Managing your food cravings

Welcome to episode 44 of the Inside Knowledge podcast. I’m Anna Mapson.

Do you have a specific food that you really crave? Something that is always in the cupboard and always kind of calling to you in the evenings. Maybe when you’re watching TV, something that you just love.

What is a food craving?

For some people it’s things like ice cream, for others it’s chocolate or crisps. These are common cravings foods. What’s interesting about cravings is more often than not, it’s a really specific type of food.

It’s a particular brand or a particular flavour or product that you crave. And it’s really intense drive to get that particular food that isn’t quite the same as getting a different brand or a different flavour.

It’s something that’s wrapped up in that particular food and its emotional attachment to you. I’m going to go through a few examples of why we have cravings and what they actually mean a little bit about how we can deal with them. What kind of things you can try to reduce down your cravings.

A craving is a desire for a specific food

A craving is just a really strong drive to have a particular food. If you think about the foods that we normally have a craving for, it’s very rarely like broccoli or an apple.

It’s the type of foods that are highly processed, what we might call ultra processed foods. They have that perfect, what’s called the bliss point. With a mix of fats, salts, sugars, that really try to encourage us to eat more.

And often there’s associated memories and an emotional attachment to the cravings.

We learn food cravings

You know what? We’re never born craving to eat salt and vinegar crisps or eating ice cream. Like, no one’s born with that craving.

We learn to crave foods or through nice experiences. When a food has either comforted us or other times it’s because these foods, when we eat them, releases a little bit of dopamine. Kind of can make you feel better. These chemicals in our brain that just help us feel a soothe for a short moment. And that’s where emotional eating can overlap with cravings.

Emotional eating and cravings

Sometimes there’s a good memory that we’ve always had ice cream, for example, when we’re on holiday with our family, and then we crave ice cream.

And sometimes what we’re craving is we’re craving that connection. Or that sense of relaxation that we had when we were on holiday. Over and above the actual taste of the ice cream.

Connection to memories through food

Although sometimes taste and smell can be very evocative themselves as well and help us to feel better because they’re helping us feel connected to a certain situation. Maybe when you eat certain foods that you used to eat at home or that you’ve had on holiday. But there are also physical reasons why you have more cravings at some points than others.

Physical reasons for food cravings

One of the main reasons for having cravings for food, particularly in the evenings, is because you haven’t eaten enough food during the day.

Even people who are trying to lose weight and go on a diet need to eat regularly and need to eat a good level of food that sustains you. That’s complex carbohydrates, a good mix of fruits and vegetables, protein at every meal.

These are things that keep your energy up and when people are properly nourished throughout the day cravings can go down. Now I’m not saying that they definitely will because it’s much more complicated than just saying if you’ve eaten enough you never get cravings because Clearly you do. So you might be low in energy, low in calories because you haven’t eaten enough food.

Nutritional deficiencies can cause cravings

Secondly, you might be low in particular nutrients. So sometimes we have a craving for certain foods because actually it’s something our body needs. Now this theory it feels like it should be right. So where people, for example, might be low in iron, they may be craving a steak. Where they are low in vitamin C, maybe they’re craving some fresh fruit.

It hasn’t really been proven, I think, in looking at the scientific literature, that people crave the nutrients that they need.

However, If you’re not eating enough food because your diet is very restricted, it could easily be the case that you are deficient in the nutrients, and your body is giving you a sign to eat more. But I wouldn’t say necessarily a particular nutrient is linked to a particular craving.

Pregnancy cravings are linked to nutrition – pica

Although we know, for example, in pregnancy, some women will find that they crave chalk or they will be eating the limescale out of their kettle. And people have thought that that is craving for calcium, for example, that’s in the water or some minerals.

So sometimes it’s called pica. This is potentially linked to nutrient deficiencies

Is your diet restricted?

The other thing is if you are cutting out whole food groups. You have gone low carb and you are eating no grains, no carbohydrates. Then you may well be craving foods that are high in sugar and high in carbohydrates.

So they’re going to give you some energy.

Drinking alcohol can increase cravings

Another time when you might feel more cravings is alcohol. When people drink alcohol generally you become a little bit more relaxed. Those moments you thought you would be able to control through willpower or you thought you would stay away from eating the crisps or eating the chocolate just becomes that much harder when you have had alcohol.

