First up, let’s talk a bit about cravings…
What is a craving? The dictionary definition of craving is: “A strong feeling of wanting something” and for anyone who struggles with their weight, you probably know exactly how this feels – no matter how much you want to lose weight, that urge for a biscuit / cake / chocolate / bag of crisps / glass of wine etc etc etc just keeps appearing and even though you really want to say ‘no’, you simply can’t fight the craving. What I want to say straight up is that you are not alone – you’re not weaker than everyone else, there’s not something wrong with you and there are so many of us who are completely in the same boat!
Some people think a craving is a signal from our body that it needs food or a specific nutrient. I know I’ve told myself many times ‘I’m feeling a bit tired, my body needs some sugar’ – this is not fact!
A craving is nothing to do with hunger. If we are hungry, it’s a physical feeling and any food we consume will get rid of the hunger. A craving is when you are fixated on a particular food that you can’t stop thinking about (and eating something else, does not get rid of it)
The foods we crave are often the high calorie, high sugar, high fat, high salt foods. Foods that don’t contain any particular nutrients so cravings are definitely not our bodies crying out for specific nutrients.
Who craves a bowl of broccoli after dinner when catching up on your favourite TV programme?
Studies show that cravings are mainly down to psychological reasons rather than physical ones:
1
They are linked to habits we’ve created over years and years – getting home after a tiring or stressful day at work and pouring yourself a glass of wine to help you unwind
2
Completely cutting out a certain food or labelling it as ‘naughty’ or ‘bad’ can create a feeling of deprivation and then rebellion if you do eat it. This can then lead to a feeling of guilt or failure which can continue the overeating cycle
3
Avoiding a ‘real’ problem by masking it with food – no-one likes feeling sad, stressed, overwhelmed, angry so avoiding those feelings by eating can perpetuate that feeling of emotional eating and reinforce the ‘when I’m sad, I eat chocolate’ behaviour you believe is true about yourself.
A craving is just like any other feeling. You can have the feeling and choose not to act upon it. Cravings are temporary – they will pass if you give them enough time without acting upon them.
Surf the Urge
There are many techniques to help to cope with cravings, but this is one that I have found really helpful and a good tool to practise.
Apologies for my artistic skills but the below image represents a wave – it starts off small, slowly builds to a peak and then at some point will begin to fall and drop away as it rolls into the beach. Surfing the urge compares working through your craving as a surfer would ride a wave – I’ll explain more below.
How it works
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Spot when your urge / craving starts – this is the starting point of the wave beginning to build. It starts off small but there will be a trigger.
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As the craving starts to build and grow, instead of ignoring it and hoping it goes away, actually lean into it – think about what the trigger was, what caused the urge, how do you feel – is this a habitual behaviour or are you reacting to an emotion / situation?
Many of us may give into the craving at this point and eat or drink the item we are craving but if you can spend a bit of time thinking about it ‘riding the wave’, you may find you are able to distance yourself a bit from the craving.
3
The urge or craving will build up to its peak – like a wave reaching its highest point, if you’ve made it this far, you may well give in at this point as the craving is at its most intense. But again, don’t hide from the feeling, ride it out, recognise what’s going on around you and remind yourself that this is just a feeling, it will pass and won’t be around for ever.
4
The urge will naturally begin to fall, your mind may be distracted by something else, the urge to eat or drink whatever it was will fade and go away.
- Cravings rarely last longer than 30 minutes if you don’t ‘feed’ them
- Ignoring them and pretending they don’t exist can actually make them worse
- Often we think the only way to get rid of a craving is to ‘give in’ to it – this isn’t the case, recognising it, thinking about the cause of it and giving it some time to naturally pass away helps to cope with it now and also in the future.
There are lots of YouTube videos and meditations online which really explore this technique a lot further if it is something you’d like to learn more about but I know for me, it’s really helped me to get on top of some of my habitual and behavioural cravings so I’d definitely recommend giving it a go!
I love helping people discover the best ways to work on their mindsets and habits to help them reach their weight loss goals and if you would like to find out more about my 1-2-1 coaching programme or how I can help you, please do get in touch.
Email me or phone/message: 07834 442607
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I’d love to hear any thoughts or comments on this post and if there’s anything that really works for you to help keep you on track or how to keep the motivation going strong!