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Demystifying Food Cravings: What Cravings Actually Mean

 What Do Food Cravings Really Mean?

What Do Food Cravings Mean? Earlier, Cravings Cured covered how your gut can actually send you food cravings because you’re starving yourself of certain essential nutrients. You may not interpret these cravings in the healthiest or most efficient way because you speak English, your gut speaks another language, and your brain’s translation program isn’t perfect.

Of course, no two people are exactly alike. Still, it’s possible to offer some tips that can help you listen to your cravings, satisfy your appetite, and start enjoying better health. To help demystify food cravings, it might help to look into the meanings of the most common food cravings.

Demystifying Common Food Cravings

Get started with these common food cravings and their possible meanings:

Curing Chocolate Cravings

Some people crave chocolate so much that they almost consider it an addiction. Certainly, you can satisfy a chocolate craving by adding unsweetened cocoa powder to many dishes, plant milk, and of course, coffee. Another tip is to buy a dark chocolate bar, break off a square or two, and then melt it in the microwave over a couple of handfuls of nuts.

Some deficiencies that can cause chocolate cravings include magnesium, some B vitamins, chromium, and essential fatty acids. It’s worth noting that chocolate also helps boost serotonin, so your craving could be emotional. If you’ve got the blues, you can find healthy ways to indulge in a bit of chocolate and spend some time relieving your stress in other ways.

Curbing Carbohydrate Cravings

If you’ve already looked around Cravings Cured, you know that we don’t think carbohydrates are the devil. Your craving for empty carbs and calories may simply stem from not eating enough healthy carbs, particularly those with plenty of gut-feeding fiber.You’re probably having trouble keeping your blood sugar in check, and the right diet can help minor issues with this.

These are some tips to help satisfy your carb craving while staying fit:

  • Discover whole and sprouted grains, tofu, lentils, starchy vegetables, and other sources of healthy carbs and fiber again.
  • You may lack magnesium and chromium, which also help balance blood sugar.
  • Make sure you’re hydrated and have had enough sleep.

Fried Food Cravings 

The most intuitively obvious reason for craving fried food is a lack of healthy fat. You might start by eating a portion or two of nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut oil, grass-fed butter, fatty fish, or olive oil. If you want to fry food, try using a little bit of spray oil in the oven or a saute pan instead of several inches of deep-fry oil.

Red Meat Obsessions

People actually don’t tend to crave read meat as much as they crave carbs. That might suggest something about the importance of healthy carbs over dripping hunks of red meat. In any case, cravings for red meat are likely to stem from a need for health fat, iron, or certain B vitamins. Dark-green vegetables, legumes, and adding a bit of nutritional yeast to other dishes can help with this.

Salt

You need to consume some salt to stay healthy, so if you’ve been carefully avoiding salt, make sure you consume some every day. Otherwise, you may have a problem with an electrolyte imbalance because of a lack of B vitamins or even stress. Coconut water helps balance electrolytes. Otherwise, food with healthy fat and B vitamins, like nuts, seeds, and legumes.

Nutritional yeast also has a cheesy, salty flavor that most people like, and you can add it to vegetables and other dishes as a condiment.

What if Food Won’t Satisfy Your Food Cravings

If you eat an ample amount of healthy food, it’s likely you’re having trouble balancing your blood sugar because you don’t stay hydrated, need more sleep, or are struggling with stress or other emotional issues. In some cases, you may suffer from other medical conditions, so it’s not terrible advice to tell you to get a checkup if you suffer cravings frequently and simple dietary changes don’t offer any solutions. A doctor can test your blood sugar and other markers.

Your Two Brains: Why Your Gut Bacteria Matter for Weight Loss

Can Gut Bacteria Impact Weight Loss?

Yes, Walnuts Look Like Brains!

Scientists have known about the trillions of bacteria that live in your gut for at least a century; however, in those early days, they just thought the bacteria took advantage of free rent and board. Only recently, have doctors come to understand that the relationship between you and the incredible ecosystem that lives in your gut was a symbiotic one.

You feed your bacterial zoo, and in turn, you could say that your gut bacteria help to feed you. Does the unique balance of specific bacteria keep you lean or overweight? A few years ago, a lot of doctors would have scoffed at the idea; however, may of them are changing their mind.

Do Scientists Think Your Gut Biome Impacts Your Weight?

Some very credible studies say your gut biome may very well impact how hard or easy you find losing weight. Harvard Medical School reported on two studies of the impact of gut bacteria upon weight. One involved mice; however, the other one explored the impact of the gut biome on humans.

  • In the first study, scientist used three strains of mice. The first strain tended to be lean, but the second strain tended to get plump. The third group was bred to lack gut bacteria. When the researchers injected that third strain with gut bacteria from the lean group, they mice stayed lean. However, when they injected mice from the third group with bacteria from the plump group, the mice gained more weight.
  • A related study took the gut bacteria from two identical twins. One twin was lean, and the second twin was obese. When these bacteria were injected into the gut of two groups of no-bacteria mice, the results were predictable. The mice that got the lean twin’s bacteria remained lean, but the second group became plump.

Does Gut Bacteria Determine Your Destiny?

Your gut bacteria may have so much impact over your weight for a few reasons. Frankly, some bacteria are much better at breaking food up into suitable food to send back up into your bloodstream than others. If you’ve got too many of those efficient bacteria, you may fair well during lean times, but you’re probably not suffering from lean times. When overweight people contend that they have a harder time losing weight than leaner people, they’re often right.

