Dealing with Cravings on the Juice Feast

During my first Juice Feast in the first few weeks I had intense mental cravings for junk food.  I thought it rather harmless, my nocturnal junk food cravings for McDonald's (where I worked as a teen) and other vile "food" I hadn't thought about or touched in years. It reminded me of Larry Groce's  old song Junk Food Junkie.

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I often resolve tough situations with humor--or maybe humor is such a fundamental part of my life (I find it intellectually stimulating to make others laugh) that it arises without much needed thought or incentive.  Nevertheless I deal with these false psychological cravings for junk food by recognizing them as phantoms from my past. Some say it is a form of detox. The Juice Feast did funny things to me emotionally--at times my emotions were like a wild roller coaster ride.  This was foreign to me as I'm a pretty even kind of person. I often found myself talking myself down from the ledge of irrationality.  Don't get me wrong life is often irrational but I make sense of it (most of the time) through rational means.

In the first JF I'm fairly certain I didn't meditate once. I wasn't a regular back then. Now that I have meditation working with me I intend to use it to help me clear my mind of cravings during the second JF. I also keep a journal of the days. I find much of what I wrote to be repetitious nonsense and that's okay as it is really an outlet for my mind to stop thinking about things. I find that when I write things down my mind is triggered to let go--I won't forget the message because I've written it down.  Another tactic to deal with cravings is to accept them as they are.  When I quit smoking I did a lot of reading on addiction. The books I read all indicated a craving lasts no more than seconds. I knew I had the willpower to outlast cravings despite the mind doing funny tricks on me. I would usually notice the craving, count for the seconds it lasted and be amazed how it disappeared.  On occasion a craving would return three or four times in one hour and I would repeat the process--but this was rare for me.

I recognize cravings will come and go on the JF.  With any luck they will amuse me--and quickly go away.