Cravings, Cues, and Connecting with Self through Food

We have all been there. Your cravings don’t come with any sort of moral weight. And your weight doesn’t come with any sort of moral value.

Read that again.

I hear different versions of this all the time, and there is always shame and guilt attached to it: You had a "good" day of eating. You aren't technically hungry… Or maybe you are? And you find yourself standing in your refrigerator, door open for who knows how long, searching for something… Are you looking for sweet? Salty? Crunchy? Ooh! Maybe all of them! Or maybe you are more of a sour person, or possibly umami would hit the spot? And we haven’t even thought about bitter, spicy, pungent, creamy, aromatic, earthy, cooling… Food is a multisensorial experience from the time it is selected from nature, through the preparation process, and the sharing and consumption of it. Which senses are craving what? How are your emotions contributing to this open fridge door repeat? Did you hear or see something that was an environmental catalyst? What about smells?

What delicious foods did you think of while reading that?

Were you curious about or judgmental of yourself?

I often recommend that clients ask themselves if their bodies, taste buds, or emotions are hungry. Something needs to be nourished, so let’s find out what. Sometimes it’s an easy task, just never thought of before, and other times it takes time to develop or uncover the answer. Food is an inherent part of our lives and an existential requirement… we really should be kinder and gentler with ourselves when exploring hunger cues, cravings, preferences, and habits.

The wellness overwhelm that we experience from the never-ending onslaught of diet culture nonsense creates so much unnecessary noise around food and our bodies. It’s always about a decade behind research and uses reductive stigmas to get you to feel bad about yourself. What part of that sounds like wellness? So let’s try to combat that judgmental noise with some cravings curiosities.

When we consider food as medicine from not only an allopathic (also referred to as modern Western medicine) perspective, but also by incorporating Traditional and indigenous approaches and wisdom, we begin to not only understand our cravings, but also to heal our relationship with food through experience.

Having cravings is natural and has nothing to do with lack of discipline; it shouldn’t come with faux moral attachments, can’t be “cured” by willpower, and is absolutely not a character flaw. The craving isn’t the problem; the environmental etiology of disconnection is.

Remember, the following sections are only organized as such to help with digesting the material. All of these things are ongoing and interconnected within us. You don’t have to know or master anything in any certain amount of time. These are tools to use to integrate curiosity and information into your interactions with food.

1. Biochemical Cravings

Through an allopathic lens, your body acts like a chemistry lab where skipping meals or cutting carbs causes blood sugar crashes that trigger panic signals for quick energy; interestingly, traditional systems like Ayurveda and TCM interpret this same phenomenon as a Vata imbalance or depleted Qi, where the body craves the "sweet" taste to stabilize erratic digestive fire. To resolve this, we focus on stopping the crash before it starts by swapping processed sugars with less nutrient density for Root Medicine (not to be confused with root work), which has higher nutrient density. This approach incorporates naturally sweet, grounding vegetables like sweet potatoes, beets, and carrots alongside protein earlier in the day to simultaneously stabilize your blood sugar and restore your energetic foundation without the energy crash and cravings punch. Oftentimes, when we make it to the point of a really powerful craving, it is because we are depleted but don’t know how we got here, which means we don’t know what to do, and sometimes we don’t even know what the craving is. Figuring out what our body is telling us along the way and unpacking all the noise trying to convince us otherwise is a process, and it will help with nourishing to understand and support ourselves.

2. Emotional Cravings

While modern Western science explains that we use food to chemically soothe our nervous system through the release of dopamine and serotonin, Indigenous perspectives offer a deeper truth: food is spiritual medicine, and cravings for comfort are often a yearning for "Grandmother Energy" - the feeling of being held, safe, and connected. Recognizing that we aren't just hungry for calories but for connection, the solution is not to simply restrict food, but to identify the true spirit of the craving; by building an emotional toolkit that includes nature and community, the safety and nourishment you are seeking becomes about nourishing mind, body, and soul. There is a big, wide world of how the stomach and the brain interact contained within the gut-brain axis, which is a great place to start if emotions guide your cravings more often than not. But let’s be real, we are human, and we are all “emotional eaters”. But not in a judgmental kind of way, in a let’s normalize this because it’s misunderstood, not bad! We also store emotions in the body, and these cues can be used in conjunction with your curiosity about hunger cues and cravings to determine if you need a hug or some chocolate, or maybe both. Each different craving tends to be connected to a feeling and nutrient need, but these can vary depending on your own personal journey with the foods, the feels, and the other factors to consider.

