Feed The Beast

Your cravings are the devil! They will get you in trouble every time. Here's why: it is much more complicated than just lack of personal discipline or weakness of character.

Your cravings are your body's cries for drugs. Everyone has their "drug of choice": caffeine, sugar, salt, fried foods, beer, wine, bread, tobacco, fast food, candy, soda pop. Indulging year after year in feeding your addiction has altered your DNA. Here's how:

If your drug of choice is alcohol then you are basically a sugar addict. Alcohol turns to sugar in your system. When sugar enters your stomach your pancreas produces insulin which metabolizes the sugar. Your body is smart; if your body predicts that every evening around 6pm there will be an influx of sugar, like a good butler, it releases the insulin. The problem becomes when you are trying to abstain from alcohol and your body continues to release the insulin. When your system has too much insulin, it sends a message to your mind to EAT SUGAR! This is to absorb the excess insulin that has been released in your body. Because the mind is easily sated with these "foods", it cannot hear the bodies cries for nourishment.

Nutritional healers have used

• honey to treat alcoholism
• chromium and brewer's yeast to treat sugar cravings
• spicy peppers to induce water craving and thus curb appetite
• aromatherapy and cooking with fresh herbs to aid in weight reduction
• psyllium seed to kill cravings for large amounts of food
• exercise and yoga to curb cravings for fatty foods
• extra virgin olive oil in cooking and rubbed on the body to satiate fried food cravings

How do you kill the beast?

1. Flood your body with nutrients. The average American is deficient in Chromium (brown rice, molasses, eggs and potatoes). Calcium must be present in your body in order to process Iron; but you cannot take Iron and Calcium supplements together. Zinc and Selenium are common deficiencies. (fish, kelp, legumes, pecans, edamame, sunflower seeds)
2. Plan every meal and snack. You will eat crap if you don't have a meal planned, prepared and waiting for you. You will not choose an apple, a handful of walnuts and a liter of distilled water when you go to a restaurant to eat. Get a pen and paper and plan your attack on your food choices. Go to the grocery store with a detailed list and make whole, healthy foods easily available to you 5 times a day in the form of meals and snacks.
3. Go 30 days without soda pop. Drink water.
4. Go 30 days without caffeine. Drink water.
5. Go 30 days without alcohol. Remember, those AA guys do it all the time. They come to your company happy hours and swill a glass of tonic water and lime and smile that knowing smile as everyone around them becomes fat-tongued. See the world from the other side. Nobody, I mean NOBODY, has ever noticed I was drinking non-alcoholic beverages at a party. Trust me, they are only thinking about themselves.
6. Go 30 days without eating in a restaurant. This is such a quick easy fix for a lot of things: overeating, abstaining from salt and fat, budget management.
7. Keep a diary. List everything about your current health and weight. Make a note of your emotional/mental state. Keep a list of every morsel that crosses your lips. Note how detoxing from sugar/fat/salt feels. Write down how many days it takes to get over it. Write down how it feels to be clean.

"If you change to a vegan diet, and do it very
vigorously, you have enormous power... You can, I believe, prevent most
cases of cancer if you combine dietary changes with avoiding tobacco. You
could prevent probably 70% or 80% of cancers, just by those steps alone.
And, obviously, there's a whole host of other diseases that you would be able to
live without."

Neal Barnard, M.D.

Turn Off the Fat Genes