Dr. Preeti Nanda Sibal explains why you crave sweets and processed foods: nutrient deficiencies like magnesium and zinc, learned habits tied to certain activities, and high-carb diets that spike insulin. A 2016 study found very-low-calorie diets nearly eliminate cravings entirely.
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Hi, have you ever experienced food cravings? I have experienced food cravings multiple times. There used to be days when I actually, before seeing a patient, had to go down to the grocery shop and get a chocolate for myself. I am Dr. Preeti Namdas Sibal, and I practice functional medicine out of my clinic in Gurugram. I specialize in obesity management, diabetes reversal, bioidentical hormone therapy, and autoimmune diseases. And today I'm going to share how I treated my food cravings. So if you are interested, and if you think this is a topic which you really want to know more about, subscribe to my channel, Food, Medicine, and Lies, and do share your feedback and any other topic you want me to talk about. So food cravings. We all know that these food cravings can be because of multiple reasons. Number 1, nutrient deficiencies. We know magnesium is instrumental in metabolism of glucose and management of insulin. So magnesium deficiency can lead to food cravings. What else? Zinc deficiency, chromium deficiency. If you feel addicted to cheese and all, it could be iron deficiency. So deficiencies can be one key reason. I've seen in PCOS girls or in early pre-diabetic people, chromium deficiency. The moment I correct that, and zinc and magnesium, patients come back and say, wow, I don't have cravings for those foods. And you know what, one very interesting craving with some of my patients, and they tell me, I'm like, oh, Why? Because I get to make my diagnosis, and that is craving for salt, which clearly indicates that the patient is maybe going through adrenal fatigue, or there's a probability that he is in that pre-adrenal fatigue stage, and I am able to stop it there and then just with this one line of history. Now, second reason food cravings happen when we associate certain things with some things. For example, you know, when I was in college or newly married, whenever I used to go to watch a movie, my watching a movie was clearly associated with high butter popcorns, right? So they have a lot of calories. Even if I used to watch a movie in house, if I watch it without the popcorn, it's not gonna happen. Somehow I could never disassociate the two. And what did that mean? That always meant that if I'm going for a late night movie after my dinner, I still will have popcorn and of course will land up gaining weight, right? Third, cravings happen when we have high carb foods or in our body we have high insulin. Why does this happen and how high insulin basically stores food as fat? And gives you less food to convert into energy, because of which you feel hungry in very short durations. If you want to know more about this, do watch my other video on calorie counting. So this becomes very critical. Now there is a study published in Journal Obesity in 2016 which compared low calorie diets and very low calorie diets. And found out how food cravings were affected with both these diets. And you know, interestingly, we always feel that if we have food craving, what happens? We land up eating more. Yes, but the study showed that if we eat less, if we take low calorie diets, our craving decreases. And if we take very low calorie diet, the cravings almost are non-existent. When I read this study, it really moved something in my mind, and I practiced that, and I promise you, it works. If you are one of them who experiences food cravings, do try this out. Yeah, this is like an itch. If you are feeling itchy somewhere, will you keep just rubbing there with your nails? Lot of us do, but then what happens? We get injured here, the skin gets bruised, sometimes even blood starts oozing out, right? And then we realize, no, no, no, we have to find an alternate solution because till the time I keep rubbing it, it is never going to heal. So friends, food craving is similar to this itching situation, and if till now you are itching again and again Stop itching, and now you know how and why. Stay healthy, stay happy. Health to happiness always. Do subscribe to my channel Food Medicine and Lies because I will keep posting more of such relevant, simple videos on staying healthy.
