How To Eat Healthy Snacks When Junk Food Cravings Hit [Episode #718]

This week’s topic is: How To Eat Healthy Snacks When Junk Food Cravings Hit

I think we’re all familiar with these feelings, this intensity of wanting the chips, the cookies, the ice cream. Even if they are healthier versions, like the coconut ice cream varieties, which our family has certainly discovered, let’s face it, they’re still treats and laid in with sugar. They’re okay to have sometimes as with most things, however, we don’t want to feel controlled.

The thing about cravings and other forms of addiction is that there’s this feeling of forcedness, which doesn’t feel good to us. We feel compelled to eat it. We feel compelled to do something. And it’s a departure from our true freedom and expression of being. Ultimately depleting and reducing our self-confidence. We don’t feel as good in our bodies. We can end up feeling very heavy or bloated. And so that of course affects our moods. It can affect our meditations and our relationships.

This cornerstone that we’re talking about today is practically speaking in the food cornerstone, however, the food cornerstone is intimately connected to emotional wellbeing and spiritual growth cornerstones. We often project our unmet or suppressed needs, feelings, desires, things that we haven’t quite worked out, onto something that we can pick up. It’s a denser physical entity like food.

Today we’re going to talk about strategies that are short term healthy snacks to satisfy your immediate cravings and some longer term tools so that we’re not just putting a bandaid on this issue, but working on long term healing.

Have you been wondering about this very topic? If you want to know the answer to this question sent in by a Beauty just like you, listen now to find out!

Remember you can submit your questions at https://mysolluna.com/askkimberly/

[Question Answered]

Tessa – Vermont (Food Cornerstone)

Kimberly, I love to snack between meals throughout the day. How can I shift from eating junk food to healthier snacks when I get these cravings?

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When you start learning to use your will more and more to draw in more energy, you will find that you may need less energy from outside sources, especially from food. 

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Namaste loves and welcome back to our Thursday Q&A podcast where our topic this week is How To Eat Healthy Snacks When Junk Food Cravings Hit. I think we’re all familiar with these feelings, this intensity of wanting the chips, the cookies, the ice cream. And I will say even if they are healthier versions, like the coconut ice cream varieties, which our family has certainly discovered let’s face it. They’re still treats they’re still laid in with sugar. They’re okay to have sometimes as with most all things, but we don’t wanna feel controlled. And the thing about cravings and other forms of addiction is that there’s this feeling of a, almost like a, like a forcedness, which doesn’t feel good to us. Like we, we feel compelled to eat it. We feel compelled to do something. And it’s a, it’s a departure from our true freedom and expression of being.

So it is ultimately depleting. It reduces our self-confidence. We don’t feel as good in our bodies. We can end up feeling very heavy or bloated. And so that of course affects our moods. It can affect our meditations, it can affect our relationships. So this cornerstone that we’re talking about today is practically speaking in the food cornerstone, but as I’ve talked about so much over the years publicly, and also with my private clients, the food cornerstone is intimately connected to the emotional wellbeing and the spiritual growth. Cornerstone. We often project our unmet or suppressed needs, feelings, desires, things that we haven’t quite worked out. We project them onto something that we can pick up. It’s a denser physical entity like food. So today we’re gonna talk about strategies that are short term healthy snacks to satisfy your immediate cravings. But we’re also going to mention some longer term tools that I’d like you to consider to help, not just put a bandaid on this issue, but to work on long term healing, which is something that has been part of my path.

And I’m very passionate about sharing it. I was very addicted to crunchy things, pretzels, chips, and I still do very much enjoy them, but it wasn’t until I started digging behind the intensity of the craving that I discovered the, the crunch was helping me to work out tension and stress, and I wasn’t employing other tools and waste to self sooth. And so my outlet was the food. And once I started to see it, I healed in the short term or I, I, um, ameliorated it in the short term with salsa and hummus and veggies, especially carrots and celery, but now long term. And it’s been some years I have worked on being heard by myself, self validation, many other tools, self connection that have really helped me transcend the craving altogether. So it doesn’t mean I don’t like crunchy foods here and there, but this intense control has now lifted.

