The Chemistry of Food – Fat is For Comfort
Insights October 2006
Food cravings come in many forms, driven by subconscious chemical requirements. Sometimes complex requirements of chemistry dictate cravings and compulsive eating.
High fat foods, including cheese and potato chips, indicate a subconscious need for comfort.
High glycemic foods, sweets and simple carbs, indicate a subconscious need for an anesthetic for an uncomfortable emotion.
Salt cravings indicate a subconscious desire to hold onto something, such as an emotional state, a belief, a judgment, or a circumstance.
What’s frustrating is that your subconscious is probably not operating within your conscious perception of what is going on in your life. You might think things are going pretty well, and it might decide it wants something you weren’t thinking about – literally.
Cravings and compulsive eating force you to be aware that you are not successfully making decisions in your life, because your subconscious drives are dictating behaviors you are not happy with You probably prefer that your clothes fit, or better yet that they be too big. There’s little chance of that happening if your subconscious is influencing your eating habits.
The good news is that this knowledge frees you form beating yourself up when your conscious decisions don’t dictate your behavior. The fact is, conscious decisions don’t dictate your behavior, your subconscious does. Until you learn to reprogram your subconscious and master it, you are stuck with feeling a victim of your own behavior.
It’s a worthwhile exercise to do some deciphering of cause, using the above list of food types, when you do eat to satisfy your subconscious. At the very least, you’re admitting what is really going on inside you. At best, you might be able to substitute other behaviors that satisfy your subconscious needs, behaviors that aren’t about food. You can learn methods to make those substitutions. In next month’s column I’ll provide more detail on this process.
Willpower will not override your subconscious mind. What makes this work is training your subconscious to cooperate with your cognitive agendas. That’s a process of learning and tools called Self-Mastery. Your subconscious is not rational, which is why what you’re doing stops working. Mastering your subconscious is taking back control of your behavior and your life. It’s an exciting process because it frees you from feeling like a victim of your food cravings. You deserve that freedom. You deserve that relief. You deserve smaller clothes, if that’s what you want.
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