My absolute favorite food used to be pizza. I would crave it every day and on days that I didn’t eat it sometimes I would have dreams about eating it. I didn’t know this at the time but that was all being driven by a very unhealthy gut flora.
The gut bacteria survive and grow based on what is given to them. Ultimately, we can have a measure of control over our gut bacteria. However, the gut bacteria have hard wiring that reaches up into the brain and controls our craving and even our taste buds. There has been extensive research done proving that gut bacteria have a great deal of control over our brain and causes us to crave foods that are good for the preservation of the type of bacteria present in our gut. What I have noticed is that I no longer have cravings outside of my morning coffee. Not only do I not have cravings but when on rare occasions I eat the foods I used to eat regularly they no longer taste nearly as good. This is not a coincidence, the good bacteria I have developed in my gut are controlling my taste buds and cravings to the point that things I would never have eaten a few years ago like steamed broccoli with nothing on it are now palatable.
Deciding to make a change in your health isn’t easy, it can be one of the hardest things to do. From extensive research, I realized there are several “minds” in the body that control us and influence how we act and reason. The issue is if we just go along with whatever we feel like doing or eating then we a succumbing to hedonistic temporary local pleasures that will keep us entrenched in the spots we are in life. So like with anything in life a change in diet will require a great deal of self-control because you are going to be killing your old self. In the case of the gut flora, you literally are killing them when you change your diet, that is why cravings can feel such a strong pull. The gut bacteria have “hard wiring” that stretches up into the brain and goes up much further than the little “string” like strands that hang down from your frontal lobes. That is why will power will often fail to cravings if you go cold turkey.
When I started losing weight I was very far off from where I am now. How I was able to achieve so much is by incremental improvement over time. I didn’t give up pizza all at once and I didn’t quit candy all at once. I slowly began to add good foods in before I dropped my old bad habits. I started adding things into my diet to improve my gut biome, including probiotic pills which I think were useful at helping to fast track dropping the unhealthy foods. I also used cheese in small portions as a tool to control cravings since it is a highly addictive food. Slowly but surely, I kept going and successfully changed my diet and my gut biome. All of these small changes add up over time. The change in lifestyle isn’t linear it is exponential and will require some time with seemingly little improvement to build up to the large changes.