Craving Food? Learn how to avoid cravings without using willpower!

We have discussed craving coming from pathogenic gut bacteria.  There is another, whole body craving having to do with blood sugar.  Everyone has heard of blood sugar in some way, whether it has to do with a diabetic or a child getting a toe prick when they are infants.   

When sugar is used as a primary fuel, it activates metabolic pathways that cause blood sugar to drop quickly and substantially in order for your body to “need” replenishment.  This is in addition to the signals sent from pathogenic gut bacteria.  This is “willpower’s” worst enemy.  We are not a nation who is all of a sudden in the past 60 years (since the governmental dietary guidelines came out) devoid of willpower.  Willpower and the term “hangry” are not things that our ancestors knew about.  We have created this phenomenon and the foods industry specifically fuels this fire by creating meal times, such as breakfast, lunch and dinner.  This is for one reason only, marketing.  They can tell you the most important meal of the day is Breakfast, consisting of breads, oatmeal or cereals of all kinds.  With that breakfast you most likely wont even be able to make it to lunch without a snack, but don’t worry, they created a snack for you as well.  Then comes lunch, just had your snack a few hours ago, but over the last year you realized you have been gaining some weight, so you eat your salad at lunch.  Satisfying for about 30 minutes you turn to a snack or two in between lunch and dinner.  Now it is dinner time, you are still being “health” conscious so you cook or open a package of lean meat on top of a salad or make a pasta that today, might be “gluten free” so it is healthier.  I cant fill this article with quotation marks on every term as it would get ridiculous but you get the picture. So now it is 9pm, dinner was at 6 and you are starving or just craving food, well they invented dessert for you as well.  These desserts and snacks suppress the signals that relay the fact you are full and the body doesn’t need anything else.  Now starts a tough night of sleeping for unknown reasons (reason being your body is fighting foods that the is not meant to be consumed by the human body all night).  Waking up in the morning, hectic lifestyle, rushing yourself or the kids out the door eating something quick again, breads, cereals or oatmeal and the cycle starts again.  This cycle is not just a pain to live with, but truly detrimental to the cells and organs in your body.  Creating mitochondrial stress which allows weak cells to survive instead of being killed off and producing a toxic environment and the start of modern diseases such as general inflammation like Alzheimer's and even cancer. Sounds awesome, sign me up for that daily routine (85% of Americans are unknowingly accustomed to this and in metabolic disfunction)  

Now let me remind you, I did not know I was part of this cycle for the 34 years.  It wasn’t until I met someone similar to myself who had the knowledge to show me the light and breakdown what was going on in a systematic way.  I was an American sugar loving adventurer.  I did CrossFit for 4 years 5-6 days a week.  I didn’t do it to lose weight (I didn’t realize I had to lose 40-50lbs) I did it for the sport and the brutal concept (never lost a pound).  I was always an avid traveler and hiking was my thing.  So I never noticed a need to change anything.  After learning about children's nutrition, becoming a nutritionist, body transformationist, personal trainer and health coach, I realized the world is not what I thought it was.  Let me put it in terms of my daily routine in a fashion that mimics the above example of our body being primarily by glucose but in our case fat adapted.  Married with 3 daughters under the age of 9 and using fat for ketones as our primary fuel.  Let me preface this with the fact that we don’t use the terms breakfast, lunch or dinner, they are just meals and very interchangeable.  We wake up after a successful restful sleep, sometimes we eat breakfast of eggs and bacon or the meat from the night before, many times we as a family don’t eat breakfast due to our nutrient dense dinner the night before (correct, the kids are rarely hungry in the morning).  Lunch time comes, many times it is later than 12 if we did eat breakfast.  We have high fat meats such as sirloin or ribeye's, but really concentrate on eating the fatty protein from the night before (yes, the girls bring cold meat to school) no snack before dinner and many times we have to make sure we do eat enough for dinner if in fact we did eat breakfast and lunch.  Dinner will consist of protein high in fat such as chicken thighs (chicken breast is as nutrient dense in our eyes as lettuce, weak) or ground beef in many forms.  Now for the great night sleep and the day starts again.  What you should notice is the lack of cravings, snacks and overall processed foods.  We beat the system by eating ancestrally.  The whole food animal products we consume are so nutrient dense and bioavailable to the human body that we don’t hesitate to let growing children skip a meal or not “clean” their plate.  When their body tells them they have had enough, you can bet they received what they need.  After reading both scenarios, if one does not sound better than another, move on, but if you are intrigued by this concept, you can live now with minimal modern diseases and better yet, allow future generations to live free of modern disease.  No cravings, mental clarity, using clean fuel for energy and proper brain function, that is true metabolic health and is done through fat adaptation.