Freshly baked chocolate cake, hot chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven, hot pakodas, hot chocolate or a cup of hot tea/coffee. These foods are some things that we often tend to associate with winter and a cold rainy season. Many of us owe our excessive consumption of these types of foods to cold and cravings. But Nina Maria Saldanha, Executive Nutritionist, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals, Bangalore (Shakarnagar) says that most of the time this is just an excuse and our way of confessing our bad/unhealthy food choices.Read also – Weight Loss Tips: Eggs or Paneer? Which one helps to lose weight faster?
What are cravings?
Webster’s Dictionary defines cravings as “an intense, urgent, or abnormal desire or longing.” Cravings can be due to several things, but most of the time we associate cravings with pregnancy and foods such as acidic, salty, sweet foods, etc. Read also – Do you really lose weight by not eating after 8pm? This is what we know
However, you may not only have food cravings. PICA is a condition where you may have cravings for non-food items, such as sand, paper, metal, etc. It is better that you avoid consuming them as they can cause serious health problems. Read also – Weight Loss Tips: 5 Things You Need To Know Before You Try To Lose Belly Fat
Why do we have cravings?
There are some studies that indicate that cravings are our body’s way of telling us that we may be deficient in a particular nutrient; however, this will require the correlation of several tests.
How do we deal with cravings?
Many of us tend to confuse hunger (especially for junk food) with cravings, and we tend to use this excuse as to why we keep eating unhealthy foods. Cravings can happen for anyone and at any time, they don’t follow any rules. They are most commonly seen at 4 times during a person’s life:
- Infancy/Infancy (especially early childhood)
- At the time of puberty (during the growth spurt)
- During pregnancy and lactation (in women)
- Old age
These periods are also most often the periods where we see nutritional deficiencies arising due to unbalanced meals, food fads, lack of appetite, etc.
Pregnancy and cravings:
Pregnancy is one of the periods in which we most often see cravings. These cravings tend to intensify during the winter months of the year. One of the possible reasons could be that it is cold, and we tend not to do much work, or we work too much and then overeat, keeping reason pointing towards hunger.
During pregnancy, it is very important that you focus on satisfying your pregnancy cravings in a healthy way. Include healthy salads, toasted nuts, etc. are great ways to beat cravings.
Winter Cravings and How to Beat Them:
Nina Maria Saldanha, Executive Nutritionist, Cloudnine Group of Hospitals, Bengaluru (Shakarnagar) suggests on a cold winter day, a cup of coffee/hot chocolate, warm tomato soup, a fresh green salad, a small bowl of roasted walnuts, freshly heat roasted/baked namkeens, etc. are great ways to satisfy hunger and cravings in a healthy way.
Here are some healthy options and their benefits:
Replace your hot coffee/hot chocolate with turmeric + ginger milk/hot badam/nut milk. Turmeric and ginger are really rich antioxidants, help promote digestion, nut milk/badam are rich sources of iron, protein, etc.
Replace packaged/canned soups with fresh, hot and homemade soups by making a soup, fresh and hot, you can choose the best quality of ingredients and ensure that they are free of preservatives.
Instead of eating a salad with rich dressings, opt for a fresh green salad, with a simple vinaigrette dressing. Instead of eating salads with rich, creamy salads, eat fresh salads, with simple dressings, that help fresh vegetables and produce shine.
Don’t go for spicy fried namkeens, go for roasted and baked namkeens instead. Roasting and baking namkeens helps ensure that much less oil and fat is used, making namkeens healthier to eat. Also, spicy and oily namkeens can often trigger gastritis and heartburn, which can be quite uncomfortable.
Avoid fried and overly salty cashews and opt for boiled or roasted nuts, or a bowl of dried fruit and salted and fried nuts, they have much more added fat than necessary. Roasting and boiling nuts, or consuming them as such, are much healthier ways to consume them.
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