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Show Notes

• How it’s possible to misunderstand what our food cravings are saying to us
• What is it that helps resolve an overeating habit?
• What is the ‘home’ within us and how do we get there?

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• The Secret Language of Cravings – available now in ebook, paperback, hardback, large print and audiobook

Transcript of this episode

Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 40 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with a second book excerpt from my new book called The Secret Language of Cravings.

The book is available now, as I record this, and it will be available when you listen, obviously, in ebook, paperback, large print, hardback and audiobook. And I just want to show you the cover here, if you’re watching on YouTube, oops, there it is there. I still don’t have my print copies. So I can’t show you a copy of the paperback or the hardback. But it is available.

If you’re listening to this exactly when it goes out, which is in the middle of November 2023 it’s slowly making its way to the stores in all those different formats. So if you can’t find it in the store that you prefer, in the format that you prefer, just wait maybe a few days, and it’ll eventually show up there.

Audible is notoriously slow at getting the audiobooks into their store. It’s actually kind of frustrating. But right now, as you’re listening to this, the audiobook is available in the Kobo store, for example, it’s also available on Kobo plus, which is their subscription service.

You’ll be able to ask for all of those formats at your local public library. Remember, I’m always on about how valuable libraries are and how we can access books there. And the other formats are available in all the usual places.

Today, the excerpt is going to be chapter 16, which is called The Call Toward Home, which is about our innate well-being that I talk about so often on this podcast.

If you’re watching on YouTube, once again, you won’t see me reading the excerpt, there’s just going to be a placeholder image there. So I hope you enjoy the book if you happen to pick it up.

If you have any questions about it, I’m always wanting to hear from readers and listeners like you. So please let me know, you can email me at support (at) AlexandraAmor.com. I’d love to hear your questions or your thoughts.

If you happen to read the book, and you enjoyed it, I’d love it if you could leave a review wherever you happen to buy it or get it from, including the library.

Libraries take reviews as well. Reviews are super important for authors, for us to get the word out to other readers like you who want to understand and resolve their unwanted overeating habit.

And I’ll say this too, about reviews, the length of the review doesn’t really matter. Like you don’t have to leave five paragraphs like a PhD thesis. Literally one sentence is enough, because what’s happening is that the algorithm is weighing the number of reviews that a book gets more than it’s weighing the length and depth of each individual review.

So if you just leave a five star review and say, I really liked this book, it’s one sentence, that’s totally fine. And every author, not just myself, but every author always appreciates our efforts to do that to leave our feedback, and let other readers know what we thought of a book. And always be honest, of course, I always am in my reviews, and I try to leave as many as I can. So thank you if you’ve left a review in the past or if you leave one in the future, I really appreciate it.

That’s it for today. And we’re going to go in now to chapter 16 from my new book, The Secret Language of Cravings. I hope you enjoy it.

I hope you are well. And I will talk to you next week. Take care. Bye.

Chapter 16: The Call Toward Home

For decades I believed that what my food cravings were pointing toward or alerting me to was brokenness within me. I innocently thought that cravings were pointing toward things like unresolved childhood traumas or emotional injuries from the past. I thought they were pointing toward ‘issues’ I needed to resolve.


We believe this because that’s what our most well-understood psychological paradigm tells us.


Perhaps, like me, you’ve spent years or decades trying to resolve those issues so that your cravings would go away. We innocently believe a) that we can be wounded, b) that those wounds will continue to torment us for as long as we’re alive, and c) that we can then use substances like food to comfort ourselves from that torment.


But what if we misunderstand the way that events from the past affect us? What if that old psychological paradigm is pointing us in the wrong direction? What if that’s why none of the strategies and tactics we’ve tried in order to stop overeating have worked? It’s not that we were doing it wrong or were beyond repair, it’s that we misunderstood the assignment, as the kids these days say.


We sometimes think that food cravings are alerting us to wounds from the past and problems within our psychological or emotional being that need to be healed. In fact, cravings are trying to point out to us that we were never wounded in the first place. They are calling us home to our true nature, to the fact that we are infinitely resourceful, resilient, and whole. They are letting us know that we are in a temporary misunderstanding about how our thinking works.


Our experience of life comes not from life itself, but from how we think about it.


Now, please understand, I’m not saying that your traumas and wounds and experiences in the past don’t exist or that they don’t matter. Not at all. These things have contributed toward making us who we are, just as our happy, fulfilling experiences have. What I am saying is that looking in the direction of our innate resilience and the well-being that exists within us is what resolves unwanted habits. Seeing the true nature of thought is what brings peace.


Dr. Bill Pettit, who was board-certified in adult, adolescent, and geriatric psychiatry, and in psycho-somatic (mind-body) medicine, learned about the ideas that I’m sharing in this book from the man who first articulated them, Sydney Banks. The logo on Dr. Pettit’s website is a cork floating in water, which symbolizes that our human design is one that, without effort and without interference from our minds, will always return to its natural state of rested well-being. We don’t need help getting to a calm, quiet state; we naturally go there, even when we’re stressed out or unhappy.


We’ve all experienced moments of this: a hearty laugh in the midst of a deep depression; a few moments during a very stressful period where our mind falls quiet, and we lose track of time; a peaceful feeling amid chaos; a loving or compassionate feeling toward someone who is ‘difficult.’

These experiences, momentary though they might be, point us toward the true nature of our design.


But what about illness, you might ask. What about disease and physical and mental challenges? How can I say that we are well and whole when we experience things like cancer and epilepsy?


Let’s use an example to illustrate what I’m pointing toward. Have you ever been in a bad mood? If so, did that mood encompass all of who you are? Would you define yourself by that mood?


Or was it temporary? Did it exist in the context of your larger personality? Was it something that you experienced but not all of who you are?


Without trying to be too reductive, that bad mood is an illustration of what all of our life experiences are like, whether they are insignificant or enormous. They exist in the greater context of who we are, which is spiritual beings having a human experience. Even when we are gravely ill, we are part of something greater than just the momentary human experience we are having. There is something more to us than our skin and bones and arthritic knees. There is a part of us that is always well and whole.


Your food cravings are calling you home to that ‘something more.’ They are a part of the same universal intelligence that brings the blossoming trees to life in the spring and guides the gray whales from Alaska to Hawaii and back again. They are asking you to stop and reflect about who you really are. Are you an amalgamation of all your thoughts and experiences? Or do those things exist within the context of something greater?


Remember, this is not dogma. I promise I’m not trying to sell you a religion. What is resonating with you about what I’m saying (if anything)? That’s the place to explore.