[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of the So Here For It podcast. I am your host, Amy Mingin, and I am so darn excited that I get to talk to you today about resetting your taste buds. I don't know about you, but there used to be a real problem in my life about craving sweets. And it wasn't the worst sweets in the world, but it was a habit that I had created and I really wanted to overcome it.
I really, really wanted to, and it was so hard. At the time I actually didn't think it was possible and I didn't actually realize it was a problem until I did. Now let's rewind a little bit. I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you my story of how my hormones and bloating and everything, actually, was related to sugar cravings.
So I was in my twenties. I was a massage therapist, energy worker, and [00:01:00] I was studying to be a naturopath. And when I was studying, I was learning all of these great new things. I was learning about food as medicine. I was learning about herbs. I was learning about nutrition. But what I kept doing was using it in the way that would kind of punish me.
And I didn't have a good mindset around food at that time. I didn't have a good mindset around how to treat my body. It was very feast and famine mode. And I'm sure that anyone who grew up in the 90s, early 2000s, you would hear me and hear me well that there used to be this big valuing of being skinny.
It was like, who can be the smallest, who can look the skinniest, who can have the bony waist or the bony shoulders? Like, it was so weird. And I look back and I just go, who decided that was attractive? Anyway, what it did for me is set off a whole lot of hormonal [00:02:00] cascades. Now, I would try and eat as little as I possibly could, only to feel hungry and then binge on things later and binge on whatever I could possibly get my hands on later.
And this was the problem. The easiest things to come by are packaged foods, are things that I would then punish myself to be like, Oh no, I'm studying this stuff. I am not allowed to eat this thing. And then I would go and eat the thing. I would probably choose a healthier version of a cake, but I'd still go and eat a cake, or I'd choose a healthier cookie or a protein ball, but it was filled with dried fruit.
You know what I mean? Like there was still a whole lot of sugary sweet foods in my diet, and I would wake up day after day feeling more and more tired. I wasn't getting enough sleep. I would then go and exercise.
So one thing that I have had through most of my life is my fitness, but I haven't always been energetic whilst exercising. [00:03:00] I haven't always had this great mindset around my body and around my food. Like that has developed over time, right? So because this mindset was around, I didn't value creating, like meal prepping didn't seem to be a thing back then when I was in my early twenties. It was just something like I would just make the meal that I had sitting there, which sometimes had veggies, sometimes it might've had some rice, sometimes it might've been quinoa, sometimes it might've been salad, but it hardly ever had enough protein.
And this is the big thing. When you're craving sugar, it is a big, big alarm bell, a big red flag to me that you're not eating enough protein. Sometimes you're not eating any protein. And this is why I don't believe in vegan diets. It's so bloody hard to get enough protein on a vegan diet. And even on a vegetarian diet, the people who come through Catalyst who have done it in the vegetarian way, they're [00:04:00] often like, Oh, I'm really tired of eating tofu.
I'm really tired of having like cheese on things or whatever, right? Cause some of them will eat eggs and that's good, but I don't recommend that people eat eggs every single day. Like we've got to have a variety of different styles of protein in our life so that we can overcome the amino acid deficiencies that a lot of people have. Whenever people are going through stressful stages, our need for protein increases, but also the stress hormones increase right?
Now, when a stress hormone goes up, very quickly our cortisol goes up. So if adrenaline goes up, then cortisol goes up and very quickly, the body goes, Oh, we need something in order to dampen down this response. So what does it use? A craving. Of course it uses a craving. So if you think about how many different stressors I had as a 22 year old, right? These are the sorts of things I had.
I was worried about my friends. I was worried about boyfriends. I was worried about what was going on on social media. I was [00:05:00] worried about work. I was worried about study. I was worrying a lot. I didn't have good self care practices. I didn't know what self care was. And whenever I ate something that I had perceived as bad, which now I don't believe that any sort of food is good or bad.
There's food and there's food-like products. That's the way I categorize it these days. And so long as you're eating mostly food, then everything's fine. Whole foods is the way. Anyway, I digress. Coming back to 22 year old me, bless her, she was doing her best. She was doing her absolute best, but she was stressed out of her brain.
