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Jul 26, 2024 · If you are in the United States and experiencing a medical emergency, call 911 or call for emergency medical help immediately. Food cravings stem from the way our brain is wired, an evolutionary holdover that motivates people to eat high-calorie foods. With some effort, they can be overridden.
- Overview
- Why food cravings aren’t the enemy
- The truth underneath compulsion
- 7 techniques to learn from food cravings
- Tips for enjoying your food
- Takeaway
This is Present Tense, a series on mindfulness for busy people (read: all of us). Whether you're at work, on a walk, or hanging with loved ones, mindfulness can help you stay connected and engaged – no matter what the circumstances.
If you’re human, you’ve probably had a food craving.
From jonesing for your favorite sweets to comforting memories of mom’s home cooking, there are plenty of reasons you might have the urge to reach for a certain food.
While you may desire a certain food due to its nutritional content, much of the time food cravings can have emotional roots.
Instead of looking at cravings as something to resist, ignore, or stamp out altogether, it’s possible to gain insight from food cravings as a way to meet the deeper needs hiding underneath.
Here’s how to mine the wisdom your food cravings hold to find peace in your relationship with food.
If diet culture is to be believed, food cravings are something to be controlled and resisted. But what if there’s another approach?
While food cravings can have many causes, they can often indicate that deeper feelings and stressors that are lurking under the surface.
Instead of restrictive dieting, intuitive eating embraces desire as something to be celebrated and enjoyed.
According to a 2021 review, intuitive eating is considered an adaptive mental health strategy that’s connected to several positive outcomes, including increases in:
•positive body image
•self-esteem
If food cravings are covering up deeper feelings, repressing or controlling them doesn’t ultimately solve anything.
According to a 2020 review, food deprivation increases cravings for the foods being avoided when it comes to specific foods. The study notes these cravings are a conditioned response brought about by learned cues rather than nutrient or energy deficiencies. This means they can be unlearned.
While it’s difficult to say exactly what these cues are, they likely have emotional undercurrents.
“The root of the issue lies in the subconscious mind,” says Elizabeth “Typically, it’s fear of something—not being lovable, fear of not being worthy, fear of not being perfect, fear of not being in control.”
Roth has a similar approach.
To get at the root of the desire for food, she guides her students to get curious and deeply listen to their own desires. This also involves coming to recognize that the idea that food will fix anything is a “lie.”
Sit with the craving
It’s only natural for cravings to arise from time to time. Instead of repressing, ignoring, or immediately gratifying them, try sitting with the sensation of craving to tune in to the message it has for you. “Your cues, including your cravings, give you insight into what your body is asking for,” says Elizabeth. Present Tense
Try it
You can apply three steps to put this into practice. 1.Sit with the craving. 2.Explore meeting the need. 3.If the desire is still there, enjoy the food. Was this helpful? First, sit with the craving. Feel where it is in your body. Notice what sensations, memories, or images arise along with it. As you do so, you can ask yourself where the craving comes from, without trying to ‘figure it out.’ Just let any information arise naturally—or not. Second, explore whether the feeling of craving can be met or lessened in other ways. These can include: •drinking some water •taking a cat nap •going for a walk •calling a friend •taking a warm bath After you try a few ways to meet the desire, you may discover the need for the specific food you had in mind isn’t so intense. This may indicate that your craving didn’t come from hunger after all. Once you’ve taken space to experience and explore the craving, you can decide whether you’d like to go ahead and eat based on what you’ve discovered. If you do choose to eat, make sure you allow yourself to enjoy the experience. This practice isn’t about willpower at all—it’s about exploration. There’s no way to do it wrong, whether you decide to eat the food or not.
Be aware of the belly
Roth teaches her students to give attention to their bellies, especially because this can be an area of the body that many students try to cover up, hide, or ignore altogether. “You begin the process of bringing yourself back to your body, to your belly, to your breath because they…are here now,” writes Roth. “It is only here, only now that you can make a decision to eat or not eat.” Present Tense
Roth outlines several tips for truly being present and enjoying your food.
1. Eat when you are hungry.
2. Eat sitting down in a calm environment. This does not include the car.
3. Eat without distractions. Distractions include radio, television, newspapers, books, intense or anxiety-producing conversations, or music.
4. Eat what your body wants.
5. Eat until you are satisfied.
“When we give up dieting, we take back something we were often too young to know we had given away: our own voice,” writes Roth.
By listening to your cravings and treating them with curiosity, respect, and trust, you can begin to reclaim that voice.
- Crystal Hoshaw
Jan 10, 2022 · Another strategy to deal with a craving is to focus on how a food tastes and makes you feel, and then replace a problem food with a higher-quality food that satisfies the same urges. Dr. Brewer ...
- Identify All of Your Food Cravings. This process starts by keeping track of your food habits, like what you eat and when you eat. As you do this, note when you feel a craving and what the food is.
- Think About the Different Forms of Hunger. We all know the hunger that comes from the physiological need to eat. But other stimuli inspire food cravings as well, even if you don’t exactly need nutrition at that moment.
- Try to Stick to a Meal Time Schedule. If tracking your food reveals that you frequently snack between meals, you could shift all food consumption into meal times.
- Examine Your Feelings Connected to Eating. Mindfulness asks you to pay attention to the reasons behind your food craving. Why you want the food could be linked to one or more emotions.
- Jillian Kubala, MS, RD
- Eat enough calories. It’s important to fuel your body properly to keep it healthy and functioning at its best. Without enough calories and nutrients, it’s natural that your body signals you to eat, which can cause strong cravings for certain foods.
- Avoid restrictive diets. Picture kicking off a new diet, feeling ready to change your eating patterns and reach new health goals. Unfortunately, just hours or days later, you get stronger and stronger cravings for all the foods you cannot eat.
- Don’t let yourself get ravenously hungry. Although hunger is a natural body cue that shouldn’t be feared, letting yourself get too hungry might increase the risk of strong food cravings.
- Eat filling, nutrient-dense foods. A simple way to keep cravings in check, feel fuller for longer, and stabilize your blood sugar levels is to enjoy foods that promote feelings of fullness.
If you can, remove high-fat, sugar-rich and salty foods from your environment. Make sure your goals for eating are SMART. This means they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Be kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up if you eat something that doesn't meet your health goals. Just keep on trying.
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Aug 25, 2019 · And in my experience with hundreds of clients, it often works when nothing else does. Recognizing, then radically accepting cravings can remove the need to "get rid" of them through behavior, thus ...
