Comments on: SCD Food Cravings: Are You Crazy or Is Your Body Trying to Tell You Something?

By: Lori Jo Berg

Lori Jo Berg

In reply to Kristin.

HI Kristin – that is interesting! Some experts believe the body crave what it needs when it’s attempting to get back into balance. I’d go ahead and listen to those red meat/salt cravings, as your body may be needing those things:)

By: Kristin

Kristin

I know this is an old post, but I stumbled across it as I was researching “SCD diet & cravings”.
I’ve had some “emotional cravings” for sure, where I just want something because I miss it & it had been a past favorite…but I’m having intense physical cravings for red meat. The odd thing is that I almost never ate red meat previously. Typically I would eat chicken or turkey. Now I’m eating red meat all of the time & basically have no desire for chicken/turkey, so red meat, eggs, & shrimp are probably my main protein sources. I do have a bad habit of eating the same things over & over once I know what I like, what’s easy enough to stick with, and what keeps me feeling best.
I also crave salt, which is not unusual for me; but I’m craving it much more intensely. I’ve read maybe iron deficiency,as far as the red meat cravings, which may also explain my still ongoing fatigue. Do you have any new or updated insight on this issue of cravings related to SCD diet? I’ve been on the diet 2 1/2 months. Thanks!

By: Christy

Christy

LOL, shots of honey. Raise sticky hand!

Mostly I crave sweets. I think my carb cravings were just habit because they’re either gone or easily ignored, whereas the sweet cravings are still around in full force at 3 months of SCD. Maybe in a year I’ll be over it, I don’t know. I’ve heard when you crave something in a tear-your-hair-out kind of way it’s probably something too advanced for you at your level, which leads me to think it’s bacteria talking….er, screaming. Hopefully in their death throes.

I’ve also heard a food allergy or sensitivity will cause you to crave the very food you’re sensitive to.

By: Steven Wright

Steven Wright

@ Laura – I totally agree with you when I started the diet the bad bacteria and yeast inside of me where fighting extremely hard for more sugar and wheat.

@ Pippa – I know when it comes to my body that if I’m not eating enough fat that I will tend to be hungry and stay hungry all day and that usually leads to cravings.

SCD is not low in calories but some people just don’t understand how much natural food it takes to get the same amount of calories as when they were eating cardboard junk. I actually wrote a post about this here:
https://healthygut.com/30/are-you-starving-yourself-on-the-specific-carbohydrate-diet/

By: pippa

pippa

Hi Interesting post.
Maybe it’s calories that the body is looking for. That’s one thing I noticed about SCD that it tends to be low in calories as many people get most of their calories from starches.
Have you kept an eye on making sure your getting enough calories in there..
Pip

By: Laura

Laura

I always heard that you can only crave salt if your body physically needs it. The honey/carbs could be the nutrients or blood sugar, or it could be the bacteria in the gut. I know when I started SCD, the bad bacteria went insane in their desire for sugar.

By: Jordan Reasoner

Jordan Reasoner

Naomi and Hayley, thanks for the insights and suggestions. I really appreciate it. It’s always interesting to put up a thought provoking post like this and get everyone’s great feedback and ideas on different things they have had success with. I will look into that.

In good health,
Jordan

By: Hayley

Hayley

Annemarie Colbin’s Food and Healing
Kathleen DesMaisons’s Potatoes not prozac (don’t be put off by the title!! some great insights in this book)
I think Doreen Virtue’s Constant Craving (but I am not sure if that is the one that my psy of disease teacher recommended off the top of my head..)

Maybe finding a way to combine the 5-day miracle diet with SCD

Look into the rules of food combining as well. The previous post’s recommendations are great too with Metabolic Typing giving you the ratios which best fit your metabolism but they don’t say which foods to eat so SCD can be combined for sure.

By: naomi

naomi

In my experience, cravings are the result of imbalance of some sort. Cravings for sweet foods usually indicate a blood sugar balance and suggest that you may not be getting enough fats/protein in your diet at that time or eating too much starch and sugar – even SCD allows consumption of huge quantities of fruit, high glycaemic vegetables such as squash, carrots and beets and even honey.

Some cravings are habitual – from the head as in comfort eating, but most come from an imbalance in nutrients and can be resolved by adjusting ratios.

Having said this, most people experience withdrawals and cravings for old foods when they change their diets and can often replace old foods with new ones and over eat on these instead. A common one is to replace a sweet food with a fatty one such as cheese, nuts, nuts butter or even just plain old butter!

Think about looking into metabolic typing to help you understand what your natural balance of fats, carbs and protein should be.

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