S3. E2. Sweet Cravings
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[00:00:00] I find that we crave sweets often. After, we've adequately fueled ourselves because we have not fed our soul and we are putting so much pressure on that food to cater to everything that our body and soul needs, where food was never meant to do that.
Food was never meant to carry the full weight of your weary soul.
Welcome to Your Daily Bread podcast. I'm your host, Abbie Stasior, a registered dietician and certified intuitive eating counselor. My prayer is that these bite-sized episodes will help you heal your relationship with food, improve body image, and ultimately help you grow closer to God. Now, I can't personally heal you,
but I'm gonna be directing you to the one that can, and that is Jesus.
Also disclaimer, I'm not a pastor, but a sister in Christ that's offering you some food for thought that you can take into your quiet time with the Lord as your daily bread. Let's dig in.
this episode topic has been highly requested by. A lot of clients and actually one client's brother who also struggles [00:01:00] with this, and I'm like, you know what? I've had enough requests for this topic. I'm going to do a full episode on it, and I really feel that this will be valuable for you. We're gonna be talking about cravings today and what may be behind you craving something sweet after you eat.
So have you ever finished a full meal and immediately thought. I just need a little something sweet. Or have you ever said, oh, I always need something sweet after you eat? And a lot of people feel guilt and shame around that, but I just wanna say that that is not a failure, and it's instead an indicator.
Your body is trying to communicate something, communicate a need, and we're gonna go through all of the different potential needs that your body may be communicating and why you may be craving something sweet, especially after you have already eaten.
So Father God, thank you so much for this day. Lord, we just praise you and thank you for your goodness, your faithfulness, that your mercies are new every single day.
Lord, thank you for designing us in a way where our [00:02:00] bodies communicate our needs that you have equipped us, equipped our physical bodies with. Indicators for when we're hungry, when we're full, when we're tired, just all of these biological cues, Lord, and I pray that you help us to renew our mind around those cues so that we don't shame ourselves.
We don't condemn ourselves. We know that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, but instead we. We honor those cues. We listen to those cues. We are attuned to those cues, and we attend to those cues out of care, love, and respect for our bodies, our temples, and out of love and honor and respect for you, Lord, so that we can really be living that first Corinthians 10 31 life.
Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink. We do it all for the glory of God, Lord. So I just pray that everything that's said in this episode is what you want to say through me, not what I want to say, Lord. And that it just lands on the heart of every single listener and leads to less guilt, [00:03:00] less shame, less condemnation in terms of our relationship with food, but more grace, more compassion, and , just a better relationship with food where we can partner with you Lord, in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
We're gonna be diving into Matthew four, verses three through four. And at this point in scripture, Jesus has just been baptized. God has just said, this is my beloved son. With him, I am well pleased. And Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to fast for 40 days, and he is tempted by the devil.
Verse three says, during that time, the devil came and said to him, if you are the son of God. Tell these stones to become loaves of bread, but Jesus told him no. The scriptures say people do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Now, typically when people use this verse, they're talking about.
How we need to just stop eating. 'cause like, oh, we don't live by bread alone, so you just need to stop eating. They [00:04:00] use this verse to justify restricting. And this verse is also talked about too, when we are talking about biblical fasting. And that's not what the episode's gonna be about today. It's gonna be talking about all the different reasons why.
We crave certain foods and there are physical reasons, but then there are also emotional reasons that we need to be aware of because not every craving for food means that you actually need more food. First, let's dive into the physical reasons why you may crave sweets. After eating, because cravings doesn't always mean that something is wrong.
It just means that your body is communicating. So when you go through all these reasons, this is gonna help you with better discernment you can really decode your cravings and respond to what you feel like you're sensing in your body in an accurate way. Number one, you can feel cravings for sweets.
If you are under fueling, especially even after a meal, you may be craving something sweet because you haven't given your body enough fuel, enough energy, enough calories [00:05:00] throughout the day. Another reason why you may crave sweets after you eat, is because of a lack of balance in your meals.
