5 Tips to Help Eliminate Food Cravings (Replay)

The Holistic Navigator

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Because we’re right in the middle of the holiday season, we decided it might be a good idea to give this episode another play. You likely are sorting through leftovers, including those delectable treats many of us only get once a year. With Christmas and New Years on the horizon, we wanted to share a few ways to help say no to the unhealthy foods we often crave this time of year.

Ed addresses why we crave particular foods and gives a few easy to implement tips to help reduce those cravings. There’s always a fair amount of self-control that needs to happen when trying to change our eating habits, but these small steps can make that journey much easier.

Some Topics We Discuss:

• Why is food addictive? (3:30)

• How does sugar consumption affect our brain? (4:45)

• What are Ed’s 5 tips to reduce food cravings? (11:43)

• What is intermittent fasting? (22:15)

• How to do cheat meals without falling back into your old ways? (28:04)

Some Key Takeaways from this Episode:

• We have to define hunger pain or is it an addiction that is clicking in your brain? (3:28)

• Self discipline is not the answer to removing food addictions. It’s changing your blood’s chemistry. (7:24)

• The most common reasons in blood chemistry why people suffer from food additions are issues and imbalances involving insulin, glucose, your adrenals and the weakness of a hormone called leptin. (10:11)

• Stop eating breakfast, and start drinking it. (15:41)
  

Products + Resources:

• Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

• Ed’s Breakfast Drink

• Bulletproof Diet Roadmap

• Bhu Fit Bars

• Zunta Bar

• The Core 4

• Vitamin D

• Magnesium

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Brian Strickland: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and enjoyed some good food and time with family and friends. We're taking a little break this week in honor of the holiday, but we didn't want to leave you without an episode. So we're replaying one that we think is pretty important for this time of year. We hope you enjoyed this episode, and we'll be back with brand new content in a couple of weeks. We'll talk to you soon.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Holistic Navigator podcast where we talk about all things holistic health and believe in the body's ability to heal itself if it's given the proper nutrients and care. It's the start of a brand new year and we're excited about bringing you new episodes each and every week. If you're new to the podcast, we just want to say welcome. My name is Brian Strickland. I'm the producer of the show and joining me in the studio as always is our host Ed Jones. And our goal for this podcast simply to educate anyone who [00:01:00] may be interested in learning more about natural, holistic healing. Well with the New Year beginning resolutions will abound and most often at the top of that list is dieting and weight loss. And while these are fine goals to aspire to, sometimes what we really need to do is target the underlying reasons why we eat what we do and more often than not it really comes down to food cravings. We all have those particular foods we love of and when we indulge our bodies crave more but we want to teach you how to combat those cravings to begin a journey towards healthier eating. And with that being said, let me go ahead and toss it over to the host of our show, Mr. Ed Jones.

Ed Jones: Thank you Brian so much. And you said that eloquently about the fact that you know, we need to address these food cravings because I've been watching people for 41 years in a professional sense deal with a lot of New Year's resolutions, but [00:02:00] not just New Years. It happens every month of the year. And we have a nation that is truly addicted to foods and many people do not realize that. I've had my certainly share in the journey of you know, falling into the pattern of needing a certain class of foods, most of which is carbohydrate driven. And the more I eat, more I want. And the more I want the more I eat. And it's a vicious cycle and it is destructive not only to your weight but to your health. Now, there are some genetically gifted people who are very skinny and they can live on Cokes, and cookies, and breads and all the bad things. It doesn't matter. These people are forming so many internal disorders, diseases, and illnesses by the use and the fact that they are consuming foods from an addictive standpoint, not from a choice standpoint. And 80-90%[00:03:00] of all Americans and studies are prisoners of their food addictions. Now when I say food addictions, I am not talking about hunger pains. We must make sure that inside of our head that we are not fooling ourselves, people, that we think, oh, I'm hungry for the cake. I'm hungry for the bagel. I'm hungry for a big bowl of rice with whatever I'm getting. No! We have to define is that hunger pain or is it an addiction that is clicking in your brain?

So why is food addictive? Well what happens with certain foods, it involves the same exact brain regions as it does with heroin and cocaine. Yes, exactly on a scan when you're addicted to food, you either don't have it and then you consume it. Those parts light up in the brain chemistry. [00:04:00] Sugar in particular everyone, which I think most people who listen to this or far ahead of the curve. If you're already on the Holistic Navigator, you are already experienced or you wouldn't be listing probably because you have a sincere interest in learning how to be truly healthy and reduce disease in the long run. My 41 years has shown me so much by watching people do well and watching people do poorly. And I'm going to share that with you for as long as I can on this podcast. Listen, you cannot learn everything in school. We all need people who have life experience. But sugar in particular, which is the most common food craving it triggers a production of your brain's natural opiates. We all know what opioids are because their prescription drugs or street drugs. They're like pain killers. And your brain is essentially becomes addicted [00:05:00] to its own opiates if you are forcing that with food addictions. In one study rats were allowed to choose either a water that was sweetened with sugar or cocaine and 94% of the time they chose the water with the sugar. And these were rats who already addicted to cocaine. Let me ask everyone here listening a question. Have you ever been addicted to something in your life? I have been you know, I think most of us could say we have been. And what I'm going to list is the major addictions: sleeping pills. Yes, they're addictive because that means once you take them and you quit you cannot function and you have to go through a withdrawal. I do have a wonderful Holistic Navigator podcast on insomnia and sleep if you are in that category. Alcohol, cigarettes, chocolate, caffeine, antidepressants. [00:06:00] Yes, they are addictive that means your body has to rely on them to function. If you are having issues with depression. Please listen to my Holistic Navigator on depression and anxiety. And we must say legally we are not treating your medical condition. We are here to educate only check with your health professional before changing anything. So we've got you know, all of these different parts to the puzzle of addictions and we're not even mentioning the prescription opiates and street drugs from meth all the way down the list. What do they all have in common? They consume and control much of your emotions and feelings as you need to envision a constant craving or need for this substance, or you will not be satisfied. Now they can be, you know, your life's not going to stop if you don't get the piece of chocolate, but it can't stop if you can't get the alcohol [00:07:00] or some of the other things that we've listed. But food cravings are constantly tugging at you day after day and we do not as human beings have a lifelong backbone of discipline that can never waver. So you have to realize just making up your mind not to eat these foods is not the answer people. I've seen it for 41 years, you have to change your body's chemistry, which is out of sync out of rhythm and unhealthy for these cravings to go away. And the thing is the more you satisfy these cravings, not hunger pains, the deeper the addiction goes. So the longer you let it run on, it's just going to confer their control you. And we must know this to remove the handcuffs of any addiction including foods. It's like AA for alcohol alcoholics, you must admit that you have an issue. If you're fooling [00:08:00] yourself, you're going to just live on the surface as so many people do. You have to admit that this food kind of has me and then you have to create a type of plan or protocol in order to make improvement and get out from underneath this addictive quality of foods.

And then thirdly you have to be willing to accept the bitter fact, I'm sorry, but the bitter fact is it's not going to be easy for somewhere between 10 to 30 days. Yeah, that's all it takes. If you are strict with it to reduce your food cravings by 80 to 90%. And you're going to have to detox some with that because the whole system is based on rebalancing your brain and blood chemistry and we're going to bring it back into harmony and when that happens the food cravings basically disappear. And you know in my life, I've you know been subject [00:09:00] to all the same things every other human has and I have a great amount of self-discipline and I could not self discipline myself to not want the foods that I was addicted to until I balanced my chemistry. I can walk past any bakery, any food place, any menu with all kind of choices and 95% of the time, it doesn't even I don't blink about it. It's just nothing. I want the other foods because I'm not being driven by imbalance blood chemistry.

Now without giving any biochemistry lesson because really no one wants to hear that, I want to tell you the overall reasons why if you are addicted to foods why that is from a blood chemistry standpoint. It really is boiled down to this exact paragraph that I have written. It's the addiction is an interplay between the complex or emotional imbalances mixed with [00:10:00] the almost certain issues and imbalances involving insulin, glucose, your adrenals and the weakness of a hormone called leptin. Leptin and Insulin are the two biggest reasons why you cannot get off of the foods long-term because they're sending messages. Now just imagine your thermostat in your house. You come in in the morning or you leave in the morning or you come in the evening you set that thermostat to where you feel comfortable. Well guess what happens when that temperature goes down? That thermostat reads the truth. It needs to kick on the heat in order to heat the house back up or if it's getting too warm, it knows to cut that off. That is exactly what is happening in a healthy body. What's going on when your food addicted? What I call message resistance occurs. And message resistance is [00:11:00] the receptor sites and the chemistry can't hear any longer the feedback loop that is sending to the thermostat within you that you've had enough, you don't need anymore, and we are satisfied. And that's not happening. It's almost like you just turned your phone on silent and you forgot to turn it back on and all these little messages are coming through and maybe phone calls with important information and you're not getting it. That's what has happened to this nation because of what we've done. I'm going to tell you to facts here, people. I'm going to make this pretty quick. So you're going to build a walk away with some you are going to walk away with five tips and steps to stop your food cravings. So hang in there with me. We're going to make this happen together, but the two facts you have to know. You know, I don't know about what goes on in high school much anymore. I'm you know, almost 63 that was certainly many decades ago, but when I was in high school, [00:12:00] there was a lot of what we call druggies. There was maybe a half a dozen and they would stand around, you know, and try to give us little doses of their drug. Why did they do that? Well, they did it because they knew there was a certain percentage of us if we tried it would become addicted and then we would be their customer. Because we couldn't make it without their substance. Well, guess what? The food chemists today who work at the major corporations understand all too well how to make your brain and body crave their foods by seriously confusing and befuddling your body's chemistry. They know that is why they produce the combination of salty, sweet, greasy, and chemical-laden substances in order to make your brain [00:13:00] need it and want it. You have to know something: these corporations who produce the processed foods are your enemy. They're the druggie at the high school playground who is giving out the bad stuff, except you're the one who's going to them now instead of them trying to find you. Doesn’t mean you have to live in a cave, people. You can still have some goodies, but you have to know which ones that you have to write off. The list fact number two. I'm going to tell you how you can bring balance back to your body chemistry and fix these cravings once and for all but the one issue that I can't give you a to-do list on is the fact that some people eat because of emotional and stress eaters. That's what I call them emotional stress eaters, and they're going to require a two-prong [00:14:00] approach to this one is following in my five steps for food cravings, but secondly, you have to deal with the emotions that reside within you, and your life, and your stress and recognize that if you are an emotional eater, you have created an imbalance physical body, but you also have to figure out a have a toolbox in order to not let the emotions trigger you into grabbing the food. And what how do we do that? Well, I'm a big fan of something called EFT: emotional freedom technique. It is something you can learn for free off of the internet. I do like Mercola has information on EFT Mercola.com just type in EFT and he's got plenty of free information on how to learn it. It is simply a tapping method. So when you start feeling fearful, craving, painful, not sleeping, you can kind of disrupt this [00:15:00] system of messages that is sending you down the wrong path by using EFT.. I've used it for probably 15 years. It's you know, it's not a fix-all but it's a tool. It's a safe tool to get you further down the journey to health. All right, people. I'm at the point where I'm going to give you five of the absolute Ironclad, I know will work steps to vastly reduce your food cravings. First one and I've mentioned this on several times and I know Brian, you know we've talked about it personally is stop eating breakfast and start drinking it. The reason that I say that and I've looked at so much blood work of people based on what they've eaten, their supplement programs, and how it boils down to their blood chemistry. And because I'm a huge fan of leaning toward a keto type of lifestyle. [00:16:00] What is Keto? Of course, it's a higher fat diet that's trying to help teach the body how to burn fat for fuel rather than glucose, which is sugar. And I don't think people need to be in full-blown ketosis or really follow it super strict. But I think you need to lean toward it. And here is my take home message: number one on this on this stop eating breakfast, if you start your day with a perfect macros, what our macro is the perfect protein fats and carbs in the right mixture. You actually have room to make some mistakes the rest of the day because you've set your chemistry up with basically like you're flying in a small airplane. You've got the right amount of oil and the right amount of fuel and you really don't have to worry too much because you prepared yourself for that flight. Well when you wake up in the morning and you try to hurry and you try to fix breakfast, I can tell you it's going to be impossible to eat a breakfast that balances your blood chemistry unless you are [00:17:00] so into this and you're not hurried and you can stay at home and you can spend the money and spend the effort. You can do it with food. How many of us can do that? Not many. So what I found is six days on and one day off, I will drink my drink. What is my drink? It is a keto balanced protein drink and my favorites are Metagenics and Garden of Life. They're the only two I really really like. And so what I'll do is use two scoops of my keto powder 1 tablespoon of MCT oil amazing for fueling your brain and burning body fat. If we can get our brain to run on fat instead of carbs, life will change for you. I promise. What will change? Clearer thinking, longer-term energy. The brain wants to burn fuel from fat far more than it does glucose and is clean burning. It doesn't give you the ups and the downs, far less brain fog. [00:18:00] So we got two ingredients keto powder, MCT. I use a greens powder. I'm not going to go big time into why but is super important to help the liver open up his channels of detox and protect you from all of the vast poisons that we are basically swimming in in today's time from the glyphosate to all the fumes, to the chemicals, the pesticides you name it the greens are the protective armor. And then lastly the flax and chia ground up. I do like Garden of life's version of that but that can change anytime I use all four keto, MCT, greens, and flax, blended in cold water or unsweetened almond milk. And that will give you all of the nutrients, and the protein, and the fat, and the lesser carbs to start with the right chemistry. If you do nothing, but this step one you are going to see a change in how you feel. Not perfect, but you'll see a change enough. You'll be thrilled to death. [00:19:00] All right, so we got step one out of the way, you're going to stop eating breakfast and drinking at six out of seven days. Two: you know, what if you are an alcoholic and you have been recovered and you haven't drank for 10 years and all of a sudden the person fixing your foods or giving you is slipping alcohol back into some of the things you drink? We know what that would do to that alcoholic. It's going to trigger that addictive quality to surface again. It's going to grab them. And they may not even know that that alcohol was being put into their drinks because we can hide alcohol easily. Well guess what? That is part of what's happening when you don't have a food list. What I mean by food list? It's not easy to this complexity of okay, I'm going to the grocery store or I'm going to a restaurant and you got a big menu. Okay. Let's see. I know that let's see lettuce is healthy, kale is healthy, [00:20:01] maybe whole grain crackers are healthier. Well, maybe they're not what kind of oil do I use? What kind of sweet knowing? It's a Minefield I can tell you I was listening to Dave Asprey the guy who invented Bulletproof Coffee and Anaheim, California about a couple years ago, and he The most concise easy to read list of how to pick your foods of anything on the internet. So when you can I want you to Google bulletproof diet roadmap. Bulletproof diet roadmap. I followed this until I memorized it. What it is is it has three different colors green yellow and red. If we eat off the green line, you will be so much healthier. Probably live far longer, look better, anything you want out of your life will be enhanced by living on this list because he breaks it down. Okay, if you're going to do a beverage he says these are the beverages you choose. These are the ones you don't the veggies, the oils, the nuts, the dairy, the proteins, the starch, the fruit, [00:21:01] the sweeteners, and the cooking. How do you do it? It's really easy. You can download it. So the bulletproof diet roadmap is going to give you the roadmap of how to choose your foods 90% of the time you need to live off the green 10, maybe 15 percent of time yellow And the red is for very special occasions. You also need, under Step 2 of the bulletproof diet roadmap, you need to make sure because if you are like most people we all rely on protein food bars in order to make it through a busy day. Traveling, airplanes, missing foods, you cannot fall prey to the advertising magic that is going on in today's times and media. And in stores all these food bars that are super healthy with all the magic words from natural, whole grains, blank blank blank down the list. That doesn't really help us know is it something we truly need to balance our chemistry? [00:22:01] They're not. 80% of these bars are made with clean ingredients but are still are like the alcohol being slipped into your drink. And so I've only approved a few bars: the Bhu Fit Bar and the Zunta Bar, which is one that I invented. They have the right parts to the puzzle. Do buy bars that list it is a keto bar. That's the safest version but some of the keto bars are not using clean ingredients. That's why the Zunta Bar and Bhu Fit are the two of my favorites. So we've got step one and two and now step number three is intermittent fasting. I think many of us may know what this is. It's not hard people. Let me tell you what happened to me personally. I have an employee, his name is Adam and he's a walking encyclopedia. Young fella, and he was talking to me about his benefit of intermittent fasting. Well, I've spent most of my life believing that I needed to eat food about eight o'clock at night. [00:23:01] I didn't want to lose weight because I have a very fast metabolism. I try to maintain a body fat, luckily, it's still right there at 10%. I felt like I would lose size strength. I couldn't work out as much if I missed these foods. Well, he showed me his blood work of how much his testosterone increased when he started intermittent fasting. And so about a year and a half to two years ago, I started eating my last meal at about 5:15 and I would not eat again until I had my drink the next morning. And actually the drink is not even considered a real meal. So intermittent fasting means at least 12 hours with no calories coming into your body. And what that is going to do to you is it takes the body about 11 hours to build the sugar that has been stored called glycogen which is found primarily in your liver and your muscles. And most people including me for the first 61 [00:24:01] years of life, I never depleted my glycolytic glycogen stores because I ate three meals a day and two snacks and I did the last one before, you know at eight o'clock at night. So the body was in a constant feast mode. It isn't supposed to be like that, people. Let me tell you with me, I have never had better gut function, never had better elimination function, my sleep improved modestly not fantastic, but I definitely a step better than it had ever been in the past decade. And nothing failed me in the gym. I maintain the same strength, actually lowered my body fat, and my