The Four Root Causes of Cravings

So I believe there's really four root causes of our cravings.

Yeah.

And I talk about this in my book, but it's bacterial, nutritional, emotional, and physical. So the bacteria in your body, and there's maybe 10 times more of them than there are human cells of us. So they're kind of running the show. Sometimes they crave sugar. A lot of them do. So, like Candida overgrowth, that's a yeast.

Bad bugs crop, crave sugar.

Right. The bad bacteria, which everyone has them. It's when they start to grow out of control. I used to jokingly call Candida, like the beast within or the puppet master. And they do communicate with the brain via the vagus nerve. It's like they're driving us to the refrigerator so you can have this bacterial drive that they crave so you eat what they need. And then there's nutritional.

Wait, before you jump off that, I just want to say something because people, how do they get that? Well, they get it by eating sugar and processed foods, having antibiotics, sometimes using hormones, steroids, stress, all that stuff will cause an overgrowth of yeast, which is. Can be Candida, can be other forms of yeast. And I've seen this in my practice for decades. And when you treat it, people feel better. And one woman, she lost 15 pounds by just giving her an antifungal to change the whole dynamic in her body and the inflammation and probably your cravings.

Yeah. So you can start eating probiotic rich foods like raw sauerkraut, start taking some good quality probiotics, and start taking down the refined sugars completely for a while at best.

And you know what else is antifungal?

Coconut oil.

Yes. Lauric acid, which is in coconut oil, which is amazing. Right.

It's great stuff, man.

We actually prescribe in my practice, something called caprylic acid, which is one of the fats that's in coconut oil. We use that directly as a supplement to help treat yeast.

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. So those bacterial cravings are real. And you need to look at that first. And then there's the nutritional cravings. You know, we are, as a species, most of us are overfed but undernourished. So we, we get a lot of calories, but we don't get the nutrients that our body needs, the trace elements, the minerals. So my favorite example is for women, most American women especially are magnesium deficient.

Yes.

Our body knows that if I eat a bunch of chocolate, I'm getting sugar and fat and yummy. Plus it's a pretty good magnesium source. Yeah.

Chocolate's one of the best sources of magnesium. Yeah.

So for my serious chocoholics, I'm like, get thee to the supplement aisle and get a magnesium supplement. Or take things like chia seeds and hemp seeds, good sources of magnesium.

Almonds are a great source of magnesium.

Yeah, yeah. And then there's the emotional and the physical cravings. People often say to me with some shame in their voice, I'm an emotional eater. I say, sweetheart, welcome to the human race. Like, we're all, we're emotional beings. So even if you're an MMA fighter, eating for the next bout, there's emotion there. You're not. I really think we do a disservice to people when they tell them that food is just fuel and that you should just eat to live and not live to eat. I'm like, bs Food is awesome.

Yeah, of course. Got all the pleasure for me. Otherwise I wouldn't eat it.

It's delicious. And it's how we form bonds with our family, with whoever we're dating. You know, I always like to say that eating food is the most intimate thing we do with other people in public.

Yeah.

It's how we bond and create story and history together. So food is emotional, but are you using it as a way to enhance goodness or using it to cover up sadness or fear or anxiety or anger or stress? So emotional cravings, gotta look at those. And then finally there's physical cravings. Yeah, we're animals. We're physical beings. We need to move, we need to stretch, we need sleep. None of us are getting enough sleep. And we are built for pleasure. And a lot of us don't have enough fun. We don't have enough pleasure. Adults have forgotten how to play. And if we could have adult sized equipment at the playground, I would be so happy if I could fit my adult sized rear end into a swing and just go swing for a few minutes every day to have fun in your body. The only way we adults know how to do that is alcohol and food. Sex and sex. Well, we should definitely be having more sex. I mean, I talk about. There's a chapter eight in my book, sex. Skip directly to chapter eight. But there's so much shame around food and around sex, especially for women, that those two things get conflagrated and confused. And I really want to take the shame away from that.

Yeah, that's great. So how do people get over their cravings? How do you help them get over all that?

Well, the first thing is to recognize that we all have them. You're not bad for having a craving. You might actually want to indulge whatever that craving is. Is this craving going to serve me, or is this something that is hiding something else? Is it covering up a bacterial, a nutritional and emotional need?

Right.

So you got to kind of work your way into those things and really start to discover what's going on with you. And, you know, really ask yourself, like, what do I want? How do I really want to feel? And how am I? How are my habits with these cravings and foods and in my life setting me up to have the life that I want?

Yeah.

So I believe that, like, cravings are really one of your body's languages that speaks to you about what you need, but we don't know the language.