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This week’s topic is: How To Eat Healthy Snacks When Junk Food Cravings Hit

So let’s get back to our topic this week, which is about eating healthy snacks when junk food cravings hit. And our question comes today from Tessa who lives in Vermont. So hello, Tessa out there to the east coast, sending you so much love to this, that beautiful state where I’ve hiked many times beautiful state, for sure. And you write Kimberly, I love to snack between meals throughout the day. How can I shift from eating junk food to healthier snacks when I get these cravings?

So there’s a bit of research which we will link to in the show notes and cravings are something that have been studied now quite a bit in the scientific community. There’s research around this topic, particularly in my third book, which is called Beauty Detox Power, which talks about the top nine food cravings. And it was my, um, exploration around the deeper energies, the chakras, how these cravings really relate to our emotional needs. What’s going on with us mentally and spiritually and so on and so forth. But there’s many, um, studies now, which again, you can check them out if you would like over the show notes about how, when we eat certain foods, the neurons and the reward region of our brain become active. So there’s actually brain, um, changes that happen, which actually create feelings of pleasure. It feels very positive. So it becomes this channel, this easy to access channel, so to speak this well, which we could know on some level, we can keep going back to time and time again to create this positivity.

And so this is what creates the cravings because it’s an easy way to ameliorate those feelings of loneliness, abandonment, stress, anxiety, you know, lack of connection, whatever it is. It’s just this thing, okay, it’s in my kitchen. All I have to do is go up and pick it up right, and eat it, put it in my mouth. And immediately these brain chemicals are triggered. So this works for a time, but then it is not as we all know a long term solution because we tend to gain weight. We feel bloated, we feel guilty. And even over time, we need more of the food to get the same amount of that sort of rush in our bodies.

So the hormones that are released are include dopamine, um, leptin, grillin, and cortisol. Also an insulin are also appetite hormones that play a role in cravings. So then we get down to the complexities of hormones and just this relationship between reward and what is, you know, what we are equating with with getting the, getting the reward.

Thought of the Week

So now I want to read a quote about this topic. This is from the You Are A Powerhouse in the new book on page 155. When you start learning to use your will more and more to draw in more energy, you will find that you may need less energy from outside sources, especially from food. So again, this speaks to the long term where healing, where we learn to self sooth, we learn to in a practical sense for me, journaling, getting out ideas, validating myself through just seeing the words on paper was very healing, which is why journaling and journal prompts are a big part of our Solluna Circle.

Our online community meditation was where I could really connect to this inner place and feel grounded. So grounding is a topic that we talk about when, you know, it’s a popular, <laugh> modality now to be barefoot in nature, but it’s because there’s a literal different shift in your energy. There’s, um, negative ions that are given off from the earth. So you feel settled. And when we meditate and our spine is straight and our root chakra, our Moula chakra is sitting on the ground or the chair. We will feel this inner anchor and this inner anchor can really help us feel just so grounded, anytime, anywhere, more and more, when stress kicks up, when something unexpected happens, when a disappointment comes in, whatever it is, we start to feel this inner anchor. So these are some of the longer term practices that I recommend, particularly journaling and meditation.

And remember on the site, we have a whole library of guided free meditations for you. You, I do recommend incorporating a morning meditation as part of your practice so that you can feel this more grounded place as you start your day and before the food cravings hit. Now let’s talk about some healthy snacks. So in the shorter term, we wanna be able to replace. We’re not there yet with the full healing. It could take years, it could take months or weeks. Everybody’s different for me, it took quite a bit of time. My pattern was very deeply etched and that’s okay. We’re not in a rush trying to get there, especially when we know that there are better short term options. So if you like soothing foods, if you feel yourself drawn to things like ice cream, there is a soothing quality to that softness and something that you can try instead are the delicious coconut milk yogurts out there.

