5 steps To Changing Your Unhealthy Food Cravings Into Healthy Ones

"Cravings" are usually associated with being "bad"—you know, whole pints of ice cream and cookie dough. But according to natural chef Pooja Mottl—who's also the author of The 3-Day Reset: Restore Your Cravings for Healthy Foods in Three Easy, Empowering Days—cravings are not just totally normal...they can also be good."Our bodies our biologically hardwired to seek out certain tastes such as sweet and fat," she says. "But the right kinds of sweet and fat—the kind in whole foods, like sweetness from fresh, ripe fruits, and fat from things like nuts, seeds, and meat or poultry from pasture-raised sources—are good. They serve as signals telling us what our body needs to survive and thrive."

She says cravings are complex things though.They come from more than genetics or being stressed out—an imbalanced diet and eating processed foods can also come into play.

But the benefits of making the switch between "unhealthy" and "healthy" cravings can come with tons of benefits. "You will feel more balanced, you’ll have more energy, you’ll sleep better, and you’ll lose weight faster and maintain a healthy weight more easily," she says. "On a more global level, craving healthy foods will increase your quality of life, your productivity, your happiness, and your longevity."

With that in mind, Pooja has these five steps to making the switch!

1: Ditch processed foods from your diet as much as you can. "At least 80 percent of the foods you eat shouldn't be from a box, package, or even restaurant food (which tends to be high in refined, processed ingredients like sugars and salt)," she says.

2: Fuel your body with whole, fresh, minimally processed foods and drinks. Avoid foods that are high in refined sugars and salt; look for these words on your foods' ingredient list and avoid them: corn-syrup solids, dextrose, fructose, crystalline fructose, glucose, sucrose, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrates, demerara.

3: Start cooking more meals. "The more you cook, the fewer processed foods you will eat," she says—and the less you will crave them.

4: Get more sleep. Studies have linked a lack of sleep to increased cravings for sugary, fatty, junky foods.

5: "Start a meditation practice," she says. " At least 5 to 10 minutes once a day, gradually increasing to 20 minutes per day."

"It’s important to realize that we’re biologically set up to crave healthy, whole foods—that’s what are body wants so desperately to do!" Pooja says. "We just have to give it the opportunity. We have to try our best to avoid all the processed food and 'fake healthy' food (processed energy bars, smoothies, yogurts, and so on) that surround us on a daily basis and give our bodies the chance to yearn for the foods that truly nourish."

What do you think of these tips? What healthy foods do you find yourself craving?