Interesting question. I think cravings can be an important indicator that we need something, and by taking into account what we are craving and how we are craving it can tell us a lot about our needs. There is not enough scientific evidence to convince me of food addictions but I do think our brain gets used to certain patterns of behavior, and we are likely to set our own selves up for intense cravings by restricting certain foods. For example, for over 20yrs I binged in my car. If I was going from Point A to Point B I'd give myself an extra 20min so that I could go through a drive-thru before arriving to Point B. Every time. Like Pavlov's dogs, every time I'd get in my car my mind would automatically calculate the nearest drive thru. It's a pattern of behavior that is very hard to break. Is that a craving? I don't think so. My mouth waters and I immediately think of burger king when I step into my car... So we have to ask ourselves if this is a real craving, where it comes from and is it just a pattern of behavior that we are reinforcing?
Cravings born out of restriction are the worst, they are soo soooo strong. And cause the biggest guilt when you give in to them. If I tell myself "no pasta for a month" then guess what, I'm thinking about that pasta every single day and resentful that I can't have it. It's a miracle if I don't give in before the month is up but I guarantee on day 30 you'll find me buried in a bowl of linguini. The only thing that was keeping me from doing it was willpower alone, and we all willpower is a very bad source of energy.
Cravings can be very confusing when they hit hard. Since I've gotten in tune with my body my cravings have not only become less intense but they've also become more specific. So before I'd just want something sweet, it could be anything, i'd just be focused on eating anything that I could find that was sweet - rampage my cupboards. Now if I want something sweet it's specific. I'll specifically want a bowl of raisin bran, and in the absence of that I can't settle for a cookie. If my craving is not specific then that's how I know for sure that it's NOT a real food craving, it's just anxiety or an emotional need.
Last edited by Palestrina; 05-30-2014 at 02:25 PM.
Not for me. My body never calls for the healthy fats that I feed. It wants Panda Express orange chicken and it wants it NOW.
Yea me too. I've been told that if I can just hold on and eat "clean" long enough that my body will learn to dislike the goodies. Nope, I love avocados. But all the avocados in the world cannot make me stop loving mayonnaise.
Depends on the craving and the source. I've had nutrient cravings and I usually indulge them, unless the basis of them is carb withdrawal. In which case indulging them worsens the cycle.
I will even eat something I have a head craving for, but I will do so on specific occasions, in specific quantities, or I will make a substitute that fits my plan. I do this much less frequently because I don't like reinforcing those pathways in my brain, but I'm not militant about it.
Generally, though, I don't have strong cravings for off plan foods. I eat what sounds goods and fits my plan 95% of the time, and the rest I deal with on a case by case basis.
We've all seen cats and dogs eat grass. Not just any grass either. It seems to be a particular sort. I have no idea if they have a craving as such. But they know what they need and they go and get it. It looks so funny a big dog with big teeth trying to bite off a skinny sliver of grass.
But when you see them poo grass you know they had a tummy upset or a bit of constipation. Its medicinal but I don't think we can ever know if there's a craving for it. Or if they just know from some other means.
When I was trying to quit smoking I read about how we train ourselves that when X happens we want Y. And it becomes a habit. When I first started smoking I would smoke in the bathroom all the time & also in the car. So EVERYTIME I would go to the bathroom or be in the car I wanted a cigarette. It didn't matter if I just had one. I think it is the same way with food. If I have trained myself that everytime I sit on the couch at night and watch a movie I eat chips, then in that same type of experience I am going to crave chips. That one is pretty obvious. But I bet there are tons and tons of other experiences that are tied with food that we just do not realize we do or that we have tied together.
This has only become a problem for me in the last couple years - I never had these food routine issues before. I think it might be tied to Bigger Life Issues and trying to create rituals/routines in looking for comfort, but man. After buying the house, there were a lot of long summer days of manual labor, which led to cold (GF) beers and ordering out small (GF) pizza. And now whenever I do yard work for awhile, I come inside and want pizza. My husband and I got into one very bad habit this spring of ordering Chinese takeout every Friday night to eat while we watched a terrible SyFy series we'd gotten sucked into. And it was terrible, because Friday would roll around and we wanted Chinese. It is definitely worse if your partner-in-crime gets trained to want these things too, because then you're just aiding and abetting one another.
I hate those cravings because they aren't real in the nutritional sense, but hardwiring food to recurring routines can do something fierce to the brain.
... Lots of yardwork on tap today. But, I promise myself - no pizza!
John Yudkin in his book Pure, White, and Deadly talks about palatablity. Most animals have the same nutrient needs but different ecological niches.
So giraffes find particular leaves very palatable. For sure because they can extract the nutrients but also over eons they evolved to 'like them'.