So if you’re like me and you like ice cream with crunch, I will slice up bananas. I’ll even put dark chocolate chips in my coconut yogurt. And it has, it’s not the same per se, but it has some of that energy in it to help you soothe. You can also blend frozen can lope or banana. If you want more of that INESS right now, it is quite hot in many parts of the world, especially where I am in Hawaii and in LA in California. So you can also make your own ice cream and natural form with just plain blended fruit.

If you are into crunch as I was one of my favorite snacks still, I don’t have it all the time, but I, I do have it on hand is the gluten free crackers. I like the Mary’s gone crackers very much. The superseded variety, um, is my favorite. The gluten-free cracker. Sometimes when I want a little bit more body to my snack, I have that. I dip it in the kite hill cream cheese. I really like the cha flavor or sometimes in hummus. And we often have cut up veggies because when the, you know, when E gets home from school, when BU gets home, I like to have that for his snack celery snap piece carrots are his favorite. So that, that crunchy veggie is still a very practical, great option to throw in the mix. And then you can keep that cut up and bring it to work or bring it to your desk, Tessa, and all you lovely listening to this so that it’s not like this gap where, oh, this cravings hit, and it’s gonna take me a lot of time to cut this up.

You you’re prepared. So a little bit of prep just washing and cutting keeping in Tupperware or whatever is a really great tool. Keeping those gluten-free crackers on hand. The coconut yogurt on hand is wonderful now, even, um, there’s really delicious kale chips out there as well, which can also help to satisfy the crunchy nest. They come in different varieties, like almost like a vegan cheeses and things which sort of emulate Cheetos or, um, you know, there’s also these chickpeas snacks that do have vegetable oil in them. They’re not perfect, but they’re not horrible. Right? And they, if we’re moving from the scale of really junky upward, they can definitely be put into the mix. So I recommend just keeping those on hand and also making your own trail mix. So there is satisfaction in having a little bit of fat in the snack. So you can have some organic nuts that you throw in Macadamian nuts, which are, you know, a bigger, not for me now that we are in Hawaii, since macadamias are grown there, goji berries is also a big dried fruit in my home sunflower seeds. So just making your own mix, which you, which you curate, and if nuts are roasted, you can get dry roasted to avoid some of the unhealthy oils. And it’s just a really wonderful way to keep, you know, a small amount, which you can Dole out and put into a jar, put it in the fridge or at your desk. So, you know, that is your portion size. So these are some options, oh, and dark chocolate, you know, high percentage CA cow for sweet cravings. And I always still have that in my fridge. I’ll eat a square or two and it’s okay. I mean, I just, I don’t feel guilty about some dark chocolate because of course there’s minerals and magnesium and healthy compounds in chocolate.

And it’s not laid in with dairy and tons of additives. If you get like a nice, pure organic variety. And we are growing Kaka, as we say, in our family in Hawaii. So I have deep respect for the Kaka plants and chocolate in general. So check out some of these options. And then on the other scale, if you are coming from a place of commercial, dairy ice cream, there is the coconut ice creams, which we also have on hand. And those are better in a sense because you’re not having the dairy, there’s still sugar, but you’re having the, you’re not having dairy anymore, which is congestive and bloating. So just remember here, it’s not all or nothing. We wanna be kind. We want to be, um, forgiving of ourselves. We wanna be compassionate. There are some deep, emotional reasons why these cravings have come about.

So we wanna just witness ourselves. We wanna bring in these healthy replacements and we wanna work on deeper connection over time, ways to self soothe. And this goes beyond the scope of the show, but please check out our show notes over at mysolluna.com for more tools around self connection, including our meditations, other podcasts articles, and definitely the new book. You are more than you think you are, which is a wonderful way to really get past some of these patterns once and for all, and start to really come into your full power, which is available to all of us. So thank you so much for being here with me today, sending you so much love so much gratitude. I’ll be back here Monday for our next Q&A show till then take care and Namaste.