Craving Control
Photo by Brad Switzer on Unsplash
Cravings are powerful.
They involve a whole series of reactions in our brains and bodies. They can be brought on by our own deeply ingrained eating habits or they may seemingly come out of nowhere by something we see, a time of day, a particular group of people, or to snuff out negative feelings. Experimenting with how best to manage for ourselves is one of the most powerful tools we have to manage our behaviors around food.
Managing your environment is the 101 course in craving control because it is simple and straightforward. This looks like ridding your environment of the foods that you know you have trouble managing. Throw them away, stop buying them, have those who want them in your house hide them from you. Not “running” across a bag of chips or cookies can be very helpful because the visual trigger is gone. Out of sight, out of mind works surprisingly well.
In leading workshops at WW I spoke often about Oreo’s - my problematic cookie of choice. I would get them occasionally thinking “I’ll just have two” and before I knew it, a whole sleeve was gone - the pull they had felt extremely powerful! I tried buying individual bags for portion control, and putting them in the basement so I would have to make extra effort to get them. Nothing worked - I always ate too many. Finally, after years of this I decided that the only thing to do was to stop buying them. It was hard, a little heartbreaking in some way, and took years to master.
But we cannot keep all the foods out of the house. It is unrealistic to think that we can avoid all cravings. They will arise when you least expect it, and so I have done a little digging on methods to manage. Each one of them involves just sitting with the urge or the craving, and watching what goes on in your mind. Over time, you will have so much more clarity around your cravings that they will lose their power, and when you stop satisfying the craving, it will often become much less frequent.
Here is how it looks:
I feel the urge for a sugary treat that is not part of my plan. I ask why is this coming up right now?
I do not give in and instead I ask myself how am I feeling? Restless, uneasy, bored, a little desperate, physically hungry?
I listen for what I am telling myself. It would taste so good, I deserve it, I’ve been “good” all day, one will not hurt, I exercised today.
I wait. I breathe. I wait. I tell myself that it is possible to just sit with the urge until it passes even though it’s really uncomfortable. I tell myself that it is okay to feel uncomfortable - it will not hurt me. I wait until the craving has mostly passed - and it usually does.
I have just started to do this in the last few months, because now I am ready for something deeper and broader than just controlling my environment. I could never have done it at the beginning of my journey - I was not there yet.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. At the very least, that pause gives me a lot of clarity and if I indulge, I am clear about it, instead of stumbling into it as is the likelihood when I have a craving.
As with so many things, building your awareness is key.