She was on the pill. And so the amount of stress hormones that she would feel every single day was a lot. And so it makes sense, if she wasn't fueling her body, didn't have enough protein, wasn't drinking enough water, definitely wasn't always filtered water, so didn't like the water, so didn't drink the water, and then the cascade would occur.
By the time she got to lunchtime and the afternoon, she'd feel tired, she'd [00:06:00] feel a little bit cranky, and a bit lightheaded, and then she'd go and grab something to eat. And it wouldn't always be a good choice. And it wouldn't always have protein in it. Very rarely would it have protein. And so these cascaded responses would happen. She would go and choose a thing and then feel bad about it and repeat the pattern the next day. End up bloated, end up feeling a bit cranky, end up feeling low in energy. And the hormonal cascade went on and on and on, to the point of, and that same year when I was 22, I came off the pill and it took me 10 months for my period to come back.
And that's not just because my ovaries had had the pill going on. It was because of the lack of nutrition. It was because I wasn't nourishing myself. It was because there were so many stresses. The perceived stress in our life is a huge, huge bottleneck for us to actually allow ourselves to feel nourished.
So if you're not currently [00:07:00] letting yourself feel sweet in another way, then you're going to crave sweets in your diet. Think about it. If you're having a stressful day at work, you're wanting to make life sweeter, you go buy the chocolate or you go choose the cake or you're in the tea room and somebody's brought in the Cadbury's favourites.
Oh yeah, I'll just have a crunchy. Oh, maybe I'll, I'll go back and have a cherry ripe. And it's like, actually that stuff is a food-like product. It's not actual food. It's okay to have those things occasionally, but if you're starting to make life sweeter by having these sweet refined foods, there is something up.
So we need to figure out how are we going to reset taste buds. And this is my journey through it. Do you know what I did? I learned that if you trick the taste buds with a different flavor, then you stop going for that dominant flavor. So for me, even growing up, there was a lot of sweet stuff. I was always offered sweet stuff. It was always readily available. So I had the craving, I always went toward the sweet [00:08:00] food. If somebody put a whole bunch of veggies and fruits in front of me, I would go more towards the ones that were sweet. I would still eat healthy foods, but I would go more toward the sweet ones. So instead what I did every time I wanted something sweet, I would trick the taste buds.
I didn't enjoy it. I'm going to say this. It was hard. I would trick the taste buds by giving myself something bitter or something sour or something umami, which is a savory and it would trick it up. And so I started having like a boiled egg. I learned about protein, by the way, eventually I did. I learned about the importance of protein.
So by the time I was like 23, I would choose something that was more protein, which is really good, right? I started to notice that my puffiness started to go down. I was like, Oh, there's something in this. Maybe I need to have a little bit of chicken at lunchtime, or maybe I needed to have some fish. Like in those times, I didn't eat a lot of red meat. Whereas these days I eat heaps of red meat. So it differs from time to time, right? We're talking about early twenties [00:09:00] me, she was still learning. It's perfect.
Tricking the taste buds. It can take a little bit. It can take a little bit because you're getting that feedback mechanism within the body. You're getting the feedback from the gut bugs. So anyone who gets sweet cravings, sometimes there's candida going on in your gut. That's what's feeding everything else. It's saying, Hey, we actually want more sweet food. Candida by the way, is like a type of fungus. It's natural, it's normal, but when it's out of control, it controls you. And anyone who has like that lower belly, like below the navel, if you get like bloated down there every afternoon, it could be Candida, particularly if it's coupled with energy slumps, brain fog, can't think of what you're doing, can't remember what you were saying.
You walk into the room and you're like, what the hell am I in here for? You know, those times? The brain fog is real when Candida is around. It doesn't always mean that you get thrush. It could [00:10:00] show up in different ways. It might show up as like little patches of skin that's itchy. It could be an itchy scalp. It could be any sort of skin rash. It could be that your skin on your face is super oily. It can show up as, of course, food cravings, like lots of carbs, those Candida types love carbs.
