Food cravings are interesting

From personal experience, I believe the root of cravings is influenced by our emotional state. This can relate to emotional lack, emotional depletion, emotional rollercoasters, over serving, people pleasing, suppressed emotions, stress, you get the idea. As self soothing behaviors through food become chronic, they begin to imbalance our blood sugar and related hormones (especially as it’s usually sweets, carbs, things that send blood sugar spiking, perhaps we are craving sweeter aspects of life) and it changes the way the brain responds to food in reference to reward. 

We often hear cravings are caused by hormones but what came first, the chicken or the egg? What is the root of the initial craving? Scarfing down too many snacks at the end of your day? Depleated? Eating ice cream after a breakup? Missing the sweetness of love. Gain weight after grief or a traumatic experience? This can also be a reflection of the way we use food to create physical protection from being hurt again or “holding on” to what is now a loss. (This is also seen in the unprocessed energetics around hoarding.)

We reach for food during emotionally turbulent times and then pretend that emotions play no part in our health or are indeed, the root of both health and dis-ease. I recently had to take a hard look at my own eating habits because I myself was reflecting binge eating patterns. My close friends were like “what are you talking about, I never see you do that.” 

Ahh yes, because we usually self soothe alone, in secrecy, just as we may swallow down our feelings, alone, in secrecy to the world. Lots of pretend going on and eventually we find ways to cope through these self soothing behaviors. At the bottom of this, we must take a good look at where we are living in the past, what we choose to allow in our lives, how we spend our days, unhealed wounds and how this reflects our relationship with food and/or self soothing behaviors.

I do believe there are addictive substances throughout all processed foods and mineral depletion in our food can be related to cravings, however, there are massive emotional components around using food to self soothe that are often overlooked.

If any of this sounds familiar, I encourage you to track when your eating habits fall off and pay close attention to your emotional state around eating habits. Once I shifted things in my life that were causing depletion through overserving in both my personal and professional life, my cravings decreased tremendously. I no longer had to replace the energy that I was too freely offering to others. I no longer had to make up for the mass energetic depletion that overserving and lack of boundaries will eventually create. As I “let go” of these aspects of my life that were no longer serving me in the capacity that they once were, my chronic bloating decreased, as I was no longer binging or holding on, nor was I swallowing down my feelings and needs in lieu of other peoples needs before my own.

In case you are wondering, my vice of choice was potato chips and just to be clear, binging is a self soothing habit while over induldging on occasion is entirely different. At the end of my day, I would walk to the store and get a bag of potato chips, knowing damn well what I was about to do. Did I hide it well? I sure did because I’m active, workout often and have extremly balanced and clean habits around food elsewhere. I didn’t do this everyday, more so a few times a week. However, that does not mean that my behavior was not an emotional and self soothing pattern to fill an energetic void and depletion. Just because we hide things well, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. This behavior is often what starts this cycle to begin with.

Our relationship with food, reasons for bloating, food sensitivities, food allergies, etc can be extremely complicated and often need a holistic approach to fully heal. If you are cutting out foods, taking enzymes, probiotics, supplements, all the things and still having digestion imbalance, I encourage you to ask yourself what you are swallowing down, what has not been fully healed, what you are unable to let go of and what is depleating you.

With Love, Jen xx