Cravings cured with lots of fat

I recently went to see my homeopath about the crazy cravings I have been having. I was finding it so hard to stick to the diet and really needed some support. She made a few suggestions that I thought I would share.

She mentioned that if I wasnt getting any sugars in my diet is natural for my body to crave them and the I should go back to including a small amount of fruit in my diet. She also suggested that I only eat fruit and veges that are in season and proposed that the reactions I was having to fruit may have been because they were artificially ripened out of season.

These two suggestions made sense to me and seemed a more natural way of eating too. She also suggested that honey might be causing me problems with the sore throats I am getting and that I should still avoid that but introduce some whole nuts.

Well I implemented all those ideas and was still craving sweet food, so I made some almond meal muffins with honey (I figured it was the lesser of two evils). Well of course that stopped the cravings but made me nauseus.

Then, today I was reading some emails from the GAPS group and somebody had posted that they were having this same problem eating cycle with their child. The following email was from a wonderful person explaining that it is probably a yeast craving and then a light bulb went off in my head.

I had read in the past that yeasty cravings can be combatted by eating lots of good fats. The funny thing is that I have used this strategy in the past and I know that it works. I have fallen off the good fats wagon and then forgotten that it existed!

So today I am back to adding lots of fat to my diet. Am I worried about weight gain? No, I tend to find that the extra fat actually helps me loose weight as long as I am not also eating loads of sugary, high carb food. (IE: high fat never helped me before GAPS, but then again it wasnt good fat, so maybe that is why!)


Basically the theory is that fats are converted into glucose, in the body, for energy . Carbohydrates and starches are too hard for the GAPS sensitive body to break down and so they ferment in the gut and create nasty chemical reactions with the brain, that then cause all kinds of nasty side effects thoughout the body.

But fats are simple for the body to breakdown and so they don't create that some toxic cocktail in the gut.

So by eating lots of fats your body gets the energy food it needs and therefore does not get the "sugar lows" that cause cravings. That is my understanding of the science.

I find if I eat a teaspoon of coconut oil at every meal, along with all the fats in the foods I'm eating then it curbs those cravings and helps satisfy my hunger.

So what types of fats am I eating?

Animal fats, cold pressed vegetable oils like olive oil, fatty meat and oily veges, butter, ghee, coconut oil.

How am I eating all this fat?

I add avocado and olive oil dressing to any salads I eat. When I fry foods I pour the fat over the food when it is on the plate. I pour the fatty juices from a roasting pan into my soups or over my roasted foods, I add butter to all fruit that I eat as fat makes it easier to digest, eg: if I have a peach I cut it in half and top each half with 1 Table spoon of butter, I fry bananas (cut in half lengthwise) on low heat in coconut oil and at the end I add butter to pan to melt it and then pour the whole thing into a bowl to eat.

I cant tolerate dairy yet but when I do, yogurt made with cream will also be on my list.