The meaning of food cravings

Food cravings are one of the biggest reasons people fail with their diet program. We’ve all experienced cravings for our favorite foods when dieting, but have you also wondered what the meaning of food cravings might be?

There could be a reason why they appear and finding out what causes food cravings could also help us overcome them.

For one thing, food cravings have an emotional basis, this is also known as emotional eating. For example, when you sit in front of the television at night and despite having dinner, now you are also eating something. This is not because you are hungry, but possibly because you feel lonely. Food has become your friend or replace your partner and what you really want is company with someone who values ​​you. But since this feeling is not available to you at the time, the pleasure of having food acts as an easy replacement because it is cheap and readily available in today’s society.

However, the emotional meanings of food cravings are not always so obvious, but they can also be connected to many other negative emotions or events in your life. Since one may not always be aware of connections, methods with a somewhat psychological background, such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) or Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), can help to deal with these types of cravings.

A second important meaning of food cravings is simply the body’s clamor for more nutrients. You can eat the wrong foods, for example, too much junk food with a lot of calories, but a low density of valuable vitamins and minerals. Although it would obviously make more sense if your body wanted carrots instead of a donut in this case, it doesn’t seem to work this way.

Usually, you crave what you are used to eating, because your body knows that that is the food that is available. And now your body is giving you a signal for more food to extract more of any nutrient that you are deficient in.

Another aspect of the nutritional side of the meaning of food cravings is sharp fluctuations in blood sugar. Eating too many refined carbohydrates has been shown to lead to a high spike in blood sugar, which is followed by the release of insulin. This, in turn, often allows the blood sugar to drop rapidly to a level even below where it was before the meal was consumed, again stimulating the appetite.

With these two main meanings of food cravings in mind, cravings are most efficiently eliminated when both the emotional and the nutritional sides are addressed.