Crave appeal: listen to yours!

Food cravings usually mean your body is trying to tell you something, whether it's that you're not eating enough or that you have a deficiency in a certain vitamin or nutrient. Which tends us down the ‘this for that’ line of thought, oh I need more of this nutrient. But there could be more to it than that (I.e there usually is!).

In general, a craving can signal something is out of balance, but it doesn't always mean you need a certain type of food. A craving might mean you're dehydrated, stressed or lacking sleep. If you crave a snack, and you eat it, but you don't feel any better, your body was never needing that food to begin with (but too late then, right?!).

So although cravings may feel problematic, they are actually not trying to sabotage your health efforts or derail you into the bottom of a chip bag.

The Sugar Intervention is a great way to pare back your food go tos and instead see what you ‘fill up on’; nutrients over calories have a far reaching (energy, hormonal, bug) balance. We are also eliminating the main foods that are generally irritating to most people - dairy, wheat, most grains, peanuts and oats. So it’s a two stronger approach - what do you eat instead (more nutrients) and when you reduce inflammatory foods you can absorb all your more nutrients more and you can use all the water you’ve been using for your inflammation for other metabolic reactions (ready energiser bunny here we come!).

It’s just two weeks. Oh and why two weeks? Firstly, the cycle of sweets and sugar craving is a merry-go-round we all need to get off. It takes at least 3-4 days to clear the residue of sweets and sugar from the body. It may take a lot longer than that to get rid of the craving. Secondly there are studies that say it takes 3 days to replace the lining of your stomach and up to 21 to replace the lining of your gastrointestinal tract. Obviously not all cells replace themselves at the same time but with our weaning week that’s 21 days? It’s obviously not a precise science cos there’s no one in the world more youer than you anyway!

So when our two weeks is up there’s always the question, will I keep this up, what’s next?! For me, nothings good or bad, just in or out of balance. And balance isn’t just ‘once and done’ but something always changing. As are you. Which is cool right? So keep changing, keep listening to your body and see what you can keep becoming!