If your meals are not balanced with protein and fiber and carbs and fats, and if it's just carbs. You may be craving something sweet after you eat, because carbs are the body's primary and preferred energy source. So when your body needs fuel and it needs it, now, if your blood sugar is low, it's gonna send you cravings for carbs because that's what gets your blood sugar up.
That's what gives you the most energy, the most quickly, and actually carbs are the only macronutrient that you both start. Digesting and absorbing in your mouth. Everything else has to be in the stomach to be fully digested and the small intestine to be fully absorbed carbs, they actually start that process in the mouth, so when your body needs food quickly and it needs fuel quickly, it's gonna send you cravings for carbs.
So if you are having a lack of balance on your plate and you're just eating carbs, you're gonna be craving carbs a lot more. 'cause your blood sugar is just spiking and dipping, [00:06:00] spiking and dipping. We burn through carbs very quickly because your body is using it very quickly. So if you're always turning towards carbs and you're lacking protein and fiber in your diet and also fat, then you're probably gonna be craving more sweets.
Sometimes we crave sweets after we eat because of a restriction mindset, and we're still stuck in that dieting mentality. Or if you have a scarcity mindset. So if you don't give yourself access to sweets very often you're gonna be craving sweets more often. Because your body is thinking, oh, this is the only time that I'm allowed to eat this.
This is my one opportunity. I have to take advantage of this opportunity. Now I need to eat this to the fullest. I probably need to eat all of it so that I don't have access to it tomorrow, and I need to take full advantage of this experience because I don't know when I'm gonna be allowed to eat this again.
That's the mindset that your brain is in at that time, and that urgency creates heightened desire. Sometimes we crave sweets after we eat because we eat too fast and it takes 20 minutes. We've talked about this so many times [00:07:00] on the show, but always a, a good reminder that it takes 20 minutes for your body to send you fullness cues.
So if you eat in less than 20 minutes, you may have a false sense of hunger. Your body may actually be full by what you just ate in less than 20 minutes, but you haven't given your body enough time to actually catch up and send you fullness cue. So my biggest recommendation, if you do tend to eat faster, if you're, and you're working on, hopefully you're working on eating slower and you're feeling those sweet cravings after you just ate like a pretty decent meal balanced meal.
I would just say wait 20, 30 minutes and then check in with your body again after your body has had time to send you fullness cues and just check in. Again. It's not bad if you still have cravings for sweets. This just allows for better discernment in your body to catch up. And also dehydration.
Sometimes thirst can really masquerade itself as a sugar craving, so sometimes you may just be dehydrated as well. There are emotional reasons why we crave sweets as well, [00:08:00] because our body may be fueled, but our soul is still hungry, and
this is really where Matthew four comes alive. Because Jesus is saying that people do not live by bread alone. So yes, you need to physically fuel yourself, but there is something spiritually that needs to be fed as well. That's why you need the bread of life and the living water so it's important that yes, you fuel yourself physically, but you also need to feed your soul.
And I find that we crave sweets very often. After we eat, after, we've adequately fueled ourselves that meal that day because we have not fed our soul and we are putting so much pressure on that food to cater to everything that our body and soul needs, where food was never meant to do that.
Food was never meant to carry the full weight of your weary soul. But we're putting, food in that place. We're expecting it to play that role, and , we're really putting food in a God-shaped hole. And so yes, there is a time for fasting and to let Jesus fully cater to your spiritual [00:09:00] needs, but most of the time, more often than not, we are not in a season of fasting food.
And we actually need to be both physically fueled and then we need to turn to Jesus. And feed our soul. So there are some emotional reasons why we crave sweets after we eat. Sometimes it is habitual. Sometimes dessert after dinner is just this learned rhythm that you have and you're just in the habit of eating sweets.
So I would say in that case, you wanna be more intentional about that and not automatically jumping into eating sweets just because that's in your rhythm, but actually checking with your body. Does my body need, is my soul calling for something different? Sometimes we are dopamine seeking.