Still, your gut bacteria don’t have to be your destiny. Dr. Mark Hyman believes you can change your diet to help promote the growth of more helpful bacteria that can crowd out the less helpful critters:

1. Eat More Omega-3 and Less Omega-6 Food Sources

He attributes one problem to an overabundance of Omega-6 vs. a deficit of Omega-3 fatty acids in typical diets. For instance, walnuts have a lot of Omega-3 fatty acids, so maybe it’s not even an accident that a walnut looks like a brain. It’s smart to eat them!

Other good choices include olive oil, avocados, other nuts and seeds. Also, you can’t depend upon every plant oil as a good source of Omega-3. Other fantastic gut food includes coconut oil, fatty fish, and butter from grass-fed cows.

2. Change Your Plate

One easy rule to remember is to consume at least 75 percent of your daily diet from plant-based foods. If you make that one change, you’re bound to impact your health positively.

What Does Your Gut Have to Do With Your Brain?

The headline promised something about having two brains. Well, the interesting thing about your gut-brain connection is that several times more nerves run from your gut to your brain than run the other way. That means that your gut probably spends a lot more time sending your brain information and possibly requests than your brain sends back.

Because of this collection of nerves and the way digestion works, many scientists have referred to the gut as a second brain. It’s likely that keeping your gut biome balanced can also help relieve food cravings and may even improve mood and other health issues. They don’t call carb rich food, comfort food for nothing.

Change Your Gut to Grow Lean Naturally

Your gut may be your diet destiny today, but you can impact it. Remember the study with the identical twins who have the same DNA but very different body types. Illnesses, antibiotics, and food choices have impacted your gut bacteria your entire life, but you still have some control.

 

Dr. Hyman’s Video on Gut Bacteria

3 Big Reasons Diets Make You Fatter

The Truth About How Diets Make You Fatter

Why Diets Make You FatSad but true, 95 percent of dieters fail. What’s worse, their stoic attempts to starve themselves by restricting all food or entire groups of food. usually end up making these dieters gain weight and lose lean muscle. In the end, the weight-loss diet has make them fatter than they were before they attempted to become more fit. If your diet made you fatter, you followed a bad diet. Take a moment to understand why.

Reasons That Most Diets Make You Fatter

Honestly, there are dozens of reasons that popular diets don’t work well in the long term. The reasons may also vary with the diet. These are the big three that most of the reasons can be categorized into:

1. You Restricted Calories Too Much

Lisa Young, an NYU professor, compared dieting to budgeting. She said that budgets should help you become more frugal as you learn to spend less money; however, you can reach a point where you don’t spend enough money to maintain some reasonable level of comfort and security. Most diets make you fatter for exactly the same reason.

You see, your body needs calories to provide the fuel that it uses to burn more calories. If you restrict you food too much, you won’t give your body the kindling that it needs to ignite the fuel it burns to give you energy. Basically, your body thinks you’re starving, because you actually are, and slows down in an effort to conserve precious fuel. In addition, your normal routine may seem like too much effort, so you may find yourself opting for Netflix instead of a nice walk in the sunshine.

2. You Can’t Stop Thinking About Food

You know what slim people don’t do; they don’t think about food as often as chubbier people do. Slim people may enjoy delicious food, but they don’t always dream about their next meal or snack. If nothing else, Cravings Cured hoped to underline the point that easy-to-fix nutritional deficiencies spark cravings.

If you’re dreaming pie right now, your body is probably crying out for some quick calories, fibers, and other nutrients that pie contains. Of course, you can find better ways to feed that craving than with piles of white sugar, but you’ve got to feed them.

3. Your Diet Doesn’t Feed Your Body

Your brain needs energy to function, your muscles need protein to maintain themselves, and your gut needs fiber to stay healthy. You can actually damage your body’s balance of microbes, hormones, and metabolism by restricting food too much and for too long.

Why do people create diets that mess with people’s health? That’s a question for another article; however, it’s obvious that the diet industry earns more profits when it keeps people fat than when they’re thin.

How to Fix Your Diet to Keep it From Making You Fatter

Most people can turn their diets into healthy eating plans that help them lose weight by following these three basic steps:

  • First, make sure you’re eating enough protein. Every cell in your entire body needs protein to function. Protein deficiencies can cause weight gain, muscle loss, and lots of other bad news. Typical Western diets contain enough protein, but that might not be true if you’ve been restricting calories or groups of food.
  • After you check protein consumption, ensure that you’re eating about twice as much fiber as the average American.
  • Finally, add a reasonable amount of healthy fat.
  • Typically, requirements for macronutrients like fat, fiber, and protein depend upon your  size, gender, and activity level, but you can easily research this information.

What’s a reasonable amount of calories to consume?This tips can provide rough estimates:

  • One rule of thumb says to multiple your goal weight by 100. If you hope to weight 120 pounds, you might try to eat about 1,200 calories a day. Typically, this formula was meant for fairly sedentary people. If you’re active at play or work, you’ll need to eat more.
  • Most nutritionists advise people not to drop their calories under 1,200 a day, so you may need to add more activity if you think you need to weigh less than 120 pounds. Few adults are actually overweight at 120 pounds, but people have different body types.

If you want to lose a lot of weight, like more than 10 pounds, I suggest setting goals of losing 10 pounds at a time. For instance, if you weight 190 and would like to weigh 150, set 180 as your first goal. Give your body time to adjust to a new weight and yourself a chance to celebrate. You might try to eat about 1,700 calories a day to see how that impacts the way you feel about food.