YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I eat all the donuts I want, which is once or twice a month.

Sometimes I crave rich, sweet, fatty, starchy foods.

I suppose cakes and pies and flan and kheer would be equally satisfying, and I’d eat all of them if I had them handy.

But once or twice a month I crave donuts or (mild shame here) those edible cookie dough packages.

A tangent, but an illustrative one

I’d go to the store this minute to buy some, but the smoke in the atmosphere would annoy me.

I mention the the sentence above because it illustrates well my desires: I want cookie dough, unless it is mildly inconvenient (eg atmospheric smoke). If this was a true craving, I’d just go without a second though. But this is simply a desire, not a craving.

What I’m getting at

Do y’all think cravings are related to mental health?

I had a friend in Debtor’s Anonymous, years ago, who believed that cravings are some sort of “hole in the soul” (I’m not sure I believed that specific stance, but this brother lived a good program).

I suspect it is mostly a physical manifestation: my millions of ancestors survived by obeying their most visceral urges: hunger, thirst, sex.

To the extent that this is not physical, do y’all think it is mental/emotional/spiritual?

In addition to rich/fat/starchy sweets, I also crave:

Meaty/fatty/salty/umami

Unpopular opinion: for me, food is love

I know "they" assert that "food is not love"; until "they" pay my bills they can all go to hell.

(The cops and my boss can tell me what to do; if I don't listen to my own family of origin I won't listen to some rando with an opinion about how I should live my life. [Present company excluded, since y'all are by no means "randos"].)

I say this because for me food is better than love.

I've been hoping for love, and frequently/always disappointed.

Food has never disappointed me.

Here is a list of things that have disappointed me: most people, "society", my family of origin, religion.

Here is a list of things that have come through for me, unlike the shameful reprobates in the sentence above: this forum (2013-present), my fraternity experience (1990's), the fitness industry (post-pandemic).

Said another way

If I had to choose between food and love, I'd choose food.

We all crave rich sweets organically I think, the trick is to enjoy them mindfully though, right?

And food *is* love.

If we came from a hunter-gatherer past, then bringing that day's catch and sharing it with the group was a form of love.

Yeah, food is a 100% effective way to manage my mood in the short term

right now i am focusing on (1) nutrition and (2) movement, everything else be damned

Interesting topic.

There is a relation to sweet cravings and changes in hormones. Both men and women are affected. Testosterone levels and estrogen effect this dramatically at times, normally once or twice a month.

We all need food, we all crave food, we all have a relationship with food. Sometimes that food is our friend who we have regularly have in our life, we check in with that ingredient on a regular basis and welcome it to feel a little bit better about ourselves and it listens to us and our body accepts it.

Sometimes food is our guilty pleasure. The food that we sneak in between friends or with friends! The food your body craves when your hormones are all over the show. Then you ask for forgiveness after you dance with it.

Food is made of components some chemical and some natural. Your need to be aware some of the components are put in the food to make you want more, to trigger a part of your brain to say 'yes please, let's go out together'. No different to sugar bases drinks.

One thing i have noted in the clinic is we can tell the patients whom like sweet stuff more as their skin is somewhat different and reacts to some types of sugars.

Food for thought.

Friends, thank you for sharing!

Also, my post proved prescient: Thursday evening is my most HALT time of the week, and I have both hunger-hunger and hole-in-the-soul tonight.

I say this not for sympathy (though I won’t turn any sympathy down!), but just to offer that soul-hunger can impact stomach-hunger.

Just my two cents!