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!