There are so many times we don't give ourselves what we want or what our body is asking for because we don't believe we deserve it, we don't make time for it, we don't want to be seen as selfish, or we believe there are other more important things to do, and the list goes on and on. The longer we wait to nourish ourselves with exactly what our body is asking for the more frustrated we can become and the more we try and take control over our experience of life the anguish will build. When we are able to stop and realize this is our one and only life and that we get to decide what we want to do every moment that we begin to put ourselves and what we need first.
We only get this one life, this one body, this one mind. Are you making actions and decisions that bring a smile to your face or do you constantly put your desires second and what you feel you "should" be doing first? Even with food, when your body is asking specifically for something do you allow yourself to have it or do you deny yourself your bodily wants. There is an interesting thing that happens when we actually give ourself the food we want and actually sit with it without any distractions we can realize a lot of things about that desired food.
I used to have intense cravings for dates. Basically all sugar haha (and I don't even crave sugar). For weeks I told myself not to eat them, that they had no nutritional value, that they feed bad bacteria in the stomach...blah...blah....blah....yaddayaddayadda went my brain. Finally, I was like alright I am going to allow myself to eat some dates. I sat with a handful of dates, without any distractions, and ate my dates. The funny thing was as soon as I let myself eat these sugary treats I truly paid attention to what was being nourished within my body. My mind was being soothed because I was finally giving myself what I thought I wanted, yet as I ate them I felt uncomfortable in my stomach, my teeth started to hurt, and it made my throat feel scratchy. I now have these bodily/somatic markers of how I feel when I eat dates so whenever I crave them again I ask myself what kind of sweetness is missing in my life because my body doesn't actually enjoy eating dates.
When we allow ourselves to have what we want we can start to view life with the curiosity of a child and we can wonder what would happen if I _____. Then when we approach situations, events, food with this wonder we can open up to our human experience and really get to know ourselves on a profound and deep level.