For humans it has gotten infinitely harder the last 50 years. Yudkin wrote his book in the early 70s and recognized it even then.
There are so many foods now, tens of thousands that are so concocted the palatablity and nutrition have become disengaged. For processed foods it just doesn't hold anymore.
After I went through a hard transition period of two months I lost my sugar and carb cravings thank goodness.
I am more sensitive to needs now. But honestly not before. Except to this extent. I do believe carbs left me so hungry were because of two main factors. One of course the insulin spike led to food storage and the drop leading to hunger. But also carbs from grains, potatoes, etc. are not particularly nutrient dense so my body wanted more nutrients. Not devoid of nutrients just not as dense as say a steak or kale.
Body: We need sodium.
Brain: Sodium? How about potato chips? A family size bag of potato chips. Eat all of it.
Body: Potato chips? No, not an option. How about something else?
Brain: Um... *begins frantically flipping through the log for another alternative
Meanwhile, that craving for potato chips has kicked in. If you give in to it, the brain is no longer forced to come up with a different solution and you've set yourself up for a future chip craving. But if you wait it out, and instead eat the healthy food that your brain finally decides on, then you've started the reprogramming process and next time the craving will (hopefully) be for the healthy food.
Am I making any kind of sense?
Has anyone else experienced this? Is there any validity to this theory? Anyone have any thoughts?
I admit I didn't quite understand what you meant when I first read this so I've been giving it some thought. My NT uses the phrase "rewiring your brain" often in our sessions and I've come to believe that this is the only way to change our behaviors. Since a lot of people told me for a long time that food was the cause of these behaviors I tried to change that - of course it did not work but I still knew that something had to change... especially since all the people in my life weren't affected by those foods in the way I was I had a hard time accepting that those foods affected me differently and considered other options instead. I had to take a very good look at the impulses that drove me to eat and by doing so I figured out that I was an emotional eater - once I understood that process it became much easier to find the triggers. My triggers are uncomfortable feelings such as stress, anxiety, boredome, lonliness, happiness, restriction.... basically all emotions caused me to eat. So a craving was not necesssarily a craving for food.
I don't think it's possible to trick our brains into thinking they want something else - if you want a tuna sandwich, there's no way that you will be ultimately satisfied by a spinach salad instead. The part of the brain that wants the tuna sandwich is primitive, it can't be reasoned with and it can't be fooled. I don't believe that your'e rewiring your brain by eating something else. If you're an emotional eater like me, and you've wasted your life addressing all your needs with food then you have to relearn how to meet your needs appropriately. A craving and hunger can be a signal pointing to another need. If you can learn how to identify your needs beyond the cravings and addressing them the way they need to be addressed then that's the true nature of rewiring your brain. Once you've done that, a craving does not become a dilemma anymore. You eat your tuna sandwich and you move on with your life happy as a clam.
I used to not crave anything healthy, EVER. I recently discovered how delicious lettuce and tomato is on sandwiches and can't get enough of it. I pile on the lettuce. This not only helps quench the craving, but it works to make me more full with less calories than adding more meat or cheese!
I admit I didn't quite understand what you meant when I first read this so I've been giving it some thought.
To clarify what I meant about this (the brain thinking the best source of sodium is potato chips) let me use this analogy...
Let's say the ONLY source of Vitamin X is papaya and Death by Chocolate Cake. You've never eaten a papaya. You've eaten a lot of Death by Chocolate Cake. So when the body alerts the brain that there is a need for Vitamin X, the brain's immediate answer is cake. When the body says, "No, not an option" the brain has to figure out that the alternative is papaya. Meanwhile, you've started craving cake because your brain thought about for a milisecond. If you give in to the craving, you've circumvented the brain's need to figure out papaya and, thus, the next time you need Vitamin X the brain will still think cake. But if you fight the craving once or twice or however long is takes for the brain to reprogram itself, the craving will eventually vanish and you'll never want cake again. This is, of course, a random theory based on my musings.
And if there is any truth to this theory, it could be an explanation for those of you who profess to never having cravings for anything healthy....your brain has never reprogrammed with healthy options.
The information people shared about animals eating what they know they need is interesting and not an angle I'd considered previously. It certainly would make sense that the body knowing how to care for itself would be a primal instinct, wouldn't it? An instinct that has, perhaps, been overridden and thwarted by decades of food manipulation and poor dietary choices (which diamondgeog alluded to in his post).
My husband and I got into one very bad habit this spring of ordering Chinese takeout every Friday night to eat while we watched a terrible SyFy series we'd gotten sucked into. And it was terrible, because Friday would roll around and we wanted Chinese. It is definitely worse if your partner-in-crime gets trained to want these things too, because then you're just aiding and abetting one another. 
