Fix your Cravings! Cravings: definition: intense uncontrollable desires for specific foods, stronger than normal hunger.
Cravings truth: may be indicators of nutritional deficiencies.
Many cravings are from your body lacking a nutrient or several nutrients. This can cause overeating because the body attempts to find the nutrients by eating and compensating for poor nutrition with volume of food.
Food cravings can be a type of signal that your body is out of balance. Other times it can be the power of suggestion such as smell, sight or someone telling you about a food experience.
Cravings can be caused by other factors such as hormone imbalance, unstable emotions, or pregnancy but this episode discusses when cravings are a signal that your body is missing something, and has a nutritional deficiency.
I'm going to give you Two Easy Fixes for cravings plus three supplements that help with craving control!
Easy Fix #1 Analyze your food logs.
Keep a true food journal that only you see, but make sure you see it. If you’ve never done a completely honest food journal, you’ll probably be surprised at your numbers, but especially your carb intake. Click here to download a sample food log page: Fit 281 FoodJournal
Don’t feel ashamed or guilty. This is raw data you need to solve a problem. Cravings can be a biological drive for carb-filled foods or other nutrients you need. Once you’ve got the data, identify low-sugar carbs that are acceptable substitutes for higher carb foods.
Once you have a tracker and can review what you are eating and what times, then you can analyze and figure out what is going on.
Look for missed meals and missed components (which cause unbalanced meals). Feedings should be every 3-5 hours with main meals 4-6 hours apart (ie breakfast-snack-lunch-snack-dinner-snack).
There are three common is patterns you'll find
1. missing meals
2. missing a major component in a meal: didn’t have any protein or carb or fats
3. Not enough food to support your activity
All of these things will add up. You might not feel a huge difference during that exact day, but if that pattern continues and you are lacking enough carbohydrates, enough fat, missed meals or components in each meal, for example maybe you didn't have any vegetables today, or may be you are not drinking enough water, all of these things can add up day after day and make a huge impact on how you feel-physically and mentally.
Physically you can feel bloaty, low energy, fatigued; mentally-you feel cranky, sluggish, unfocused. The mental aspect of what food does for you is one of the most underrated factors in motivation. keeping your head sharp, making your body feel good, making you feel good, even dictating your disposition or attitude, mo stly comes from your you food intake keeping your blood sugar levels even.
When you have cravings you have to do some investigation of what you may have done the last several days and what may be missing from your food plan. This is where the food log is very important to a successful fitness plan and especially for weight loss.
Easy Fix #2 Hydration
Hydration is the easiest, most effective, practical method to reduce food cravings. Water is essential for metabolizing glucose (in the form of glycogen) into usable energy, so when the body is dehydrated, it craves sugar to replenish what it perceives to be insufficient glycogen stores.
Staying hydrated allows your body to metabolize the glycogen that’s already in your system more efficiently. In doing this, it can cut off the craving before they develop.
Three supplements that help with craving control! **Check with your physician or doctor before adding supplements to your diet.
Supplement #1 Glutamine
Glutamine is an essential amino acid plays many different roles in your body such as Immune system, workout & stress recovery and muscle growth. Glutamine helps speed up and improves the recovery processes that your body goes through after an intense workout. Glutamine for muscle growth will boost your health, decrease recovery time and reduce infections.<iframe style="width: 120px; height: 240px; float: right;" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=fitnessmakeover-20&language=en_US&marketplace=amazon®ion=US&placement=B00024CSPY&asins=B00024CSPY&linkId=8c0f5a8cd2d9bceaa400973a6dfed9a4&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true" frameborder="0" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-modals allow-forms allow-same-origin"></iframe>
Glutamine improves your intestinal health, which is part of the immune system. Glutamine can help prevent leaky gut problems.
Glutamine can help curb carb cravings and eliminate obsessive thoughts about food since the brain uses Glutamine as an energy source.
How to use: Take 1 to 2 grams of Glutamine in water before meals to reduce overall carb intake.
Supplement #2: Magnesium
Magnesium is the nutrient of insulin sensitivity. Poor insulin health leads to the blood sugar rollercoaster, often triggering intense carb cravings, crankiness and low energy.
Magnesium deficiency causes cravings for chocolate, nuts and beans. Better choices for these cravings are nuts, fruits, seeds and avocado.
How to use: For healthy athletes with a low Magnesium intake, 500 mg daily decreases post-exercise elevations in blood glucose and lowers muscle soreness.
Supplement #3 Chromium
Chromium affects blood sugar and low chromium leads to carb cravings. If you are craving sugary sweets, your blood sugar level is likely be out of control. Lack of Chromium causes fat to accumulate in your blood, leading to high triglyceride levels and increased risk of heart disease. Food sources of Chromium include meat, cheese, and some spices.
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How to Use: 200 mcg Chromium, 1 to 3 times a day.
If you eat a balanced diet as taught in the fitness makeover you won't have cravings!
Exercise and Cravings
Stress can cause cravings and exercise or movement can help reduce them too. When we're busy or stressed or both, it's easy to find excuses to skip workouts. Instead, look for the opportunity to do a little bit of something different to keep your muscles active and strong. Your workouts don’t have to be perfect, they just have to move your body!
Physically, exercise secretes endorphins, making you feel better and re-focused on your goals while reducing cravings. when we're busy or stressed or both, it's easy to find excuses to skip workouts. Yet this is the time we need to prioritize workouts-and if it has to vary from your original plan because you are short on time, then fine-your workouts don’t have to be perfect, they just have to move your body!
Workouts should be about improving on something-weight, muscle feel, reps, control, focus and not every part of your workout is going to be better each time you workout. As long as something is improving then so are you.
Even if you can't get to the gym, do some knee lifts or go for a fast walk, or if watching tv make it a goal to do some activity during commercials-jumping jacks, squats, breathing exercises, crunches or push ups during commercials.
Motivation, Planning and Cravings
The way to control all of this is with time management and a little planning. Make sure you have things planned out! Plan your meals, if you don’t have them with you, then know what you need to eat and when you need to eat and where you are going to get it from and your exercise, know if you have time for full workout or part workout, any little bit is going to help, jumping jacks, crunches, pushes ups on the floor squats before you go to bed, just to get your body moving! Remind your body that it feels good when it moves! Use your time management to avoid procrastination or eliminate procrastination altogether because that is definitely a self induced stresser that doesn’t need to happen at all.
Checklist
Make a pack with yourself to figure out WHY you have the craving first before acting on it.
Keep a simple checklist near by:
- What am I craving?
- Have my meals been on time….is my blood sugar low?
- Have my meals been balanced…is my blood sugar low?
- Do I need additional nutrients/supplementation…under stress or hard workouts
did I miss a workout….too many missed + stress=not good! - Is there a physiological need for this craving?
- Can I live without caving to this craving?
When you have cravings you have to do some investigation. Think before you act!