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Transforming Cravings and Avoiding Regret
I want to share with you a simple approach to dealing with cravings - and thereby avoiding the regret that usually follows giving in to a craving - that I developed organically as a way to deal with my own sugar cravings.
It may sound too easy, but it’s honestly been the most effective thing I’ve ever tried.
I’ve always been a huge opponent of regret and guilt. I’ll do almost anything to avoiding feeling it.
In college I used to be the first one in my house to get all of my homework done because I just couldn’t stand the guilty feelings that went along with procrastination.
Come 10:00 I was the only one ready to party while my housemates were just getting started on their work.
Rewind to childhood. I was raised on a lot of sugar. I had unrestricted access to sugar for the entire day. I ate a ton of it all the time. Sugar cereal for breakfast, cookies in between, then a visit to the candy jar here and there, etc.
Even though I became vegetarian in college and educated myself about healthy nutrition, I still always had a sweet tooth.
Throughout Ayurveda school and until recently, my sweet tooth was fierce. I would try to resist it, try to talk myself out of it, use sheer will power, whatever. But it was always a struggle.
For a while when I was very strict about my Kapha-reducing diet, I would sit with a jar of honey and lick it off the spoon for an hour.
Then one day I let myself get present with the regret I felt after giving in to the sugar. It felt horrible and it turned out that it always had. I just hadn't paid much attention to it. I glossed over it.
I realized how guilty I felt after rationalizing and indulging in just 4 little cookies. Or a handful of chocolate chips. Or whatever sugary thing I could find when the urge was overwhelming. The reasons I felt regret and guilt were numerous. Eating sugar just simply didn’t fall in line with my health goals for myself.
It was then that I realized that I could use my aversion to regret as a motivation to not give in to the cravings. If in that moment of the urge I could imagine the regret I would soon feel, it was easier to walk away from it. Each time that I didn't give in to the craving, and thereby avoided the regret and guilt that always followed, I felt such relief!
So maybe this will help you too. Whatever your cravings or unhealthy desires may be, whether it's for muffins, a cigarette, or an early cocktail, contemplate the regret you will soon feel if you give in. Consider how stressful it is to feel guilt.
You can actually avoid it by making a conscious choice. This is what Buddhism calls “skillful action.” Or what is also called “mindfulness”. You are simply taking into account the logical consequences of your actions, and making choices based on that.
Guilt and stress wreak havoc on your health. Anything you can do to avoid it is important preventative medicine.
I indulge in sweets from time to time. There are special occasions where I consciously choose to have the birthday cake or whatever. But the choice isn't followed by regret when I make it mindfully. It's the auto-pilot response to a craving that leads to guilt.
Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you too need to avoid sweets, or that you should feel guilty about your piece of dark chocolate if you don’t have regrets.
What I am suggesting is that if you are giving in to certain cravings that you feel regret about afterwards, try this technique and see if it helps.
Let me know how it goes!
Stabilize Your Blood Sugar With Ayurveda
If you're one of the millions of people who suffer from low blood sugar, you probably have been advised to eat frequent, small meals throughout your day. Believe it or not, this advice is totally the opposite of what traditional Ayurvedic medicine recommends. As you've likely heard me say a million times, Ayurveda teaches that the root cause of all disease is improper digestion. So with this focus, you can trust Ayurveda to have a very thorough understanding of what optimal digestion is! What I'm about to explain to you may be contrary to what you've heard, but if you'd like to uncover the underlying cause of your blood sugar instability, check this out.
What Happens When You Eat Frequently
In our society, food is everywhere. It's almost hard to avoid eating all the time! Except breakfast, which people tend to skip. (Click here to read about the importance of breakfast.) But let's say you eat breakfast, and then around 10 am you have a muffin, or fruit, or nuts. Healthy snack, right? Well your digestive fire, your metabolic process, now turns its attention to the new food coming in. The problem here is that during the 5 or so hours between meals, you are really supposed to be burning fat, not new food.
Fat is our calm, stable, non-emergency fuel.
Stored in there, too, are all the fat-soluble toxins from the environment. So fat burning is totally crucial! Not just for weight loss, but to detoxify our bodies and also release the essential fatty acids and stable fuels that regulate our blood sugar levels, and in turn our mood and energy level. If we're constantly giving our digestion new food to focus on, then we never enter fat-burning mode.
How To Make Your Ayurvedic Diet Stick
Adopting new food habits is probably one of the hardest, if not the very hardest, things in our life to do. We all have so many attachments to certain foods and the feelings we associate with them. Believe me, mine come up all of the time. According to Ayurveda, there is a "Yes" food list and a "No" food list for each constitutional type. You can imagine the look on my patients' faces when I show them the Ayurvedic Dietary Guidelines handout and they see all of their favorite foods on the "Avoid" list! Over the past 13 years in practice, I've realized that equally important to steering my patients in the right direction as far as "what" to eat, is "how" to make the change to an Ayurvedic diet. Here are some tips and a video that are really helpful to make your Ayurvedic diet, or any diet for that matter, stick.
