The Importance of Listening to Your Body

Just wanted to share what happened a while back...

I started craving black forest cake. Chocolate cake with cherries and whipped cream. Yum! It's not something I usually crave. That should've been clue #1...

It was a PERSISTENT craving! It went on for at least 2 weeks before I gave in. Clue #2.

I was afraid it would taste overly sweet to me. So I HAD to make it with tart cherries. Mmmmm... Tart cherries sounded SO GOOD! Clue #3.

I knew I could find tart canned cherries, but knew tart pie filling would be tough to find. Never mind that canned pie filling has MSG in it (listed as a modified starch). I looked around online and found a recipe for tart cherry pie filling that looked easy and didn't have any funky ingredients.

I baked a Duncan Hines devil's food cake in a 13x9 pan. Made the cherry filling. Bought Reddi-Wip to go on top. Oh. My. Goodness. It tasted incredibly yummy to me! I slathered on the cherries since they sounded so good.

Now what does this have to do with listening to my body?!

Well...

I was enjoying my yummy cake the days I got overheated. Remember me posting how sick I was? How I wondered if I was in a detox? As time went on, it was apparent I was DEFINITELY detoxing. The day after the grocery store incident I realized that's what it was. The next day I Googled a hunch.

Guess what...

Tart cherries can be used to trigger or enhance a detox.

The night I read that, I ate even more cherries to see if it would have an effect. Late that night my detox symptoms got a lot worse for a few hours. The next day I ate my cake at lunch. A couple hours later the detox symptoms got worse again.

Did the cherries have an effect on my detox? Most DEFINITELY!!!

Coincidence? I don't think so!

Even without always knowing what foods are high in what, my persistent cravings always prove to be related to a deficiency in my body. When I have a persistent craving, I Google "what minerals is _____ high in" and I find my current deficiency. It NEVER proves wrong!

Let me give you an example... I went through a period of craving mushrooms. I was eating them at least once a day for weeks! I had no idea what the nutrition profile of a mushroom was beyond the basics. It finally occurred to me to see if there was a vitamin or mineral they were high in. There were a few. One of the highest was zinc. "Coincidentally," for a couple of months I had cut down on the dose of one of my supplements. The main mineral in my supplement? ZINC! There are more similar incidents but that's a good example.

So this time? My theory is that my body needed some extra help with the detox so I started craving something that would help it along.

The moral of this story? Sometimes your body really does know what it's asking for ;)