Before your period cravings can be increased

For women who are menstruating, so before your period, you can sometimes also feel an increased need for the cravings. But often, again, it comes back to having energy.

Before our period, sometimes we’re more tired because you sleep less well. Because your body temperature raises slightly, which means that you feel more tired.

You need an energy boost, and your brain is crying out for some glucose and some input of fresh energy.

Managing cravings by willpower is too hard

Now I mentioned about willpower just then. If you are trying to just manage your cravings for certain foods by relying on willpower and thinking, well, I just won’t eat them, then that is going to be extremely challenging. Self control is not the best way to avoid eating foods you know that you have a strong craving for.

Our obesogenic society doesn’t help

There are lots of things you can do and I’m going to talk through some of these in terms of setting up your environment to make things easy for you. Thinking about your psychological state and putting some things in place to try and see the craving in a different way. And I will go through that as well, but I just also want to acknowledge the fact that In the UK, for example, where I’m recording this right now, we live in quite an obesogenic environment.

So what I mean by that is there are encouragement to eat fast foods all around us. You go to the supermarket, there’s sweets and crisps laid out as you’re waiting to pay.

See food = want it

On all the billboards there is signs for fast foods. We’re also getting bombarded with adverts on the TV. And when you’re watching programs, there’s encouragement and discounts to have fast food.

So you’re constantly being reminded that you should be eating more and that’s what the advertisers are telling you so it’s very hard to rely on willpower alone because of the environment which we live in.

Research shows exposure to food increases cravings

There was some great research a few years ago I think they had about a hundred students, maybe it was just under a hundred students. They asked them to carry around some chocolate, in a clear packaging for 48 hours.

So they had to have this chocolate on them, on display, in a clear plastic box. But they couldn’t eat them. Then they asked them to eat as much as they wanted to, after this 48 hours.

The people who carried around the chocolate in a closed box were less likely to eat as much food. Those who had to look at the chocolate for two days as they carried it around, ate twice as much chocolate as the ones who didn’t. And that’s just a tiny little study showing the impact of seeing this delicious food. Which let’s face it, tastes really nice. And you know logically that it’s not great for you to eat it.

However, when you’re constantly being reminded of it, it’s much harder to turn it down and to say no.

Are your taste buds primed for your cravings

I think there’s also some evidence that the more of these foods we eat, the more we come to accept these tastes as normal. So what I mean by this is if you are eating ultra processed foods more often than not, you will become accustomed to the high levels of sugar and salt and fat.

Texture plays a part in our food cravings

And also what’s really interesting is these foods are typically very easy to eat. So very soft and although with the exception of crisps, but they are very soft and the texture is very smooth and it doesn’t create a lot of chewing.

If you think about the difference between eating that and a raw carrot or a piece of chewy meat. You have to really work your teeth to eat those things. Chewing in itself is really good for us. And actually chewing reduces the amount of food that you consume in a meal, and there have been studies to show this.

So if you eat food that’s very easy to eat, doesn’t require a lot of chewing, you can easily eat a lot more of it.

How to manage your food cravings

Just going back to the environment set up. If you think about the experiment I mentioned where people are looking at these snack foods and they are eating twice as much as the people who didn’t have to look at them all the time. This brings us on to some of the things that you can start to do about it.

Setting up your environment to better manage cravings

So what I mean by this is if you set up your kitchen so that the foods that you want to eat more of are on display and look appetizing. Maybe you have a fruit bowl out because you want to eat more fruit. You make it very easy for yourself to access a small little pack of vegetables that you can just dip into some hummus and have as a snack.

Move the snacks out of sight

But in order to see your snack foods, you put them somewhere where it’s more difficult to get to. So there’s a lot here about making your own environment as easy as you can. If you’re just relying on willpower to get through the craving all the time, it’s going to make your life really difficult.

Your working brain’s capacity

In our brains, if you think about your brain like a computer. We have a kind of working memory that is available to process information. Help us make day to day decisions, and focus. That’s our active working memory.

We don’t have to remember to brush our teeth every day. We don’t have to remember to, I don’t know, how to walk down the stairs.

