Vegan day 331: Sweet sensational vegetables
Cravings… are they real or are they memorex?
For me I want to say that they are both! Honestly though, the only physical thing my body may ask me for IS FOOD in general.. as in hunger pain. It doesn’t specify that the hunger is a sugar hunger. There are two different things here.. a hunger pain and a sugar craving for example. A hunger pain doesn’t really say I must have a warm raspberry-lemon vegan cookie from LifeThyme Natural Market on 6th Avenue and I must have it NOW. Well, it does end up saying that lol– but IT’S MY MIND SPEAKING… not my physical body. What happens next is mind over matter. Once the mind takes control with perhaps imagery.. memorex.. it’s a done deal. Now I really HAVE TO HAVE IT and it’s no joke and there is nothing stopping me. If you try to stop an addict.. you better be dressed in armor because we WILL hurt you!
Can cravings be controlled or subsided? Perhaps not in the moment.. but most definitely ahead of time and/ or over a period of time. I still get my cravings but they have improved substantially from eating a nutritionally balanced diet with proper eating habits and daily physical exercise. When cravings appear within a balanced diet it may generally mean that some nutrient could be lacking either in consumption or absorption- or that something is missing on the wheel of life. Health is really about a well-balanced life.
Giving in to the craving is like a game of TRICK OR TREAT. Will this sweet for example, satisfy my urge or make me want more? For me, it’s actually like playing with fire. One cookie here and there quickly becomes I NEED two cookies everyday. Then the addiction becomes real.. when a craving becomes an addiction you have to stop it like any other addiction- cold turkey! If you can learn the tricks of the game though, by all means proceed with caution. One thing I have yet to put the big NO on is desserts in general. I don’t eat too much candy anymore simply because much of it is not vegan. It’s when the vegans start making all the sweets VEGAN that I get in trouble. Vegan peanut butter cups.. vegan smores made with vegan chocolate, vegan marshmallows.. vegan cheesecake and so on.
Tell me yours and I will tell you mine! Anything you have on tricking the craving, I will take. Eating half of something and savoring every single bite works on my dark chocolate but not on the cookies. I need more tricks up my sleeve and I have one today. I am surprised to say, that it worked!
SWEET SENSATIONAL VEGETABLES
I learned this from Institute for Integrative Nutrition where I am currently enrolled in a Certified Health Coach program. They speak about sweet vegetables as a way to curb sweet cravings. I made this my mission. I wanted to see if eating sweet vegetables together as a meal would be fulfilling to the extent that it would subside any desire for sugary sweets afterwards. They say that “sweet vegetables soothe the internal organs of the body and energize the mind and because many of these vegetables are root vegetables, they are energetically grounding.”
Try it for yourself!
I used yams, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips and turnips. They also suggest corn, beets, winter squashes and rutabagas. Cut these vegetables into bite size pieces. Place them into a cooking pot with the heavier more dense vegetables on the bottom. Fill the pot with just enough water to cover them and cook until they are the desired consistency. I made a nice plate with these vegetables and added spices, shoyu and some vegan parmesan. First of all, it tasted delicious but second and most important, I wasn’t hungry for quite some time after that. That’s a miracle in and off itself!
If you are like me, you might be asking about the boiling method. I’m sure somewhere in this blog I have written that it’s better to steam and bake vegetables rather than boil. I still feel this way, hence the guilt. So I couldn’t just let the remaining cooking water go. They suggest using it to make a sauce or just drinking it straight up! I used the cooking water and the leftover vegetables to make a wonderful sweet vegetable soup with quinoa. It was a win-win all around!
Reference
Rosenthal, Joshua. 2012. Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Module 4. New York: NY
Thank you for this! 🙂