Our Bodies Crave High Calorie Foods Because our Ancestors Faced Times of Famine

Imagine if you will, medieval times, you are a maiden or a lord…life seems great. Suddenly, you get the news that the entire crop of food your village has been growing was wiped out by a bunch of roaming boars and now your whole village has no food for the winter. This is a terrible situation but it is a situation our ancestors faced regularly. Food was scarce, we didn’t have refrigeration and transportation. What you grew, hunted, or foraged is what you ate. Even just a hundred years ago you can see the network providing us food was not in place. Today we eat fruit from other countries in different latitudes, with different growing seasons than us. They send food to us when our grocery stores need some more selection. It’s a great thing we have going and we should all be very thankful. Additionally, we live in a first world country and we have so much food- it is way more than we need, chances are we won’t ever run out…BUT our bodies don’t know that.

Our bodies still believe we are in a feast and famine situation. Our brains give us high reward reactions when we calorie gorge. Every piece of fried food, loaded with hundred of calories does something to our brain. Our brain says to our body, this is great, please get more! Our brain wants us to eat as much as we can….just in case we have to face a famine in the near future. Here in the USA, that famine never comes. However, day in and day out we repeat this series of events. Our brain says yes, drink that chocolate milk, eat that cheese….the calorie consumption is sky high and our activity level (calorie usage) is minimal.

I think it’s liberating to understand our bodies are made to be this way. Doesn’t it make you feel a little less down on yourself to realize, it’s your brain’s fault and it’s just doing that to help you survive?! I truly believe that understanding the problem is half of the solution….

So, what’s the next step? Switching to foods we won’t over eat. Our go to foods are processed, preserved, and ladened with additives (like sugar and butter). These foods are made in a way that makes it extremely easy to over eat. When we turn back to natural foods, many times the fiber and high nutrient content make it a lot less likely to over eat. I will help you discover these foods and help you incorporate them into your life.