What if that craving for Mint Milano cookies with afternoon java were something to take seriously, instead of trying to will power it away? “Seriously” doesn’t mean letting a craving always have its way with you, but if you listen to your longings for foods, they carry valuable clues about what your body really needs. It might be a nutrition issue, yes—but often there’s more to it than that. Foods have their place in serving our bodies, but they are only one part of a holistic health formula. The perspective of integrative nutrition, a philosophy and a practical approach to well-being, is that food is a secondary source of nourishment, while relationships, career, spirituality, and exercise are primary nourishments that sustain us most deeply.
“You can eat all the broccoli in the world and still be unhappy and unhealthy because other aspects of your life aren’t balanced,” says Joshua Rosenthal, founder and director of the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York. “When you are satisfied with your career, in a loving relationship, have a spiritual practice, and exercise on a regular basis, you will be more likely to make better decisions about the foods you eat.”
The institute is the largest nutrition school in the world, offering programs of study with leading health and nutrition experts, and spanning topics from traditional philosophies about food to modern physiological and even ethical aspects of food. Graduates of the program are nutrition counselors, trained to address each client’s individual, holistic needs. “One of our unique theories is bioindividuality,” says Rosenthal. “There is not one diet that works for everyone. Integrative nutrition teaches over 100 dietary theories to give our students the knowledge they need to decide what works best for each person.”
Holly Anne Shelowitz is a certified nutrition counselor based in Rosendale and director of Nourishing Wisdom, which offers workshops, classes, and individual counseling on nutrition and food preparation. Many of Shelowitz’s clients are women who are trying to juggle too many things. They may be having health problems, trouble sleeping, depression, weight gain, relationship issues, fertility issues, or other challenges—many of which are interrelated.
“Often the motivating factor that gets them to see me is a high level of stress,” says Shelowitz. “They’re on the go nonstop from the minute they wake up to the minute they fall onto the pillow. Often they are taking care of a lot of other people but not taking care of themselves. These women are eating out a lot, grabbing food on the run, and have no time to cook.” Shelowitz likes how the integrative nutrition approach doesn’t profess confining dietary regimens for everyone, like taking supplements every day or staunchly avoiding bad foods. “Inevitably, with those approaches, people fall of the wagon and eat stuff they know they shouldn’t.”
Cravings As Clues
Andrea Ramirez is a holistic health counselor in Beacon who also sees a lot of people under the duress of an overly full and demanding schedule. She can attest to the power of food cravings as a manifestation of something being out of balance. “For 90 percent of people, the craving is for sugar,” she says. “Most people are at such a disconnect from their bodies that they aren’t aware of how much sugar they are having.” The sugar-caffeine team is especially common as a way to endure a stressful, overscheduled day, she says. That combo might give a jolt of energy in the morning or a kick to bridge the afternoon, but the pattern can escalate and become self-perpetuating. “Glucose goes up after eating something sweet,” Ramirez explains, “and insulin release is triggered to get the excess glucose out of your bloodstream.” Then, in response to insulin, blood sugar may drop precipitously, leading to an energetic “crash” that you seek to treat again, often with sugary foods and/or caffeine. Nutritious meals, good sleep, and natural ways of energizing are left in the dust.
Sugar cravings can reflect the body’s legitimate need for fuel when reserves are running low—a common issue when meals are skipped, or nutritionally meager. Patricia Charles sought aid from Ramirez after getting some glaring clues from her body that something had to change. “I was working 40 to 60 hours a week and not taking very good care of myself,” Charles says. “I wasn’t eating full meals, and I was eating fast food a lot. In the morning I would have cookies for breakfast, and sometimes wouldn’t even have lunch. I would get so busy that I could go through the day without noticing I was hungry until I got dizzy. So I was having dizzy spells, having pains in my legs, and I even had a seizure, maybe due to not eating properly.” Charles had been having anxiety attacks at work as well. “I had been to counselors for too much anxiety,” she says, “but they would say there was no solution, that it would be a lifelong struggle.” Anti-anxiety medication was suggested, but she didn’t want to resort to that.
What Charles learned with Ramirez’s help included nutrition basics—what foods her body really needed, and when. But when Ramirez suggested that Charles cook nutritious meals for herself instead of eating take-out so often, she balked. “I didn’t want to cook anything, to even acknowledge the benefits of it,” Charles recalls. “So we started out mostly focusing on sugar and breakfast. I started eating high protein foods in the morning—nitrate-free ham and turkey, with the fat and protein instead of the sugar. I noticed the impacts. When I ate breakfast, I no longer got dizzy at two o’clock.” She eventually was willing to tackle cooking dinner. “Little by little, I gained small confidences, like cooking rice. When I finally did that successfully I got excited—it felt like a big accomplishment. Now, when I eat well, I rarely have anxious attacks. I’ve tested it. If I go back to eating sugary foods, I get more easily stressed and moody again.”
Charles gained more than better eating habits: “I learned to have greater appreciation for myself. Before I had specific goals for myself, I would say yes to everything and do whatever anyone asked me to do, like working through dinner. My personal self would take a fall for that. But now, when I know I’m going to make dinner at seven, I’ll say no. Before, I would have said yes and just gotten pizza.”
Longing for Balance
Sugary foods, and the fats that often accompany them in snacks, aren’t just fuels to meet the body’s energy demands. Sugars and fats, as we savor them in the mouth, stimulate the brain’s “pleasure center” and enhance the release of feel-good brain chemicals like dopamine and serotonin. Food cravings can be a signal to stimulate the pleasure center—somehow, some way.
