When I started my blog, I didn’t have a clear vision about what should I write. But there was one thing I was sure about “The relationship between food and our life” how food shape our emotions, and how food nowadays is the culprit for obesity, and chronic disease.
I was wondering yesterday, is there any social media outlet, where you can just post a status about what food you are craving now? Sounds like a great idea for me! I may just start one!
Do you usually crave this? I don’t think so!
Food cravings can happen anytime without any warning signals, its just comes and boom! We crave food for the memory it awakened, and the pleasure it brings with just the think of it. And worse than that when you happen to have a kitchen full of “ready to eat” snacks and desserts.
It is really important to DEBUNK the myth “Nutrition deficiencies leads to certain food craving” we all crave high fat, high sugar, no ones craves red meat, because he/she is anemic but because of the high fat content. Many studies now are looking into that, Here you can read more about it
So whats behind food cravings?
There are many factors, scientists believed that will lead to food craving. But we still don’t have an exact idea why food craving happens to all individuals at different ages. These are few:
- Age: In this study They found that children are more vulnerable to food craving than adults, but they still can regulate these craving
- Gender: Many people believe that women have more food cravings, that’s maybe true. In this study stressed women are more prone to sweet craving than men, because of the increased leptin level.
- Stress: Is one of the major contributors of food cravings, In this study they found that chronic stress affect the calories you consume, in older women especially!
- PMS: Makes women crave sugary fatty food before period, because of the hormones status in the blood, where Cortisol is high and serotonin is low.
- Gut bacteria (I just happened to read this in the morning before I hit publish) Bacteria can play a major role in the food we crave, because the way its works like a “mini brain” its really interesting finding! Please read the article, I highly recommend it.
How to beat food cravings
If you tried just to suppress the urge to eat , you will end up eating more of the food you craved. In this study they found that women eat more chocolate when they tried to resist eating it.
In my personal opinion, advice such as creating new memories of healthy food is unrealistic. Memories created in a unique way, not everything we eat or do will be a memory. You can’t just create a salad in a graduation party, and called it a great memory, I don’t think it happens this way.
The most important tool to help you stop craving, is to stop think about food in a way that is the only solution, or the only easy access pleasure. Taking a bath or a long walk is a temporary solution, but having a goal in you life, and working hard for it, keeping your mind busy, and eventually creating ideas is the best way to stop craving.
And yet craving will just happen! I used to crave food all the time! Really! All kind of food I love. Now after having a baby to look after(makes me busy all day and night) I don’t have time to think what I’m craving now. But that doesn’t deny the fact, if you love food you will just crave it more often. Moreover, if you cook your food, you’ll crave it more, it really helps you of creating new dishes, but again it depends on how do you think of food!
Final words, don’t make food cravings a big deal, they won’t makes you fat, but overeating will. Therefore, controlling food portions, and opt out the low-quality, empty- nutritious food will help you a lot to stay on track of being healthy.Go outdoors it helps with elevated dopamine, and reduce stress which is normally leads to food cravings.
For Further reading:
