Cravings...are they in our heads?

I'm writing this post from beautiful Victoria. I realize how fast paced my life is in the big smoke when I come here. Yesterday I got out of my PJs at 3PM. It was glorious.

As soon as I arrived at my parents' house, I gobbled up a couple of my mom's yummy butter tarts. I had been craving them for a couple weeks and asked my mom on more than one occasion to make sure she made them. Biting into her tarts brings me back to many holidays from the past. The way the pastry flaked, the texture of the filling has never changed since I was a child. It is easy to say that my butter tart craving was purely emotional/psychological. But can all our cravings be categorized so easily?

Today I'm doing my regular segment on Arlene Bynon's 640AM talk show via the phone to address this question. Are our food cravings emoitional or physiological? And how poignant given the time of year. Stress runs high. The holiday triggers positive and negative emotions more than any other time of year. We fall back on coping mechanisms to help us deal with higher levels of stress. For many of us, these coping mechanisms include increased food and alcohol intake.

Our emotions often have an effect on our brain and body chemistry and our brain and body chemistry can have an effect on our emotional state of being. It's a cycle without a clear start or end point. But the biggest player in this cycle is stress.

Stress alters our body chemistry by increasing the production of a number of hormones including adrenaline, corticotrophin (ACTH) and cortisol. The particular hormone released depends on the degree of stress. Stress can also stimulate the release of other hormones while at the same time inhibiting the release of others. Stress can also effect dopamine function in our brains. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that regulates movement, emotion, motivation, and the feeling of pleasure.

The problem is that many of us suffer from chronic stress making us cortisol junkies. We just never stop producing and releasing cortisol. Cortisol effects our mood by making us hypervigilant, anxious or even depressed. We end up craving high sugar high fat foods to increase serotonin levels in our brain. But shortly after our indulgence our serotonin levels dip again and we're back at the beginning of the cycle. In addition, high sugar high fat foods are better at satisfying the pleasure centre of our brains. In effect, stress not only makes us cortisol junkies but it also makes us become 'addicted' to foods that will temporarily balance out our brain chemistry. Cortisol will also disrupt our sleep and keep us up at night. Lack of sleep increases our stress levels.

So I don't want to be a big bummer so close to the holidays. But this cycle needs to be stopped if we don't want stress to make us sick, tired, fat and depressed. How you ask?

1) Get professional help from fitness and health professionals who know how to break this cycle. We do at Urbanfitt.
2) Make sure you're taking pharmaceutical grade fish oil to help stabilize your mood.
3) Ensure you're taking a high quality multi-vitamin and boost vitamin B intake (B6 is used to make serotonin) but don't take it close to bed. Vitamin B can make you hyper.
4) Live in the present. Start being mindful of your moment to moment food choices and start noticing how you're letting day to day stressors effect you and BREATHE instead of eating a damn chocolate bar.
5) Food journal for a week and see if you can link your bad food choices with stressful events in your day. Awareness is the best place to start.
6) Make sleep a priority. If you don't, you won't be able to break the stress/food cycle.
7) Exercise. Duh. Like you needed me to remind you yet again.

That's all I'm giving away today. I've got to go back to being on vacation. Let's see how long I can stay in my PJs today.

Happy ho ho ho to all.
Jane
www.urbanfitt.com