One thing that you may have noticed if you have followed my advice and decided to increase the amount of fat and protein in your diet is that your cravings are gone (or at least decreased).
While you might be thinking, of course, fat makes you feel full (and you are right), but there is more going on here than you might realize and this has big implications on why you want to continue to eat the way you are eating.
Am I Really Hungry?
You probably know what hunger is, don’t you? It is that ache in your stomach and if you don’t eat soon, then thoughts of food becomes an obsession, where you have to get some food and you have to get it right now.
We’ve all seen those movies where someone is crawling across a desert, the sun is beating hard down on their head and the last bit of water they had was yesterday. Most people describe hunger in exact same way (only instead of craving water they are craving French fries, or a chocolate bar).
This may come as a bit of a surprise, but that is not hunger.
What you are experiencing is addiction. When you become obsessed, shaky, aggressive and anxious about not having food, then you are experiencing withdrawal symptoms from an addiction.
As you move from eating a standard American diet to eating healthy, you have removed a lot of the foods that you are addicted to. But as so many addiction programs say: Once an addict, always an addict.
Here is what you need to know about the fuel in your body: Even the skinniest of bodies has more than enough fuel on board to live without eating for a month. This panicked feeling you feel when you are late for lunch is the result of a modern world where food is easily found and where manufactures of that food have made you addicted enough that the thought of skipping a meal sends most people into panic mode. Think about wild animals, they spend much of their time not eating, but their bodies have adapted to this feast and famine state. Tigers don’t get shaky when they haven’t eaten for a while, nor do sharks get impatient when their last meal was over 12 hours ago.
By the way, there are a lot of benefits to fasting and I will discuss in another post.
What Kills Cravings
You will probably always have to battle the craving monster, but eating whole foods (mostly vegetables and proteins) puts that monster to sleep. Remember that there are three things that help us to feel full. They are protein, fats, and fiber. Every meal should include at least one or more of these.
