Your body naturally wants to be balanced. The food you eat is a major contributing factor to your over all well being. Foods like veggies and whole grains have a mild effect on the body. Meats, milk, sugar and salt have more extreme effects on the body throwing it off balance. This struggle eventually leads to cravings for whatever the body needs to regain balance again. The two categories for these foods are called expanding and contracting.
Contracting Foods The most common and powerful contracting food is salt, which many of us consume in large amounts. Salt is a preservative especially on junk food. Other extreme contracting foods are beef, pork,ham, hard cheese, eggs , chicken, fish and shellfish. The main benefit of animal food is for protein helping us have feelings of strength aggressiveness and increased physical mental power However when we eat too much of these foods, we create an imbalance and quickly can feel bloated, heavy , sluggish and mentally slow. The more contracting foods we eat the tighter our bodies become. As a result of eating contracting foods the body naturally craves expanding foods as a way to maintain balance.
Expanding Foods Expanding food is refined white sugar. Expanding foods provide feelings of lightness, elevations in mood and relief from blockages and stagnation. However too much refined white sugar causes rapid elevations in serotonin, followed by rapid declines. When serotonin levels fall we typically feel feelings of depression, low energy, anxiety and loss of concentration. We crave extreme contracting foods to balance the equation and again find ourselves in the thrones of the ping pong diet which is using one extreme food to alleviate the effects of the other.
Our bodies can enjoy a certain quantity of extreme foods without crating too much imbalance. But when we exceed our personal limit- and it varies with each individual- there are consequences. If you eat extreme foods daily, your body will become exhausted and depleted as it frantically tries to rebalance itself. To get out of this cycle you need to deconstruct what you are craving and seek out less extreme, healthier alternatives to satisfy you.