Causes of Cravings : by Kate

At my school, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, we identify 8 main Causes of Cravings.

1. Water: The body doesn’t send the message “thirsty” until it’s on the verge of dehydration, instead, it often occurs as mild hunger, so first thing to do when you get a strange craving is to drink a full glass of water.

2. Lack of Primary Food: If you’re dissatisfied with your relationships, or you’ve got an inappropriate exercise routine (either too much, too little, the wrong type), or you’re bored, too stressed, uninspired by your job, or you lack a spiritual practice that gives you a greater sense of being, you may experience emotional eating or eating for entertainment to fill the void of the lack of primary food in your life.

3. Expansive/Contractive Imbalance: Certain foods have more expansive qualities while other foods have more qualities. If you are eating foods that are either extremely expansive or extremely contractive, you’ll crave the opposite to balance yourself out, for example, if you’re eating a diet too rich in sugar (expansive), you may be craving meat (contractive) or vice versa, if you’re eating too many raw foods (expansive), you may be craving extremely cooked (dehydrated) foods or vise versa, if you’re eating too much bread, you may be craving lots of coffee or vise versa.

4. Inside Coming Out: Sometimes you’ll crave something you’ve eaten in the past, either foods similar to what your ancestors ate, foods that you ate as a child, or something you recently ate, a good way to re-construct these cravings is to either eat a healthier version of your ancestral or childhood foods, eat just a small amount of them, or use a tongue scraper.

5. Seasonal: Often the body craves foods that balance out the elements of the season, for example in the fall people crave grounding foods like squash, onions and nuts. People will also crave foods associated with holidays like turkey, eggnog, sweets.
6. Lack of nutrients, Lack of rest: If the body has inadequate nutrients it will produce odd cravings, for example inadequate minerals produces salt cravings. general inadequate nutrition or lack of proper rest produces cravings for non-nutritional forms of energy like caffeine.

7. Hormonal: When the body experiences menstruation, pregnancy or menopause its fluctuating progesterone and estrogen levels will often cause strange cravings.

8. De-evolution: When things are going a little too well, sometimes we sabotage ourselves by craving foods that throw us off thus creating more cravings to balance ourselves, this often happens with low blood sugar and strong mood swings.

And I would include a 9th reason: Stress. Stress causes the body to contract, and this can lead to cravings for expansive foods, sugar being number one. One way to counteract stress is to take a 5 minute meditation break, or take 3 deep conscious breaths, go for a walk around the block or drink a glass of water.