Oh, how simple it would be if we could all eat anything we wanted (literally anything) and stay healthy and cravings-free … but that’s not how it works. I’ve not come in contact with anyone at all personally or as a coach who doesn’t have some food or group of foods that are problems for them.

By problems, I mean when they eat the food in question, they feel slightly ill or react strangely to that food in some way. Perhaps the food causes massive cravings. Maybe when they *don’t* eat the food, they feel tired or run down or whatever (I’m not talking about when people don’t eat healthfully — everyone feels worse when they eat crap! Sorry, but it’s true!).

Whatever the case, if a food makes you feel something specific other than just your basic fullness at the end of a meal, it’s a trigger food.

As in, you pull the trigger and eat it, and it triggers discomfort, poor health, cravings.

As in, you shouldn’t be eating it.

My own triggers

Yep, I’ve got them too. In fact, I knew a lot about my own trigger foods long before I ever ate healthfully (and I also learned a good bit more once I ate better as well).

Personally, if I eat sugary foods — and by that, I mean anything super sweet like candy or even such otherwise healthy treats like dried fruit (raisins, dates, you name it) — in any quantity at all beyond a single bite on an empty stomach, I crave sweets like a mad woman for several days until the poison’s out of my system. That’s right — I consider anything that my body responds negatively to as a poison that isn’t to be consumed.

I also can’t eat wheat or any other glutinous grains, which are a major contributor to the once severe chronic asthma I suffered from (and was told I’d have forever — ha! take that, doctors! I’ve breathed fine for nearly 2 and a half years now without meds!) as well as a long list of other rather awful symptoms, and I recently discovered that corn triggers cold-like symptoms and a general low level of fatigue (that I didn’t even know I had, considering how energetic I’ve been these last several healthy eating years compared with the old me and compared with most people in general!).

So sugar, gluten and corn are big no-nos for me, and as long as I steer clear of them and eat well otherwise, I feel great basically all the time and have no cravings whatsoever.

But healthy eating is a lifelong learning process, and I still continue to learn things about my own body and how I react to the foods I eat. This past week, I did something I haven’t done in literally years. I ate bread. No, not gluten-containing bread, but brown rice bread with no scary ingredients in it.

Bear in mind that I eat brown rice all the time with no problems whatsoever, so I thought I’d be safe.

Unfortunately, I thought wrong because this bread was made with brown rice flour, which is far more refined than brown rice. (And to be fair, I know this going in and wouldn’t ever try to suggest that brown rice bread is a really high-nutrient food. It’s just that I thought, “Why not?” one time and tried it.) And my body let me know I’m not supposed to eat brown rice bread.

How? Cravings for more refined starches for a couple days. Ugh. Cravings for heavy foods I rarely, if ever eat, like eggs and high-fat foods. (I get plenty of healthy fats in my diet, but I don’t have a “fat tooth” so it’s odd for this to happen for me.) Yuck. And the scale went up 3 entire pounds essentially overnight from not a lot of bread. Ick, yuck, no thanks.

What you can learn from my own mistake

I’ve been down this road enough times that I know not to trust the weird signals my body sends me as it tells me to eat junk food. And I also know that in less than a week, my weight will be back to normal because it’s got to be water weight I gained. (I certainly didn’t eat 3 lbs. worth of calories and put on fat! Every pound you gain is 3500 extra calories, and I had well under 1000 calories of the stuff I’ll not call food again. But my body knew that stuff was bad for me and swelled up to clean house and let me know I should avoid it.)

If you find yourself in the same situation, know this:

• Cravings typically go away within 72 hours if you simply don’t eat more of that trigger food. So you really can wait it out, and you will feel better to boot.
• If your body feels lousy when you eat something in particular, don’t eat it. You wouldn’t take medicine you know makes you sick, and healthful food for your body makes you feel healthy and strong steadily over the course of time.
• Cravings are not a sign that your body needs Doritos! :) They are a sign that you should never eat that food again for the sake of your own health. Anything your body craves is no good for your individual body!
• Water weight — if it’s truly just water weight — goes away quickly. If you just gain a little water weight from eating something that your body doesn’t like, don’t panic if the scale goes up a couple pounds. Just eat healthfully and press on, and your body will take care of the rest.
• The ups and downs of cravings are normal and are caused by physiological issues that happen to trigger our minds to want to eat bad-for-us foods. We think it’s our minds that need that junk because our minds tell us to eat more, but in reality, once you get the junk out of your system (mind you, the healthiest food in the world is junk for you if your body can’t tolerate it!), the ups and downs go away for good.

Trigger foods are a test of your healthy eating habits, but if you can get to the other side — the no-more-cravings side of healthy eating — there’s a beautiful calm to be enjoyed. Try it!