Category: weight loss

The Hidden Force Behind Your Food Cravings: It’s Not About Willpower

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If you’ve ever battled with food cravings and told yourself it’s just a lack of willpower, it’s time to rewrite that story. Cravings aren’t about weakness or self-control—they’re the result of complex signals from your body, including messages from the tiny but powerful microbes living in your gut. Understanding this connection can replace shame with self-compassion and empower you to make meaningful, lasting changes to your health.

The Gut-Brain Connection: Why Your Cravings Aren’t Just in Your Head

Your gut is home to trillions of microbes that thrive on the food you eat. These microbes aren’t passive bystanders—they actively communicate with your brain through a system called the gut-brain axis, influencing how you feel, what you crave, and even your mood.

Here’s where it gets fascinating: different types of gut microbes prefer different kinds of food. If your diet is high in sugary or processed foods, you’re feeding the sugar-loving microbes. These microbes produce chemical signals that amplify your cravings for sweets, ensuring they get more of their preferred energy source. It’s not a lack of willpower—it’s biology!

On the other hand, if you eat more fibre-rich foods, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, you’ll nurture fibre-loving microbes. These microbes produce substances like short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which help regulate appetite, promote satiety, and reduce cravings for unhealthy foods.

A Microbial Tug-of-War in Your Gut

Imagine your gut as a kitchen, full of busy chefs. Each chef likes to work with their own preferred ingredients.

  • If most of the chefs in your kitchen are sugar enthusiasts, they’ll keep requesting sugar to cook up their favourite dishes. These demands show up as cravings and can feel impossible to resist. It’s not willpower; it’s your sugar-loving chefs making sure their orders are heard loud and clear!
  • But if your kitchen has fibre-loving chefs, they’ll be requesting fruits, veggies, and whole grains for their recipes. As you cater to their demands over time, the number of fibre-loving chefs in your kitchen increase, while the sugar-loving chefs reduce their numbers. As a result, you start to find wholefoods more appealing and the cravings for sugary foods slowly start to fade.

The beauty of this system is its adaptability. By slowly changing your diet, you can shift the balance of chefs in your gut, making healthier choices feel more natural and less like a battle.

How Long Does It Take to Shift Your Microbiome?

Here’s the encouraging part: your gut microbiome is incredibly dynamic. Research shows that microbial populations can begin to shift in as little as four days when you make dietary changes. However, for more sustained and significant changes, a few weeks to months of consistent effort are often needed. The key is patience and persistence—this is a journey, not a quick fix.

Practical Steps to Support a Balanced Microbiome

  1. Start Small
    Begin by adding more fibre-rich foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts to your meals. Even small changes, like swapping sugary snacks for a handful of berries or adding a side of roasted veggies, can help.
  2. Diversify Your Diet
    Different gut microbes thrive on different types of fibre. Eating a wide variety of plant-based foods supports a more diverse and resilient microbiome.
  3. Reduce Processed Foods
    While it’s not about perfection, cutting back on sugary and highly processed foods can help shift the balance away from sugar-loving microbes over time.
  4. Stay Consistent
    Remember, your microbiome responds to what you eat most often, not occasionally. Consistency is key to nurturing long-term changes.

Leave Shame Behind

It’s time to stop blaming yourself for cravings. Instead, see them as signals from your gut microbiome—a system that’s been shaped by your past food choices but is entirely capable of transformation. By making gradual, realistic changes to your diet, you can shift the balance in your gut, reduce cravings, and feel more in control of your food choices.

This isn’t about willpower—it’s about working with your body. Every small, consistent step supports your health, and over time, you’ll notice the difference. Replace self-criticism with curiosity and compassion, and watch as your cravings and overall well-being begin to change.

source: freepik AI

Menstruation – the good, the bad, and the ugly

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Femininity is beautiful. Along with our curves, intuition, nurturing souls and strength, we are blessed to be bearers of the wombs from which all human life begins in this world. Every human alive today, begun life in the womb of their mother. Regardless of whether a woman bears children, or how many she bears in her lifetime, there is a special process her body goes through each month to prepare for this potential event. Each step in this process, signalled by hormones, ideally occurs without interrupting, or negatively impacting, a woman’s daily activities. Unfortunately, however, this is not the experience for all women. For some, menstruation is a heavy burden and the monthly reminder of this life-giving cycle is most un-welcomed.