All of these things we just know. We’re doing them on autopilot. Like when you drive a car, you’ve been driving for years, you don’t think about it, you just do it. If we had to think about every tiny thing every time we did it, we wouldn’t get anywhere.

Our brain only has so much processing power.

Managing the discomfort of change

So we like to put things on autopilot. But when those autopilot habits are not serving us well, we need to change them. And in order to do that, you have to go through some discomfort.

You have to be able to sit with the feeling of wanting it and not eating it and you have to accept that some element of that discomfort is going to be necessary for you to get over these cravings.

It’s not going to be easy, otherwise you would have done it already. You also can’t get over your cravings if you’re not doing those first things I mentioned.

Keep on doing the basics

You need to be eating three meals a day, eating a good balanced diet with sufficient content, enough calories, enough protein, fats and carbs to get you through.

If you’re not doing that, it’s going to be almost impossible to get over your cravings because your body is giving you a sign.

How to manage cravings in the moment

There’s two approaches to managing cravings in the moment.

• One of them is to try to get away from the craving by suppressing it, by distracting yourself.
• And then there’s another way to accept this craving and to try and work with it.

Distraction techniques for food cravings

So I’ll go through first some of the things you can do to suppress and distract yourself. Generally, it’s thought in psychology I think, although I’m not a psychologist, but that suppression and distraction is not as effective as other ways of managing cravings.

But some things that you can try to get over your cravings do something that is incompatible with eating.

So if you notice a craving coming up, then you do something where you just can’t physically eat at the same time.

Maybe you’re going for a walk and go round the block and just get out of the house. Change your scenery. Or you start painting your nails and doing a little home manicure, or playing on a computer game.

Using distraction to avoid cravings

These things have actually been shown to, by distracting you, to take you away from that craving for the moment. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the craving won’t come back. It can sometimes be just enough to get you through that moment and then the craving’s gone and it passes and you’re okay.

This is a particular technique which is helpful if your craving is associated with certain times of the day. Like you’ve got the kids to bed and now it’s your time. And you feel like you need that chocolate because it’s the end of the day. Or you clear up the dinner, settle down to watch your TV programme with your partner, and that’s when you have a little snack.

Breaking habit associations

If you have an association to a routine then changing it up a little bit, doing things differently, sitting in a different chair, doing things in a different order. Really just changing up your habit can be a helpful way to break that association.

Acceptance of the craving

Then the other approach is more based on accepting the fact that you have a craving. and trying to sit with it. Now, this is really difficult to get used to at first. But what you can do is just to try noticing how you might rate your craving from 1 to 10. Where 10 is ‘I really need to eat this right now.’ You rate it out of 10.

Think about where you feel this craving in your body. Is it, in your stomach? In your chest maybe? In your heart area? Or is it in your mouth? Is it in your brain? Where do you feel this craving, this urge to eat?

And what happens to this craving when you’re not trying to get rid of it?

I accept I have an urge to eat xyz.

When you’re just sitting with it, does it get stronger? Does it come and go? Rise and fall? Or does it actually go away?

Sometimes by not suppressing it, not distracting yourself, but actually really getting into it and saying, I am accepting, I have this urge, I have the urge to eat a chocolate digestive, and you think about how strong that is, and I notice it in my mouth, I can feel it in my mouth.

I can feel it. I can feel the texture of the biscuit. I can tell that I want to have that chocolate on my tongue. I’m noticing it.

Seeing yourself as a person with a craving

You might even think looking at yourself having the craving. Obviously don’t do this if you’ve had any problems with dissociation. But imagine looking at yourself as a person who has the craving and see if you can just take yourself out of yourself to do that.

Might be a helpful way to just distance yourself from the physical feeling.

Creating a cravings card

Something else I’ve done with people before is to create a cravings card. So when you’re in a good place, feeling strong, feeling like, yes, I’m going to get on top of this need to eat chocolate every night, what I’m going to do is create a plan that I decide now what I will do instead.

So for example, you could write on a little piece of paper, ‘when I have the urge or the craving to eat my chocolate, I will…..’

And then you write down what it is you’re going to do. Maybe you’re going to phone a friend. Maybe you’re going to go and have a bath. And put a face mask on and do something relaxing.

