You know the drill. You grab a piece of chocolate cake just for a small taste and before you know it you’ve downed half the thing… While it is intensely delicious for a moment, the amazing feeling does not last long.

And the self-hating begins:

“I cannot be trusted with managing myself.”

“I lose all self-discipline around food.”

“There’s this thing on my mind and I just can’t stop myself.”

“I feel guilty every time I eat.”

“When I eat all the things I shouldn’t eat, I feel like I’m “treating” myself and I feel great for 10 minutes… but then the hating starts. It’s the worst feeling in the world.”

And then you’re back to square one the next week. Or even the next day.

Sound familiar? I know I’ve been through it, and so many of the women I work with have too.

What if I told you that these unhealthy cravings are NOT your destiny? While it may sometimes feel like you’ll never be rid of your powerful urges and regain control over your body, there IS a way out of this vicious cycle. And not only that, it does NOT have to be through sheer willpower and white-knuckling it (in fact, that’s a sure way to be back to square one!).

Intrigued?

It all goes through ancient evolutionary urges, how they play out in the modern food environment and the fact that we as women have not always been encouraged to have the healthiest relationship with food.

It’s not you… it’s millions of years of EVOLUTION

If you’ve been struggling with unhealthy cravings, first know that there’s nothing WRONG with you. As hard as it is to believe, your body is NOT actually trying to sabotage you. It is actually just… speaking to you, and you just need to understand what it’s trying to say!

What’s more, willpower is TOTALLY overrated. Thing is, the urges that drive us to eat unhealthy things or to overeat are managed by our subconscious brains, and they are very VERY powerful.

I always like to talk about the evolutionary perspective, not because I’m into Stone Age reenactments but because it always proves so damn useful. And cravings are no exception.

Get this: we are actually wired to crave things that are calorically dense. Yup, you’ve heard that right. Makes sense when you think about it. Back in the day, when we lived in the natural world, food availability was not a foregone conclusion. It was all about feast or famine. Food was here today, gone tomorrow so you’d better get your fill while it lasted!

Plus sweetness actually signalled a food was not toxic so we actually evolved to develop a sweet tooth. And to add insult to injury, since there weren’t foods that were “bad for us” in nature we did not necessarily evolve to seek out foods high in vitamin or mineral content either.

Here’s the other thing about our wiring: our brains like to automate decisions as much as possible. This is so they can avoid decision fatigue and save energy to survive in a complex world. A fancy way of saying that they will do everything in their power to have us eat that concentrated source of calories in order to avoid a blood sugar low (which is perceived as a question of life or death). Hey, that’s just how we’re wired!

It all sounds SO unfair doesn’t it?

It’s the ENVIRONMENT stupid

So what’s different today? Why are all these “qualities” that served us so well over millions of years have become our undoing today? Here’s the thing: our modern lifestyles have almost NOTHING to do with the natural world in which we spent the great majority of our time on this earth. Instead of the reality of “feast or famine” of the past, today most of us live in a world of CONSTANT feast where going out and getting food has long ceased to be an existential affair.

And where most of us do our “foraging” nowadays is the modern supermarket and the bakery, where food is cheap, plentiful and extremely refined – meaning it is high in calories and “palatability” (so that you come back for more) but also really low in nutrition. If it sounds to you like food manufacturers know exactly how to hijack our evolutionary impulses, you would be right!

Double whammy for women

As women we are at a double disadvantage because we’ve been conditioned all our lives to look and weigh a certain way, and have this be our only guiding principle around eating. And yet when you consider that food is SO MUCH MORE than this (that your body, with its every cell, every organ, every metabolic and enzymatic process, relies on the nutrients it derives from the food that you eat in order to function like it’s supposed to), it seems downright criminal to condition young women to think of food in this extremely limited way.

With that in mind, let’s dig deeper into what your body may be communicating to you. Since we’ve been so brainwashed to “pay attention” to what and how much we eat, oftentimes we’re simply not nourished enough. Which means we’re not getting enough nutrition such as essential vitamins and minerals, and very often NOT ENOUGH FAT (which is essential for many things, such as the proper absorption of some of those essential nutrients).

Plus for those of us with young children, mealtimes sometimes go by in a haze trying to get your picky kids to eat, and we don’t even realize we haven’t had a proper meal. So when you find yourself reaching for that “indulgent treat” at 10 pm, the first question I want to ask you is: HAVE YOU BEEN EATING ENOUGH?

Problem of overeating… or UNDERnourishment?

We talk a lot about overeating but I’d really like to change the conversation around this to talk about UNDERnourishment instead. Because there’s a good chance your body could actually be hungry and missing precious nutrition – which is why it’s calling out for a concentrated source of sugar and calories. (Remember evolution: your brain thinks you’re about to die so it’s pushing you to get a quick blood sugar boost!)

As I have overcome my own cravings (for the most part!) and coached women who struggle with the same, I have become more and more convinced that THIS is often the real issue. I could give you all the ideas on what to eat to be healthy but if you’re not able to get over your “scarcity mindset” around food and start to properly nourish yourself, you and your brain are not going to be on the same team when it comes to changing your eating habits.

And THAT is a sure way to eventually end up where you started.

This is why for many this struggle has been going on for YEARS. Without understanding what’s really going on in your body and changing your habitual thinking around these things, it is nearly impossible to change your results in a sustainable way. And it all starts with understanding your body’s cues and giving it what it’s asking for: proper nourishment for starters!