Do You Want To Stop YOUR Food Cravings?
26 Feb, 2018
Understanding Your Danger & Recovery Foods
My goal is to teach every individual how to stop dieting and instead learn to build a lifestyle that works for them. A lifestyle that delivers sustained fat loss along with balanced energy, reduced hunger, and absent cravings.
One of the key understandings in this lifestyle is “danger foods” and “recovery foods”. Both are important concepts to learn in deciphering the metabolic fat loss formula unique to every individual.
Danger Foods:
A danger food is a food that when eaten causes undesirable effects later and/or silently keeps you from getting results. They create negative changes in hunger, cravings or energy.
For example, artificial sweeteners are notorious danger foods for some people. Including them can increase hunger and cravings making people who consume them more likely to eat more of the wrong things more often. This is a big time example of how a zero calorie item, can disrupt biochemistry.
Examples include things like dairy and gluten. Both of these foods can interrupt metabolism through an immune mechanism such as induction of autoimmune thyroiditis(Hashimotos), or in the case of dairy, simply create an exaggerated insulin response in some people.
Other examples include fruit, sugar free products, nut butters, and alcohol. These foods may trigger compensatory eating reactions that lead to eating too much food and/or the wrong types of food later. They also can simply have more or less of a fat storing effect in certain people.
As mentioned, synthetic zero cal sweeteners, are examples as well. Some people who consume these non-calorie items end up with insatiable hunger and cravings. Some, however, have no effect and may even benefit from these foods. Understanding these individual reactions are key.
Another prime example of danger foods are the combination of fat, starch, sugar or salt. Highly palatable foods like these make us eat more at the present meal AND cause brain changes that make use crave more of those foods later. This is why “cheat meals” can be such a slippery slope.
Also it appears that foods with high flavor profiles can also be triggers.
Recovery Foods:
These foods are foods that can be used periodically through the day or week to help stave off compensatory reactions. Unlike danger foods, they have the ability to balance the metabolism and work for a person rather than against it.
Recovery foods are far more broad and can simply be something that is psychologically pleasing (i.e. having 2 squares of dark chocolate in the afternoon to avoid craving candy or pizza later).
Recovery foods keep you sane and “buffer” the negative effects of hunger, cravings, or energy fluctuations. Knowing your recovery foods is a great tool in managing the lifestyle aspect of body change.
Examples of recovery foods include chocolate/cocoa, sugar free products, nuts/seeds, high fat foods (i.e. avocado),
As you can see, these foods help control Cravings and when used buffer against the need/urge to eat too much or the wrong things later.
Don’t get confused here. Recovery foods can often be small amounts of something that in larger amounts might cause an issue.
In some instances a food may be a danger food for one person and a recovery food for another (i.e nut butters).
So, in this case one size does not fit all and one person’s trigger food can act as another person’s buffer food. This is an important consideration and part of each individual’s detective work to find their unique metabolic fat loss formula and beat cravings for food.
For more information on how to beat cravings from both the biochemical and behavioral aspect check out the Midlife Fatburn Challenge Program
