The Anatomy of a Crave

Whose afraid of the big bad crave?  If you’ve ever started a diet and white knuckled your way into the afternoon only to give in to your dessert of choice, you know that cravings can be a bitch.  They have choked the life out of my best intentions to get myself healthy on countless occasions.  Eventually a person naturally gets beat down from all that failure and gives up.  Who wants to live a life wrapped in that painful self denial anyway?

Fortunately I’ve come to understand a thing or two about cravings.  Firstly the really scary, cripplingly strong, bad ass beefcake craves only last for around 72 hours.  You have taken away something your body and mind has come to expect regularly and therefore needs for “normal” operation.  Your suggestive control centers will begin blaring over the loudspeaker for you eat a damn doughnut already to right the mothership. 

Three days.  Granted they will undoubtedly be three very long days.  Unfortunately the cravings don’t magically disappear.  They do however become much more manageable.  The super tough mega crave gives way to his wimpy cousin and now will only last a minute or two.  The biggest challenge now is proving that you can do all the things you used to do with sugar, without it.  Can you watch a movie without a bucket of popcorn and jug of soda?  Can you get through the holidays without a cookie?  Will I be able to enjoy the game without grazing on hot wings and guzzling beer?

The bad news is that wimpy cousin crave will pop up every time you go through a first time without sugar experience.  The good news is he gets exponentially wimpier after you’ve ignored him and succesfully completed said experience sugar free.  I think its pretty cool and even fun to rewire my brain.  Sometimes I will even savor the action of not giving in to a craving because when that happens I am doing no less than breaking chains.