So what have we got to do? We've got to trick the taste buds because as soon as you stop giving the Candida the extra sugar and carbs, it starts to die off a little bit because the body adapts. This is the thing. If you're helping your body to adapt to a new normal, that is more healthy, that is more in alignment with how you wish to feel all of a sudden the puffiness goes. All of a sudden you have more energy. All of a sudden you can think clearer and it is the best thing in the world, but you've got to do it.
And I'm going to say, choose your hard. So if you're, if you're making life sweeter by having lots of sweet foods, the hard is you [00:11:00] being bloated, having gas, probably having crappy periods, probably feeling puffy and not so comfortable in your belly every afternoon, probably have patches of dry skin or oily skin or an itchy scalp when you need to wash your hair so often because it's oily as well.
That's hard. That's hard going through that every single day. Your quality of life is decreased when you have all of these sweet foods all the time. So instead you take out, you don't have to take it out all together, but you take out having it every day. Take out the non food products, these manufactured foods, the things that come in a packet.
We need to decrease the level of that in our lives. I know it's so easy to come by. If you walk into a service station, if you walk into a 7 Eleven, if you walk into any type of convenience store, supermarket, anything, it is filled with this crappy food like products. And I'm here to say we need to stop buying it.
Use your money wisely because you're worth it. [00:12:00] Don't let these sugary crappy things going into your body rule your life because that's what Candida does. A lot of people say it's like, it's not me it's the Candida! And it's true. It rules your life because it's sending responses to your brain and it literally takes over your behavior patterns.
And the only way to win against it is to start changing your taste buds. You want to stop your sweet cravings. You've got to make life sweeter in other ways as well. So what do you enjoy? Bring some hobbies into your life. Make sure that you're doing things that make you laugh. Watch things that you enjoy.
Get off your social media and go and meet someone for a cup of tea or a walk on the beach or a walk in nature. Join a group, join a book club. There are so many different ways that you can be more creative, that you can be more intentional with your time, that will make your life sweeter that you don't have to rely on food.
There are so many women who I talk to in my [00:13:00] program Catalyst, which I'm going to put the link down below in the show notes. If you're interested, go have a look at it because we talk about this sort of stuff all the time. A lot of women are so intertwined with their emotions and often they feel so out of control with their food.
I want to make it simple for you. I want to make it easy. So instead of having the sweet thing, choose the whole food. Even if you're choosing a sweet whole food, that's better than a refined packeted food. So if that's the step that you need to take right now, then do that. I myself went pretty hardcore at the time and would have a boiled egg instead. Like it wasn't that pleasant, but it worked.
So here's the thing. This is your main takeaway today, that the tiny steps count. The tiny things you do, count. So if I've changed your life with this, I want you to go make the change. Because I know that it's changed a mindset for at least one person. And I know that so many women are putting up with the hard, [00:14:00] like they're not choosing the right hard.
I feel like you're choosing the hard of putting up with having crappy health, of being bloated every day, of not feeling good. I want you to feel great. You'll be so surprised how quickly the bloating goes away as soon as you get rid of the crappy food-like products, because they are not food, your body doesn't know what to do with them.
It creates inflammation. It creates chaos for your hormones. And I want you to feel great. Your hormones will be more balanced as soon as you're eating whole foods, you'll feel so much better in your brain and your body. And I want you to feel great. So if you need a hand with this, again, jump into Catalyst.
It is the best program out there, not only for having a body transformation, but also a mind transformation. And that's what I'm all about. You have so many emotions intertwined and entangled with food. And I want to help you untangle them. So you feel more in control. So you feel great inside your body. And so you have that glow that people notice.
So thank you so much for joining me [00:15:00] today. I have loved talking about this. If you've enjoyed it, share it with a friend. Rate and review this episode. I love this stuff. I live and breathe it. And I would love for this to be able to reach more people just like you. So if you subscribe, you subscribe on Apple, you subscribe on Spotify, just add it to your playlist and then you'll always get the next episode as it comes out the next week. So have an awesome week and I will see you on the next episode.