Understanding the menstrual cycle…

The menstrual cycle can be divided into stages – the first stage, known as the ‘follicular phase’, orchestrates the release of the egg and begins preparing a cosy cushion of lining for the egg to take lodging in, should it become fertilised. The second stage, known as the ‘luteal phase’ continues building up the comfy cushion wall and watches for the signal a fertilised egg has arrived. If a fertilised egg arrives, a special glue sticks the egg to the cosy cushion lining, where it is nurtured and grows into a little person over the ensuing 9 months. If, however, a fertilised egg does not arrive, the cushion wall is deconstructed and the materials that formed it are removed from the body – this is known as menstruation, or a woman’s ‘period’.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luteal_phase#/media/File:MenstrualCycle2_en.svg Wikipedia link for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_cycle

Introducing PMS… when being a woman becomes unpleasant

Premenstrual symptoms are the changes in mood, behavioural and physical health that some women experience prior to menstruation. Common symptoms include breast tenderness, abdominal bloating, food cravings (how often have you reached for chocolate pre-menstruation!) depression, and anxiety. Symptoms diminish after menstruation but come back again the following month, as the woman’s body prepares itself yet again for the prospective arrival of a fertilised egg.

Commonly, 90% of women experience at least one premenstrual symptom at some stage during their childbearing years, and for most of these women, symptoms are minor, non-disruptive and nothing more than a quiet reminder of the life-giving process going on deep within their body.

And PMDD… most unpleasant ☹

Approximately 30% of women experience more than one premenstrual symptom, at an intensity or frequency that is unpleasant and somewhat disrupting to their daily lives.

Of these women, 5-8% experience moderate to severe symptoms that cause significant distress and functional impairment, interfering with their ability to go about their daily activities, and leading them to seek treatment.

Premenstrual Dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is what practitioners call this most severe form of PMS. It is a disorder classified in the DSM-5, and able to be diagnosed by Psychologists, who can also provide treatment to support reduction in symptoms and severity. You can see a Psychologist as a private patient or speak to your GP about getting a referral – it’s recommended you call and inquire after a Psychologist with experience seeing PMS/PMDD patients, as not all are.

At our practice, we recommend Psychologist Michelle Nolan.

If you would like additional diet, exercise and supplement support, our Exercise Physiologist and Clinical Nutritionist, Felicia McQueen can support you. You may choose to see one practitioner only, however if you choose to see both, we will work collaboratively with you as a team to address your concerns and help you achieve your goals.

Reducing your risk for developing PMS/PMDD

Although imbalances in the steroidal hormones progesterone and estrogen were once believed to be the cause of PMS/PMDD, hormone therapy has been shown to be ineffective for symptom resolution in many cases. Despite ongoing, rigorous research, scientists have not yet been able to identify the pathophysiological cause and effect of PMS & PMDD. They do however have several theories, and thus far have identified four proven risk factors associated with its development.

The four proven physical, environmental, and psychological risk factors associated with the development of PMS/PMDD are:

  1. Cigarette smoking – if you smoke or have previously smoked (especially if you began smoking during your teenage years), you have an elevated risk for moderate to severe PMS symptoms. Risk for developing PMS increases with the number of cigarettes you smoke.
  • Obesity – For every kg/m2 you are above a healthy BMI, your chance of getting PMS rises by 3%.
  • Past traumatic events – although the underlying mechanism is unknown, experiencing a traumatic event increases your risk for PMDD.
  • Anxiety – if you have a pre-existing anxiety disorder, you’re at increased risk for developing PMDD.

Reducing your existing PMS/PMDD symptoms…

Addressing the above risk factors has proven to be successful in reducing symptoms, improving function and restoring quality of life.

If you are overweight, our Clinical Nutritionist and Exercise Physiologist can review your dietary and lifestyle practices, help you develop a plan and provide support to achieve your weight loss goals.

Psychological interventions such as trauma-focused therapy, EMDR, CBT, ACT, are utilised by our Psychologists in an individually tailored course of therapy to reduce your anxiety and psychological symptoms, and improve your coping skills, mental health and wellbeing.

For support in cessation of smoking – we recommend talking to your GP, Psychologist, Nutritionist and your other treating Health practitioner team about your decision to stop smoking – to put together a plan and support network to help you achieve your goal. The Australian government have put together a resource guide to stop smoking: https://www.health.gov.au/health-topics/smoking-and-tobacco/how-to-quit-smoking. There’s also handy apps available to track your progress and provide support from this US government site: https://smokefree.gov/tools-tips/apps

Stepping forward to a more comfortable you…

We invite you to contact us on 07 4637 9097 or thriveadmin@thrivewellness.com.au to discuss our professional services and how we can assist you to achieve your goals. Although we are based in Toowoomba, we provide support to women Australia-wide through video and telephone consultations.

When contacting us to book your appointment, we recommend you request a 50min appointment with Psychologist Michelle Nolan, and a separate appointment with Clinical Nutritionist & Exercise Physiologist, Felicia McQueen. Service provided and costs associated with these appointments are listed in the ‘Fees’ section of our website. You may also wish to discuss your concerns with your GP, and ask about your referral options and eligibility for Medicare’s Better Access Initiative, which provides partially funded Psychology appointments through Medicare. A valid GP Mental Health Care Plan referral is required for this.

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