Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Why is it that we sometimes crave certain
foods? Can it be that your body is sending you
a message?
The theory is that people will have a craving for certain things
that will provide a nutrient that is lacking.
In our culture I don’t think there is a metabolic reason for food
cravings. You know if you are used to consuming sugary sweets
and that is all you eat, your metabolism adapts and your body
guides you to the foods you are used to consuming.
An example of that would be someone who has gone on a
vegetarian diet and eliminated meat from their diet temporarily.
Then they start to reintroduce meat and their stomach is upset.
Their stomach is not used to digesting that kind of food. They
have adapted to digesting just non-meat items. There are food
digestive adaptations to the kinds of food that you eat. One
would have to believe that those are the kinds of foods that you
get used to.
Do we become hungry because our stomach is
empty or is it because of something else?
That is a tricky question. There are people who have studied this
and can boil it right down to all kinds of enzymes and
mechanisms that kick into play, stimulating appetite or
depressing appetite.
When I go out to exercise and I get back and sit down, I need to
replenish my water intake. The next thing that I find is I find a
combination of fruits to eat, primarily because they are made up
of water, and sugar carbohydrates. But the digestive process is
pretty rapid when it comes to breaking down sugars into glucose.
I can consume a lot of fresh fruits and it doesn’t satisfy my
hunger.
I will still have hunger pains because the digestion is completed
so rapidly as opposed to protein, which takes longer. It almost
seems like exercise can suppress appetite but I think you have to
balance that whole idea with how much exercise you are doing
and how many calories your body needs to replace and what
kinds of food you are going to consume.
It is complex and is another whole area to think about as to why
people are gaining weight, whether it is emotional or whether it is
the amount of exercise they have done.
Everyone studying this issue, trying to help people lose weight,
may have their own theories and their own recommendations.
They all study it in a different way - some try to understand the
psychology and some try to understand the nutritional aspects of
it. If it was well understood, we probably wouldn’t be having the
problems we are having today.
We

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