“Most people who crave sugar,” says Ramirez, “are really craving sweetness, which can be gotten in many ways.” Exercise, touch, sex, daylight, and personally rewarding activities are among the other pleasures that keep plenty of pleasure chemicals percolating naturally. A day that is lacking in enjoyment through these other avenues may become a day of sugar/fat cravings as one sure way to feel better. “You might crave sugar because you are bored with your job,” says Ramirez, “or because you don’t get sweetness in your relationship. Let’s say you’re single and don’t want to be. You may come home and crave sugar. It’s an immediate way to get sweetness.” Shelowitz concurs: “We have needs that we may be trying to meet by overeating, without realizing how much our food choices are a Band-Aid for something else that’s deeper.”
Integrative nutrition takes a yogic view of foods and of life, with the best health drawing on a balance of yin and yang energies. Sugar is yin energy, Ramirez explains. “It’s light, creative, uplifting. The more bitter your life, the more sugar you crave. If your life is too yang—too grounded, or too heavy in animal protein—then you are going to crave sugar as the opposite quality. You want to be somewhere in between.” Over time, addressing problems in relationships and work, and finding enjoyable physical activities and spiritual expression, perhaps with the added help of specialists, strips away layers of confusion about food. Then, eating in a balanced way comes naturally.
“Just as a cow knows that she should be chewing on grass,” says Ramirez, “we know what we should be eating if we really listen to what our gut is saying. Someone might say, ‘But if I let my gut tell me what to do, I would end up eating ice cream and burgers all day!’ But that’s not really true. If you reawaken your connection with your gut, you’ll know what to eat.”
If you’ve ever had a dastardly craving that won’t desist, you may be hesitant to trust your body’s menu choices. But you can, says Rosenthal. “It’s really that simple, if you look at all areas of your life to find any imbalances before addressing the foods you eat. When you are happy with the primary foods [career, relationships, spiritual practice, exercise], you will be more likely to feed yourself with whole foods and less chemicalized junk food. I often refer to ‘crowding out’ when it comes to nutrition. You don’t need to eliminate the foods you love, just be sure to add in more vegetables, whole grains, and fruit. You will find that as you incorporate more whole foods, you’ll have less room for the junk food.”
The same goes for the other facets of a healthy, balanced life, Rosenthal adds. “When you start adding in more loving relationships, you will find that you don’t have as much time or room in your life for the unhealthy relationships.”
The Power of Cooking
People who love to cook enjoy more than the end product. In addition to gustatory delight, there may be artistry, companionship, sensuality, a sense of pride, self-nurturance, gifting to others, and more. Cooking meals can also provide excellent nutrition at a cost well below that of a fine meal in a restaurant—more on par with the cost of buying fast food, but for so much more real value. Shelowitz loves teaching people how to make nutritious meals at home, especially in palatable forms like super-quick meals. “As much as I like restaurants and going out to eat,” she says, “the more home-cooked food you eat, the better you will feel. I truly believe that. If you integrate doing that into your schedule, it’s life-changing.”
Not surprisingly, Shelowitz’s clients often blanch at the idea of needing to find yet more time in their day, to shop and prepare and cook. “You can imagine that when someone is really stressed for time, it seems very contradictory to suggest they make more time to cook. So where I often begin is having someone tell me about their life—what’s working, what are they stressed about, whether time is an issue. We look at how their choices—career, family, and so on—affect their well-being. But we eventually focus on nutrition and cooking.”
Shelowitz dispels right away the myth that eating home-cooked meals means hours of slaving at the stove, and assures clients they don’t have to become a chef to eat well. “I might suggest they pull out their Crock-Pot,” she says with amusement of that oft-maligned implement that most people have stuck in a cabinet somewhere. “We love the Crock-Pot. It’s the best friend for a person who has a busy life. I give a very simple recipe that takes 10 minutes to prepare, like a delicious stew, with no intensive dicing and slicing.” The stew cooks literally while you sleep, and the nutritious concoction is ready the next morning to take to work—a very simple replacement for a lunch of fast food, or no lunch at all.
Shelowitz teaches how to cook a series of other meals that are delicious, nourishing, ready in 30 minutes or less, and save oodles of money. One of her favorites uses one cup of millet, a chopped yam, a drained can of kidney beans, and four cups of water—the whole thing taking about seven minutes to prepare—then you bring it to a boil on the stove and simmer for 40 minutes. Seasoned with good-quality, organic olive oil and salt, it’s a delicious, hearty entree or side dish that serves at least four, for about three dollars.
Even with quick-prep meals, clients can feel stretched to make time to shop and commit to cooking at home. But ripples of benefit begin to materialize. “There’s this beautiful rhythm that happens when you’re preparing food from wholesome ingredients, that starts to bring balance into your life. A stressed-out person who has no time for shopping or cooking will need to take time for that from somewhere else, so they start looking at those long working hours and realize that working overtime every day isn’t the healthiest thing. It really starts a whole chain of events that affects all areas of their lives. I’m not a psychologist, but when someone is really getting into making changes in their diet and seeing how that changes their lives, it can be very satisfying. It’s a fascinating approach to well-being. It can even enhance the work they are doing with a therapist.”
Indeed, Ramirez sees self-empowerment as one of the most powerful benefits of integrative nutrition. “We grow up in a culture where we’re used to calling a doctor, popping a pill—never feeling responsible for our own health. Integrative nutrition empowers you to make decisions and have power over the way you feel, both physically and emotionally. What I want my clients to take with them is the knowledge that they have control over how they feel, and they can always do something to heal.”
This article appears in April 2009.
