Listen to your body

Everyone experiences moments where you feel like you just HAVE to eat a particular food. Or then, for weeks, in the end, your body will constantly want to eat just one particular food and then after a point you just don't even want to look at it anymore.

You're not the only one who feels this way. Our bodies speak to us through our senses; we just don't understand the signals it sends us. All I'm trying to say is that we need to learn to trust these indicators that our body is sending us simply because this is our body's intuition to eat a certain food or drink a certain drink. The body knows what is best for you.

I always tell my clients to honour their hunger. Honour your biological signals form your body as your body is the only one that knows what it needs.

Listen and figure out why your body is craving what it is craving- accept when your body rejects certain foods.

Understand the causes behind each craving:

When the water content is less in our meals due to the lack of vegetables, we will keep wanting to drink more water between and during meals. Eat more vegetables, and you will stop facing this problem.

A sudden urge to eat bread and cheese. This is usually an indicator from the body of low b12 levels. It is a universal deficiency and that's why bread and cheese are universal foods.

A desire to eat curd and pickles at every meal. This is a sign that your gut-friendly bacteria is low.

When you are feeling drowsy and feel the need for a jolt of energy, you reach for sugar-filled foods. You should be reaching out for something salty because this is not the lack of energy and indicates that the salts in your body are lower than they should be.

If you find yourself wanting more dairy products like milk, cheese, paneer, yoghurt, etc; you might have a deficiency of vitamin D3.

One of the most common cravings, when you need a kick-start, is one for a caffeinated drink such as coffee, tea or aerated drinks. This stems from having insufficient levels of iron in your body.

Ordinarily, you might not find carrots or pumpkin appealing. But when you find yourself enjoying these foods, it might be a sign that your beta carotene levels are less than ideal.

Sesame seeds and leafy greens are typically bland foods, but you still might find yourself wanting them from time to time. This can be due to a lack of calcium.

Continually wanting to sip on hot water could be a sign of a disturbed digestive system. Often, it is bloating and constipation.

Respect your body when it is trying to reject certain foods. This could be due to multiple reasons. For example, one of my clients just could not take to cinnamon and would be completely repulsed by anything that had cinnamon in it. Cinnamon had to be introduced into his diet for medical purposes, but as soon as he would consume it, he would break out into acne, have blisters in his mouth, suffer from piles, etc. No wonder he didn't take to cinnamon.

We have always been told that beetroot is good for you, but we reject it even though we like the taste of it. This could be because your body has all the nutrients that beet has.

So, appreciate what your body is telling you. Tune into it. And how can you tune into it? Simply by eating fresh, seasonal, and regional.