3. Habitual Cravings

The largely reductive stance that allopathic research takes to cravings attributes habit-based cravings to conditioning, where environmental cues like sitting on the couch at the same time each day can trigger hunger hormones. And although there is truth to this, limiting reasons to conditioning and solutions to willpower is not only unhelpful in most cases, it can hinder true healing and comprehension. Traditional Chinese Medicine frames this pattern as energetic stagnation, where repetitive actions carve a "rut" in your Qi that directs energy down the path of least resistance. To break this cycle, we employ a ritual disruption (not a replacement) to stop the stagnation in its tracks. Neuropsychology takes a similar approach to rewiring the brain through neuroplasticity expansion by reframing thoughts. Rather than disconnected eating, we can pause or stop the thought or habit and redirect ourselves toward more intentional actions that nourish us in the fridge and in life. If these new habits and thoughts include a playful and interactive element, the fewer repetitions we need to get that new pathway going. Brewing a cup of tea, butterfly tapping, singing, spontaneous dance parties… find what adds a little whimsy into your life and use that as a bridge to bring joy and whimsy to your food experiences.  

4. Environmental Cravings

There are many academic and clinical considerations surrounding food apartheid, food deserts, and food engineering, and they all hold validity, but don’t address every aspect of the personal journey with food and environment. Although the work that positions social justice as public health as a means to restore more hearty and beneficial foodways that benefit the environment as well as the organisms that live within it (which includes and massively impacts us) is a necessary systemic approach to reconnecting us to nourishment, the daily environmental interactions are where that disconnection is really highlighted. Many of us either struggle with knowing what our hunger and fullness cues are, or sometimes we don’t know them at all. This is a byproduct of a capitalistic environment that prioritizes profit over people, so don’t ever feel as though being out of touch or not knowing is a personal failure. Pick-me influencers and toxic diet culture marketing tell us to hate ourselves, and mass production tells us that consuming more is the solution. This leaves us in a space of overconsumption while remaining undernourished (mind, body, and soul – not just caloric intake ~ that’s reductive shame based garbage too). Allopathic approaches address micro and macronutrient density, Indigenous and Traditional perspectives address the energetic exchange we have with food through prana and mana by choosing foods that are alive and full of energetic life force. Combining these perspectives to choose foods that address our cravings and nutrient intake alongside finding life and joy within our foods helps us reconnect with self, others, and nature.

5. "Forbidden Fruit" Cravings

Restriction, dieting, and attaching moral labels to foods can trigger the brain to become obsessed with what is off limits. Does any of that sound healthy or helpful to you? This model is iatrogenic and needs to stop. Ancient wisdom and philosophical world views approach with the intent of balance rather than the restrictive/obsessive yo-yo loop we fall into all too often. This is a fundamental imbalance between yang (control) and yin (flow). This imbalance causes us to inevitably flip to the other extreme in a desperate attempt to reclaim what we initially deprived ourselves of or overindulged in. When we shift our framework away from this dichotomous internal battle, we can begin to use our curiosity about cravings to learn, grow, and glow through embodied empowerment. You don’t need to earn your food or need permission to eat. This shift helps to dissipate the internal energetic tension and fosters harmonious homeostasis, which reconnects us to self and our experiences. This is where the majority of the work starts. And I know we have covered SO much. You don’t need to master it all, let alone all at once; you just need to pull the thread that pertains to you. The rest will fall into place. Trust the balance. Trust the process. Trust yourself. Trust your nutritionist.

How can I help you?

That is an actual question, not a pitch. I know I can help; it’s a matter of finding the most effective way to support YOU. Trying to fight these cravings with willpower is a battle against your biology, your spirit, and your environment. It’s also a really unhelpful approach and a ridiculous notion with nefarious origins. I’m not here to give you “the” answers. I am here to help you find YOUR answers. Establishing tools is a personalized process that is specific to your relationship with food. We won’t obsess over or restrict your macro and micronutrients; we will explore your macro and microcosms. My expertise means nothing without your experience, so let’s talk about them and find balance within whatever your next adventure might be.

You deserve to live life, not have to constantly manage it.