it can be very easy to give in, go into a trance and wake up hours later smothered in battered Mars Bars.
And that, whether you noticed or not, would be affecting your health!
So how can you control your cravings? Well the first step is to understand what’s causing them. Here’s 6 major factors…
Candida / Yeast Overgrowth
This is very common in people with health issues (and is something that shows up on the stool tests we run).
Candida / yeast survives by feeding on sugars. It sends signals to your brain telling you to feed it and that can cause BIG sugar cravings.
Therefore, killing off the Candida is important to help bring cravings under control.
Similar can be said for bacterial and parasitic infections.
Eating Excess Sugars
When we eat too much in the way or carbs and sugars, it spikes our blood sugar levels. Often this give a short-term increase in energy but soon these levels will drop, leading to tiredness.
This is one reason why many people feel a slump in energy mid-morning or mid-afternoon – it’s normally something they have eaten at breakfast or lunch.
When in this slump, your body craves a short-term energy boost (which you’d get from more sugars/carbs) which can put you in a vicious cycle.
Therefore, more protein and fat in your diet can often help to better control cravings. A protein smoothie made with “Advanced Vegan Protein” can certainly be a tasty, convenient way to get more protein into your diet.
Dehydration
If you don’t drink enough water, your body won’t function well.
Energy levels will suffer, and that can often mean you’ll crave poor foods to give yourself a boost.
Lack of Good Fats
So many people have too little in the way of good fats in their diet.
Fats are critical for our overall health (hormone production in particular). Depriving our body of fat will lead to numerous problems, leave us hungry and craving poor food.
One great source of really beneficial fats is Advanced Fish Oil, which may certainly be important if you aren’t getting regular servings of oily fish in your diet each week.
Poor Sleep
Quite simple this one but if we don’t sleep very well then this will lead to tiredness.
And tiredness will lead to sweet cravings in an attempt to use sugar just to get us through the day.
Therefore, taking steps to improve sleep will only be good for our cravings.
Poor Nutrient Absorption
Nutrient absorption is typically an issue for many people with health issues.
Over time, this will lead to numerous nutrient deficiencies which will worsen your health, lead to fatigue and ultimately cause you to crave many poor quality foods.
Therefore, optimising your digestive health, and reducing inflammation is really important, as well as using a good quality multivitamin as an insurance policy against nutrient deficiencies – there’s more on that here https://autoimmuneinstitute.com/pages/advanced-multi
So there’s 6 big reasons for your cravings but hopefully you can see there’s always something that can be done about them.
Just relying on willpower isn’t needed and getting to the cause of the craving is always much more effective.
Obviously please don’t think that your cravings will ever completely go away and I expect anyone to eat “perfectly” all the time. I certainly crave certain foods myself, and definitely don’t eat perfectly (my love for Salted Caramel Haagen Dazs ice cream certainly puts a stop to that!).
But it is possible to minimise those cravings, and always be in control of what you eat, and that can only be good for your health.
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