Living Yoga: Yoga and raw foods for radiant health and energy

6 Steps to Conquering Food Cravings
by Ellen Livingston

It's that time of year, when powerful food cravings can really sneak up on you and threaten to undermine all of your diligent dietary efforts! When you cave in to these cravings, you may feel disappointed and frustrated with yourself, confused, and even powerless. If that isn't enough, you may suffer some unpleasant physical symptoms as well! Let's face it, cravings are real, and they really test your commitment to health. Many of the food-stuffs you may crave contain addictive substances, such as the many opioids in grains and chocolate (addictive, toxic, morphine-like molecules), or the caso-morphine in cheese. Salt and spices also excite your system and lead to cravings. And for different people, certain foods trigger emotional associations, which can also exert a powerful influence.

I want you to know that these cravings are not a mysterious, incomprehensible phenomena, and you need not become a victim. With appropriate knowledge, you can take back your power and learn how to stay ahead of cravings. Health comes from healthy living, and that means knowing and respecting nature's laws. These laws govern all aspects of life, including diet, exercise, fresh air and sunshine, sleep, emotional poise, relationships, right livelihood, spirituality, creative expression, etc. Your health will only ever be as good as your weakest links.

Even if your diet is great, if you are over-stressed and sleep-deprived, you may still find yourself at times feeling overcome with powerful cravings for unhealthy foods. I have been on all raw food for nearly 6 years, and yes, I still experience a craving every now and then, and I certainly experienced them quite often in the early transitional years. I have learned what it takes to mostly eliminate these cravings, and to stop them in their tracks when they do appear.

In this article I simplify for you 6 areas of greatest importance for managing cravings.

1. Eat enough simple carbohydrates from fruit during the day. This really is the number one mistake most people make when transitioning to a raw diet. Until you learn to consume sufficient daytime carbs (and calories) from fruit, you will keep finding yourself reaching for concentrated sources of calories at the end of the day. This will cause you to either overeat on raw fats such as nuts, seeds, or avocados, or to stray to cooked foods such as grains (complex carbs) or cheese. Tastebuds deranged from years of eating cooked and spiced foods will also seek out excito-toxins (such as salt, onion, garlic, spices) in the confused search for fulfillment. These excite your tastebuds, and trigger cravings for more.

Making fruit your primary fuel requires new learning and lots of practice. This transition can be greatly enhanced and facilitated with personal coaching assistance and/or the appropriate info-products. See my services and products sections of my website, www.LivingYogaNow.com.

2. Get sufficient rest and sleep, and manage stress. Fatigue is a major factor in food cravings. It sets up an unhealthy cycle of giving in to cravings for "comfort", which further depletes your energy and vitality. Often when you are exhausted at the end of the day, what your body really wants is rest, not food at all. I'm sure you know that when you are well rested, everything in your world looks brighter and feels easier. Changing your eating and lifestyle habits requires focus and commitment, and these are much easier to maintain when you are well rested.

3. Go outside and play! Make your exercise fun, and integrate it into your lifestyle (such as walking or bike-riding to work) and you will be sure to make it happen. You "work" your body harder when you perceive that you are playing, such as in a tennis match, or in a game of tag with the kids, than when you perceive that you are doing "a workout".

Daily exercise and recreation are very important activities in a healthy lifestyle, and will help immensely toward curbing food cravings. Exercising outdoors in fresh air and sunshine is especially beneficial. When you exercise, you help to detoxify your body, you earn your calories, and you will tend to reach for and delight more and more in healthy fuel such as fresh fruit. You will also sleep better . . . do you begin to see how it all comes together in the "wheel" of natural health?

4. Eliminate and replace addictive foods. Many of the foods and food-stuffs common in the Standard American Diet are truly addictive, and cause your body to crave more of these substances. Even trace amounts of some of these foods can trigger your addictive response, and keep you stuck in an unhealthy cycle. While your body is cleansing on a raw diet, and actively circulating old toxic substances through your bloodstream and out of the body, it is common to experience cravings.

It takes tremendous will power to be able to include foods like cooked grains and starches, cheese, and condiments, salts and spices, and to keep them to the occasional, small quantity. Almost invariably this approach will lead to a physically and emotionally destructive kind of "yo-yo-ing" between raw and cooked food meals. It is just too easy to slip back into the apparent "comfort" of more and more of the addictive cooked foods, and to lose the ground you've gained on your raw program.

For many people it is actually easier to completely eliminate these tempting cooked foods, and to make an effort to diligently replace them with appealing raw alternatives. For example, if you know you will be at a party with tempting sweet treats, bring along a bag of dates, or even some raw "cookies". If you are headed to a restaurant, make a raw salad dressing at home and bring it with you. Eat lots of fruit just before you go, and you will be satisfied with a large, raw-dressed salad.

At home, especially on cold winter evenings, anticipate cravings by planning ahead to prepare simple, attractive raw dinners for yourself. Revel in the beauty of the simplicity of your meals! Warm your winter foods by removing them from the fridge several hours before you plan to eat, dunking them in very warm water for a few minutes, or, if you have a high-powered blender like a Vitamix, you can even warm your raw soups or salad dressings by letting them blend a little extra long. Add simple garnishes and make your meals beautiful.

When you allow your body to gradually rid itself of the toxins from all the cooked foods and stimulants, and all the residues finally leave your body, your cravings will subside.

5. Remember what you really want! Review my article in the last newsletter about "tapas", and find the inner strength to create what you really want (i.e. health!), out of the kind of love and respect that only you can have for yourself. I'm sure you've heard the term "emotional eating". Humans have learned how to subdue uncomfortable emotions by distracting the body's vital energy with food. Your body cannot effectively experience emotions and digest food simultaneously. If you eat while strong emotion is present (even if it is more subtle, partly unconscious emotion), you may be able to temporarily "stuff" the emotion, and you will likely also end up with indigestion!

Uncomfortable emotions can trigger cravings. By effectively, if temporarily, numbing your uncomfortable emotions, indulging in unhealthy food "comforts" you. It is helpful to understand this very human scenario, and to forgive yourself. In order to short-circuit this harmful pattern, you will need to be willing to sit with your emotions, and learn to replace the unhealthy eating pattern with other activities that will truly nourish and comfort you.

6. Practice yoga! Yoga can help you to conquer food cravings on many levels. Yoga relieves stress, gives you exercise, and helps to cleanse your body of toxic overload. Engaging in a few yoga postures at home in the moment when a food craving comes up can help you to resist the craving, and can allow you to just be with your emotions while channeling them safely into the nourishing, focusing activity of yoga. Regular yoga practice can help you to feel more connection to your true Self, and to a supportive energy beyond the self. You learn to observe and appreciate your emotions without needing to let them control your behavior. You can develop the emotional poise that will enable you to take back your power and self-control, and from this core of strength you will be able to put cravings in their proper place!

If you put even one of these 6 principles into place in your life, you will be on your way to conquering cravings! Believe in your strength, believe you are more powerful than the cravings, and you will succeed. You simply have some unlearning and retraining to do. In time, your tastebuds will heal, your body will cleanse itself, and cravings will lessen and fade away. But you need to take consistent action. You are not a victim unless you choose to be! Every day, in every moment, remember what you really want, and go for it!

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