Lose Weight and Keep it Off - How to Beat the Cravings

If you want to lose weight and keep it off you must conquer your cravings for unhealthy foods. But why do we crave foods? What causes us to crave these foods that are bad for us and make us put on weight?

There are at least 3 things that make us crave food. The first thing is food sensitivities. Food sensitivities are very elusive and tricky. Most people don’t even know they have them.

When you eat do you cough up mucus, feel sleepy, bloated, have excess gas, indigestion or heart burn? Do you have chronic constipation? Irritable bowel syndrome? Do you have unexplained chronic pain, pain that seems to come for out of nowhere? Do you have allergies? These are just some of the symptoms you may experience if you have a food sensitivity.

So how do you figure out which food or foods you are sensitive to? Sometimes it takes up to 72 hours before you feel the effect of a food that you are sensitive to. Maybe you eat something you’re sensitive to today and tomorrow you have an allergy attack or maybe your eczema is worse. You don’t make the connection because it took so long to feel the effect.

Food sensitivities occur because your body has built up immune complexes to something in the food that you’re sensitive to, most likely a protein in that food. But it could be an additive in the food. Whatever the source, any time you consume this food, your body’s immune system attacks. It doesn’t matter if the food that you ate was a healthy for or not, if your immune system labels it as foreign, its not something you should be eating because it will cause an inflammatory response. Inflammation is the underlying cause of weight gain and almost all chronic diseases. Inflammation is how your body handles any injury. If you get a splinter in your finger or if there is damage to your cells, your body uses inflammation to repair the damage.

There are two methods you can use to find out which foods you are sensitive to. You can do a blood test that detects an IgG response or you can do an elimination diet. Scratch tests are useless because they are used to detect and IgE immune response, an allergy.

The difference between allergies and sensitivities is that allergic reactions effects you immediately after you eat the offending food. Sensitivities can take up to 72 hours. If you are allergic to shrimp your throat may close up or you may break out in hives when you eat it. With food sensitivities you may get some GI disturbances soon after eating but some of the effects, especially the ones that occur in outside your gut can take up to 3 days to occur. Allergies and sensitivities are not the same.

There are pros and cons to both both methods used to test for sensitivities. A blood testis much faster but its also expensive. A blood test can cost over $1000 and they aren’t 100 percent accurate. You can expect an accuracy rating of around 86 percent. An elimination diet is free but time consuming and frustrating because you have to eliminate possible foods for at least 30 to 45 days. Then add each food back into your diet one at a time with a one week interval between each foods. So you could potentially be on the elimination diet for months.

I never said this was going to be cheap or easy but if you want to get a handle of your cravings you must first figure out which foods, chemicals, dyes or additives you are sensitive to and eliminate them from your diet.

The second cause of cravings lies in a part of your brain called the limbic system, the most ancient part of your brain. The limbic system stores memories and forms emotions. It is also responsible for pride, jealousy, addiction, anxiety and eating.

Your nose and mouth have a connection with the limbic system also. Your sense of smell and taste travel through the limbic system where they get intertwined with your memories and emotions. Have you ever smell an aroma that reminded you of a certain time and place? Maybe the smell of fresh baked bread reminds you of the time when you were in a little girl baking bread in your grandmother’s kitchen. Or maybe the taste of red wine takes you back in your mind’s eye to the night your husband proposed to you?

These associations between memories and emotions with tastes and smells create long lasting cravings. But the good news here is, these cravings aren’t nearly as strong and overwhelming as those associated with food sensitivities. But it does take longer to handle these cravings. I have found that it takes about 18 months for the average person. You just need to realize what you are up against and not get frustrated. Understand that it is going to take time.

The best way that I have found to handle these cravings is to create new memories and emotions with healthier foods. The way to do this is to eat healthier foods during holidays, birthday parties or other special occasions. We tend to remember the really good times and the really bad times. Everything else just fades away.

Think of the limbic system as a photo album. When you look at the pictures you can remember all sorts of details. Maybe you can remember an argument you were having with someone in the picture or taking the picture. When you look at another picture maybe you remember your first crush? But the older the picture, the fuzzier the details become. You can remember more about the picture taken last week than you can of one taken 10 years ago.

The idea here is to replace the memories and emotions that you currently feel when you think of ice cream with newer memories and emotions associated with a healthier alternative, something that is dairy free, if you are sensitive to dairy.

I know this may sound silly but it works.

Now there are some tastes that you will always like. The ones that are programed into our DNA, sweet foods, salty foods and fatty foods. These are going to be with you always. But they are much more controllable. A little will-power is all you need for these.

So in summary, the first source of cravings, the food sensitivity craving, is the one you must handle first because your will-power is powerless against these if you don’t handle them now. These are the cravings that won’t allow you to think about anything else until you’ve eaten that piece of cheese or ate that piece of chocolate. These are the cravings that have killed every diet you’ve ever attempted. Once you handle this everything will be much easier in comparison. There aren’t any tips or tricks to make this easy. You just have to do it. You will go through withdrawals, you may get headaches for a week, you will be grumpy and may be hard to live with for a couple of weeks but it gets a lot easier as you go. The first two weeks are the hardest. Now that you know what you are going to be up against, you are prepared, you are ready. After you handle the food sensitivities everything else is a piece of cake.