testosterone went up it isn't super fun because I loved that bowl of whole grain cereal at eight o'clock. I just loved it. It was something I've done and like my dad did it his whole life till he passed away. So intermittent fasting step number three. I want you to pick at least 12 hours with no calories. Number four: supplementally, [00:25:02] I'm going to make this real easy. I'm you know, there's probably 15 thousand products you could choose if you were like, okay, I want to start on a supplement program is truly going to help me reduce inflammation, make feel better, make my hair better, produce collagen and do all the right things. You cannot generally do and be optimal without proper supplementation. One is the soils are depleted people. You know, you have to eat seven oranges today to equal what your great-great grandmother ate with one orange. So you're not capable of even eating the amount of foods that you need if you can eat it. So I'm gonna make it real easy. It's called The Core Four. There's four supplements that I have seen through vast amounts of experience that every human over the age of probably 25 needs to be doing if you want to produce optimal health. If you just want to be normal and you want to walk around like most people with the aches and the pains, [00:26:02] and the falling apart, and the prescription drugs, and the lack of this, lack of that. Well, so be it. But if you want to be optimal like the old John Wayne type of people who were robust, resilient, self-healing, you have to eat right, sleep right, think right, and supplement right. Get the right multivitamin not the Centrum pieces of junk but the right one which we have on our website. We have picked those by vast amount of homework. So you can go to nutritionw.com type in core four and see the ones that I have approved of. Secondly the green drink already mentioned that once can't do without it people. I don't care how many green vegetables you eat. Thirdly probiotics and omega-3. Those are the core four things that you have to have to produce optimal health and blood chemistry, but I'm going to say for listeners on how to do the five steps for you to reduce food cravings. We [00:27:02] need to add two of the things vitamin D 5,000 units very inexpensive and very easy. I encourage you to get blood work eventually. I need 14,000 units per day to be at 50-plus nanograms which is where the magic starts with vitamin D. Most people need between 5 and 10, but without blood work, you'll never know it. So get someone to do it or you can go to the Holistic Navigator website under products and scroll down to Direct Labs. You can order all your blood work right there and go to your local lab and you will get the results in three days lastly magnesium. I have a podcast on the Holistic Havigator on the magic of magnesium. Please, people please if you really want to be optimally healthy or your parents or your you know, especially Asian people listen to the thing on magnesium there is nothing like it in the entire supplement world and almost impossible to get from your diet unless you are [00:28:02] a perfectionist person. So we've got four steps behind us with the last one number five. I want you to know that you can allow cheat foods, but it's rule twice weekly is the most you can do or it will start to awaken the sleeping food Dragon of Cravings again, and there's just really nothing we can do about that is again this analogy of a cigarette smoker he can't go, you know every other day smoking cigarettes and expect to ever conquer. The addiction is really hard to do it on twice a week, but you can do it with foods. I want you to know that you don't have to live a perfect life. You don't always have to be on the bulletproof roadmap, but you know that you can have these but here's the my tip of the day on how to minimize the addictive quality of these foods. Always [00:29:03] consume healthy fat with any of the foods that are causing the cravings. What are the foods that are generally causing it? Guess what? Of course we know junk food. Sugar, cookies, candy. But here's the others: bagels terribly high in the Addictive quality, cereals almost all of them are too much fruit juice or even a little fruit juice can be addictive. Those things are like the alcohol being snuck into the glass of the person who shouldn't be drinking it. You know fried foods, but now here's the other two that these Southerners really despise is corn and potatoes and bread. So those are the big killers in regard to food addictions. When you look at the bulletproof road map, you'll see the other choices which are plenty and I will tell you to end this podcast. I love eating the foods that I eat every single day more than I ever have in my life [00:30:03] and I'm not saying it from a place of oh, I'm expecting to get results from it. My pleasure comes from the taste the can see the way it the way it makes me feel and when I go off of the diet, it's just simply not worth it people. The brain fog comes back, you know more of the aches and pains, more of whatever issues you had is going to start surfacing again because you create an imbalance of your breath blood chemistry. So I've given you 5 Steps to reduce and probably eliminate your food cravings for the next year and the next decade and hopefully the rest of your So thank you very much. And if you have any questions, please email them to the illicit Navigator. Enjoy our site enjoy the 50-plus episodes that we have. We're going to be here long term because there is so much work to do to help counter the misinformation out there and we want [00:31:03] your tool box filled with the right options, remedies and safe kinds of products and information. That is simply not too common today. So thank you everyone. Have a great day and great year.

Brian Strickland: The information on this podcast in the topics discussed have not been evaluated by the FDA or any one of the medical profession and is not aimed to replace any advice you may receive from your medical practitioner. The Holistic Navigator assumes no responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any purchaser or listener of these materials. The Holistic Navigator is not a doctor or doesn't claim to be please consult your physician before beginning any health regimen.

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“We have a nation that is truly addicted to foods and many people do not realize that… It is a vicious cycle that is not only destructive to your weight, but to your health as well.”

-ED JONES, The Holistic Navigator