The Ultimate Purpose of Nutrition in Ayurveda
What is the ultimate purpose of good nutrition? Is it just to stay alive? Is it to avoid disease? We have so many food choices in our modern society, yet diet and nutrition are controversial and confusing subjects for most Westerners. Ayurveda, the traditional healing science of India, offers us a profound understanding of the ultimate purpose of good nutrition. Coming from the ancient Vedic tradition that valued spiritual enlightenment above all else, it's no surprise that Ayurvedic nutrition serves to further that same goal.
In the 2500 year old Ayurvedic text, Caraka Samhita, it is stated:
When diseases cropped up creating impediments in penance, abstinence, study, celibacy, religious observances and life-span of living beings, the holy great sages, out of sympathy on creatures, assembled on one of the auspicious sides of the Himalayas.
Ayurveda, Nutrition, and Cleansing Radio Show
Last week I had the honor of being interviewed about Ayurveda, nutrition, and cleansing on a yoga-oriented internet radio show called "Where is My Guru." I love the name of the show because the answer to that question is the profound, empowering teaching "The guru is in you." These fun girls interview all kinds of guests in the yoga/wellness/sustainability world. We talk a lot about daily and seasonally cleansing, the proper mindset and intention to help you lose weight, and how to get our kids to make healthy food choices. Have a listen, make a comment, and check out their other shows as well!
Feed Yourself Real Nutrition With Superfoods
A challenge that comes up a lot with my patients is how to make time to prepare real, nutrient-dense meals. Believe it or not, this crucial piece to your overall health does not have to be time-consuming. Whether you're an athlete, a nursing mom, or just a busy person, you can easily incorporate highly nutritious superfoods into your meals. Given the stresses of today's modern lifestyle, it's more important than ever to take advantage of super nutritious foods. Number one, you get some serious bang for your buck. And when you feed yourself real nutrition, your appetite and cravings naturally fall into balance.
What is a Superfood?
Superfood is a term used to describe foods that are extremely nutrient-dense. Superfoods have been used throughout time by most cultures around the world to increase energy, vitality and endurance. Thanks to online shopping, now we can order superfoods from all around the globe. Some of these exotic superfoods you may have heard of: acai, goji berries, maca root, mangosteen, amalaki, hemp, blue-green algae. Many common fruits and vegetables are also super nutritious: blueberries, kale, and pomegranate, to name a few.
The great thing about superfoods is that when you eat a meal composed of these nutrient-dense items, you supply high-quality, readily available nutrition to your cells. So your body actually gets nourished and doesn't get as hungry as often. Cravings for empty foods - processed foods - go away. When you look at all the foods in your typical meal, how many of them are nutrient-dense, and how many are relatively, or totally, empty?
If your food is empty, no wonder you get hungry just a short while later. Your body is still starving for nutrition.
This Week's Focus: Chia Seeds
The Donut Story
I've told the Donut Story to dozens of my patients over the years. Sometimes I call it "Enlightenment in a Heapful of Glazed Donuts" because it wasn't until my teacher ordered me to admit and give in to this denied desire that I realized how blindly and foolishly principled I had become. It perfectly illustrates how feeling guilt and anxiety about eating certain things is far more unhealthy than actually just doing it with clear intention and pure joy...and then truly letting it go.
Neuro-Acupuncture for Neurological Disorders
Neuro-Acupuncture is a contemporary acupuncture technique integrating traditional Chinese needling methods with Western biomedical neurology. Neuro-Acupuncture has proven to be the most effective technique for treating acute and chronic central nervous system disorders, including: Stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Traumatic Brain Injury, PTSD, Cerebral Palsy, and Autism. Neuro-Acupuncture is the primary treatment of choice for post-concussive syndrome, an ever more common predicament. Patients often experience remarkable results with just a few needles, bringing about immediate improvement that can last permanently.
Neuro-Acupuncture treatments focus primarily on the scalp. Dr. Sharada integrates scalp points with body points when appropriate, creating a relaxing, yet supremely effective experience. Since completing certification with the world-famous Doctors Jason and Linda Hao, Dr. Sharada has incorporated Neuro-Acupuncture into her practice, with patients achieving great rates of improvement in pain, peripheral neuropathy, loss of smell, migraines, mobility, dizziness and more.
Please visit http://neuro-acupuncture.org/ for more information on this revolutionary technique.
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