SCD Food Cravings: Are You Crazy or Is Your Body Trying to Tell You Something?

Have you ever taken a shot of honey?

Or eaten a half jar of almond butter?

What about licked salt off your hand?

Stuffed your face with so much fruit you got sick?

In the past, I’ve done all the above and more. During my time on the SCD diet, I swear there were times when I was literally addicted to some foods. Sometimes, I would snack on one of these simple pleasures for weeks and then suddenly when I looked at my grocery bills I would get a huge slap in the face. I ate a pound of honey a week for the last four weeks, how about a whole box of raisins in 2 days?!? Yikes.

Sometimes, it would take a bit of a realization about how much I was eating to cut back (or cutoff). But other times it was more immediate, like eating a whole bunch of almond butter and getting sick. In the latter instance, it can sometimes be hard to know how much of any one thing you are consuming unless you are diligently tracking your food. In many cases, though, the culprit might be known and probably still sitting in your kitchen.

As I’m getting farther down the healing road and reflecting on the past, I’m starting to wonder if these cravings are normal. And I have read yahoo group posts and message boards of others who have faced these same challenges. While that usually offers some relief to know that I’m not alone, there are still the questions in the back of my head lingering…

Do I have an addictive personality? Is this diet causing me to become a neurotic basket-case? Are these foods actually bad for me or only in copious amounts? Ahh… they could drive me mad if I let them go too far.

Over the past few months, as I’ve dove into the inner biology of the body and the interactions between brain, body and gut, I’m starting to shift my thinking. What if these cravings, I mean real cravings, where my every thought is literally overtaken, are being driven by my body?

Am I even in control of what I’m eating? If not, who or what is?

What if I was lacking a certain vitamin or mineral and my body knew this and it is secretly taking over to obtain what it needs?

Is my gut ecology actually secretly sending me subliminal messages to eat certain foods that one particular strain of bacteria or yeast need to live on? I’ve talked about this before in my post on week 11 of my SCD healing journey.

This is sort of a brain-dump-rant post, but I’ve been researching and working on several hypotheses related to the above and I’m curious

have you been there with me? Do you know what I’m talking about? Are you researching this too? Maybe you have some of the missing pieces of the puzzle I’m trying to locate and we could help each other.

If anyone has any particular knowledge on these subjects or knows of any good resources I would love to read them. Or if you’ve been there in the trenches with me, tell your story below. I know when I was going through my various challenges it helped reading and knowing that I wasn’t alone.

Take care,

Steve