Maybe you’re going to do five minutes of yoga. Do some deep breathing. Whatever it is to just get more in touch with your body.

So, whether you’re going to distract yourself, whether you’re going to lean into the craving, doesn’t matter. As long as you have a plan that you think will work and you keep that cravings card somewhere you can find it.

I’m just going to finish up with a few practical tips that I’ve been advising a couple of clients on.

Allowing smaller portions of your cravings food

Portion up your cravings food so that you only have small portions of the food. Because, this is something I was going to come on to at the end, but, sometimes the cravings that we have are not actually that bad.

Like, is it a problem to eat a little bit of chocolate every day? If it’s not a problem for you, why do you need to control it?

Can you allow yourself the craving?

And sometimes just allowing it can be easier than trying to stamp the craving out. Obviously, if you’re eating like a whole box of ice cream every night, that isn’t great for your health over time.

Especially if you’re someone who most of my clients are, people who listen to this podcast have got gut health issues. But maybe you don’t have to rule it out completely. Can you have a very small amount, or a portion that feels normal to you.

And just try and work yourself down from what you’re eating at the moment and have a small amount every day?

Allow it, but don’t eat the whole bar or don’t eat the whole tub of ice cream.

Don’t buy the food, or have it in the house

When I challenge my clients sometimes on why don’t you just not buy it and just not have the food in the house. Because that would make it a lot easier. It can feel completely overwhelming and scary.

If this is the case for you then it might be easier to wean yourself off it rather than going cold turkey.

By which I mean, just small portions of chocolate, or only putting out one small packet of crisps, rather than the whole big bag.

And this means you can have the thing that you want, but you’re not going to have the whole thing. It makes it easier if you don’t have it all staring you in the face and you know you’re allowed a little bit.

Move the foods out of sight

The other thing is to move these foods out of sight. So, as I mentioned at the beginning, It’s really difficult to avoid foods that you crave if you’re looking at them all the time.

Give yourself a moment of pause

Put them in a cupboard that’s harder to reach. Maybe one where you have to get a chair to stand up and to get it out of a high cupboard. The reason this is good is it gives you a moment of pause to think, do I really want to do this or am I doing it on repeat? So when we have automatic habits that we always have biscuits when you have a cup of tea.

And you just want to break the habit of having the biscuits, then move the biscuits away from the tea so that you don’t see them. You don’t associate them.

And you have to make a special trip to a different part of the kitchen in order to get the biscuits. That is going to help you break that association.

Doesn’t mean you can’t ever have a biscuit with your tea. But if this is something that you’re trying to work on, it might be helpful.

In summary

To sum up this episode, I would say

Balanced diet

Try to stick to a good balanced diet throughout the day. That will help you to avoid physical reasons for your cravings.

Allow some foods for taste alone

Try to allow yourself some of the foods that you can eat that are delicious and that give you joy. Because if you’re eating a very plain, boring, (what some people would name a clean diet, which I really don’t like those words) but people call it clean eating.

If you’re eating that sort of quite dull, soulless food, it does feel very boring, and yes, you do want to break out of it. So try to have space for foods that you love and that you eat just for the taste of it. There isn’t going to be any harm to your overall health by eating foods that you have a craving for in small doses. Unless, of course, you’re allergic to them, or they’ve got poison in them.

Work on your emotional resilience

The other part of my summary, I suppose, is just really about thinking through your psychological triggers for cravings. What are the emotions associated with eating these foods? And what can you do? In order to strengthen your mental health so that you feel better, because often the cravings are linked to emotional reasons for eating. Which by the way we all do, we all eat for emotional reasons.

However, if you’re finding it’s out of control or you’re eating a lot more than you want to and you don’t have the ability to stop. That’s where it’s useful to think about your general mental state and how you might be able to strengthen that, build some more, mental resilience. It may impact on how you approach cravings.

Please rate and review

I hope that’s helpful for some of you. And if you would be so kind, I would really appreciate it if you would leave me a review or rate my podcast.

It really does help me. Thank you very much. Thanks for listening this week. If you want to get in touch my email address is info@goodnessme-nutrition.com.

Get in touch for any inquiries about working with me too. Okay, I’ll leave it there.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Inside Knowledge Better Digestion for Everyone.