I see this a lot with the clients that I have that have a DHD or a DD, they just want a dopamine hit and they're craving sweets because , they just need that light bulb that is going off in their brain, and they actually don't need more fuel. It's not that the sweets are bad, but they don't really need that, and there may be something that's not food related, that's outside of food that could [00:10:00] give them a dopamine hit
and I had a client send me an article and we can link it up in the show notes that talked about how to create a dopamine menu. And I loved this because it was food related and they talk about having things that are for appetizers and the main meal and like , quick snacks.
The quick things that you can do that are outside of food to give you that dopamine hit. So I really liked how they related it to food. And a dopamine menu is a list of soul nourishing. Pleasure options that you can choose instead of food. And the most important thing that I got out of this article about dopamine menus is that you need to create the menu at a different time than when you need to choose something from the menu.
When you're in that state of craving something and you're used to turning to food and you know you need to turn to something that's not food, you're already feeling that tension and you just need to already choose from a list that's created. So I would say when you're not feeling tempted, when you're not in that dopamine [00:11:00] seeking state.
That would be a good time to create that dopamine menu. You have it in the list on your phone, a sticky note, or maybe a printed out list on your fridge or in your pantry or somewhere that's in your line of vision where you can easily access that and turn to that so that you have a created list that you can just simply choose from.
When you need it. And what's gonna be on that list? That's gonna be different for everyone. It could be getting outside in nature. It could be going on a walk. It could be worshiping, it could be praying, it could be journaling. It could be engaging in a hobby or some sort of creative pursuit. I have a ton of clients that get into crocheting and knitting and colored pencils and painting and things where they're doing other things with their hands.
Instead of turning to food, , it could look like calling a friend. It could look like taking a hot, relaxing shower, doing a face mask. It could look like a bunch of different things. So you have to find what works best for you and what you think could work for you, and have that on your menu so that you can choose , what is my soul calling for in this moment?
[00:12:00] And that's why this is so important to have a variety of spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines so that you have a variety of ways where you can interact with God spiritually. So it's not. Just prayer. It's not just worship. And even there's so many different types of prayer. I mean, there's conversational prayer, there's beholding prayer, there's intercession, right?
There's so many different types of prayer. Even there's meditating on scripture and like Tio Davina that we talk about so much on the show. So you wanna have a variety of ways of interacting with God, maybe even a specific playlist that you listen when you're feeling this way and that your soul is feeling heavy or weary.
You just wanna already be prepared for these instances and create that dopamine menu. I wanna say too, and hopefully this goes without saying, if you know my opinions on things and how I approach food, but this is not to say that having dessert is bad doesn't mean that you can never have dessert.
If you're craving sweets, not that you can never have dessert, this is meant to expand how you receive comfort and Just to expand where you have [00:13:00] pleasure and where you receive comfort. So it's not just food anymore.
'cause so many people feel, in some type of way, feel any sort of craving and they immediately go to food without even pausing and being intentional. And they only have food as an option. So this is just to expand where you experience pleasure and comfort. Sometimes a sweet craving. Can be that you need food and it's okay to have a, sweet treat, but it may also be a cry from your soul that you need something else.
This is not meant to shame you away from eating sweets, but it is to help you increase your discernment and help decode your cravings. It's like, okay, let me pause, lemme partner with the Holy Spirit to discern , what is my body trying to communicate with me right now?
And there are gonna be some days where you choose the right thing and you, meet your need, exactly what your body was communicating. In the right way. And then there's gonna be other times where you don't, and that's not a failure, that's feedback like, oh, okay, when I'm feeling that way, I actually didn't need that.
I actually needed this.
So I hope that this is helpful for you, and if you [00:14:00] need help healing your relationship with food, then head to the show notes and book a free initial call with me to kickstart your journey to finding food freedom in Christ.
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Your Daily Bread Podcast. Now, if anything about this episode resonated with you, I wanna encourage you to send it to three sisters in Christ who may also wanna steward their bodies better.
I read every comment, every review of the show, and I love hearing your testimonies and how the Holy Spirit is meeting you through these episodes. And if you haven't left a review yet, I wanna encourage you to do so 'cause it truly does help the show grow and it. Ultimately benefits the kingdom. And if you need any personalized support with your nutrition and your relationship with food or your body image, head to the show notes and you'll see all the different ways to work with me.
See you next week.
