E206 - Cravings Demystified

Hey, and welcome to the Mindful Balance Podcast, your guide to stop emotional eating and overeating

and transform your relationship with food.

I am Rachel, a nutrition and emotional eating coach, and I'm here to help women like you

navigate through the complex world of eating habits, health, mindset, and emotional well-being.

I hope that each episode here will be a step on your journey towards a healthier you by

shedding light on different aspects of nutrition and emotional eating.

I am here to take out the need for quick fixes by showing you how it can be done differently.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to deepen your understanding, you're in the

right place, and if you're ready, let's dive in.

Hey, and welcome back to the podcast.

Today I have something really special for you.

We are talking about cravings and what cravings really mean.

And spoiler alert, they're not the big scary monsters that we often make them out to be.

So let's get into it.

And trust me, you will see cravings in a whole new light after this episode.

So let's start with the basics.

Okay, first in this episode, and in general, I tend to use the words cravings and urges

kind of interchangeably.

The interesting thing is that they are not terms that are exclusively about food.

And I'm going to explain that.

When you are looking at cravings or urges through the lens of everyday life, things

that just happen to you during the day, it really helps to normalize these experiences.

It is not as daunting and heavy and kind of emotionally loaded.

So I want to give you a few examples from different areas of life that really show how

urges can manifest outside of food and how you can approach them in a similar way.

So here are a few examples that I wanted to give you.

The first one is think about yourself scrolling through your favorite online store when you

suddenly see a pair of shoes that you just have to have, right?

We all have those moments.

This urge to buy it hits really hard and fast and you feel like you have to have them right

now and you go ahead and you buy them.

The second example has to do with something completely different.

Think about yourself in the morning, you have your alarm set and then it goes off and you

are hitting the snooze button.

This is another common urge to just make it go away.

Make that beeping go away so you can get back to sleeping.

It is driven by the desire for just a few more minutes.

Similar to craving comfort food for emotional comfort, you are trying to make the discomfort

of having to get up go away.

The third example that's also from a completely different area is the urge to procrastinate

on a task that you don't want to do.

You want to do something that maybe is a little bit more pleasurable or just not do anything,

right?

When you have this discomfort that comes from having to do something that maybe you don't

want to do, you have the urge to just do something else or stay where you are and push that discomfort

away.

So now that I gave you these examples, let's get back to how do we define craving or an

urge, okay?

Urges are feelings of intense desire for something very specific.

If we're back to talking about urges for food, those can be urges for basic needs such as

wanting to eat something when you're hungry or other kind of urges can be for things that

are not really essential for basic survival.

For example, candy bar or maybe even alcoholic drink.

Those are cravings that are not necessarily there to fill some kind of survival instinct,

survival need, but they are there just because you feel that buildup inside yourself to eat

something that's not really essential.

What is common to all these urges are a few things.

Number one, they are not you.

And what does that mean?

Urges do not necessarily reflect your true desires or needs.

They can often be really misleading and suggest actions that don't align with your goals or

your values.

So for example, you might feel an urge to eat because you're bored or stressed or because

it's just a habit that you have right now, even when you're not physically hungry.

This is an example of the disconnect that can really happen often between you and your

urges.

Another thing that is very common is they are habitual.

That means that over time, your brain develops strong neural connections that link certain

situations and emotions or thoughts with specific actions.

Someone even said that certain people can be a trigger if they always, let's say, want

you to eat ice cream with them.

So it can be different things that trigger those urges, and it is just a habit.

This is the basis of habit formation.

When you repeatedly respond to a specific trigger, let's say stress, with a specific

action such as eating snacks, this pattern becomes ingrained in your brain.

The third thing that is very common and that I see often with urges and cravings is that

they make the payoff sound super attractive.

Urges often kind of exaggerate the benefit or relief that the desired action will bring

to you.

Urges can make the idea of giving in seem very appealing while making you overlook

the potential negative consequence.

So again, for example, the thought of giving in to a craving might come with this imagined

sense of super satisfaction.

When you understand this bias, it can really help you evaluate the true cost and benefits

of acting on an urge.

So if you ever had urges and cravings, and I'm going to guess that you have had them,

I want you to think about how attractive the thing that you were thinking about eating,

how attractive that looked before.

Your brain is kind of like hyper intensify what the benefit of eating, that thing sounds

just so irresistible, while at the same time, you really overlook how you're going to feel

afterwards.

How are you going to feel physically, mentally, emotionally?

That part is like, we're not going to think about that right now.

We're just going to focus on how attractive and irresistible that food that we're thinking

about is going to be.

Moving on to number four of things that are common with urges.

Urges, just like it sounds, they feel urgent and they often seem impossible to resist.

So again, as the name suggests, it really can create this sense of urgency, making it

feel as though you must act on them right away.

This perceived urgency, and it's really important to understand that it's really only a perceived

because there is no urgency.

This perceived urgency can feel overwhelming or impossible to ignore.

But this urgency is often, again, just exaggerated.

Nothing is going wrong.

You're not at any danger and nothing will happen to you if you don't follow through

with an urge.

But the urges definitely will challenge that.

Next is another thing that is super common with urges.

Urges come and go.

I know that it may not feel this way, but since urges are emotions, they arise, they

peak, and then they fade away.

Many people describe them as coming almost like in waves, if you can kind of visualize

that.

If you don't act on an urge, it will typically pass within a few minutes.

So the worst that can happen if you feel uncomfortable is that you will feel that sensation.

You will feel that urge, that urgency for about 120 seconds.

And again, I know that when you have that craving, it does feel like you have to have

it almost like a life and death situation.

But if you just wait for it, if you wait it out, it will pass.

Okay, urges are also very physical.

Of course, it feels different to different people.

But for most people, it can feel very uncomfortable.

Some of the things that can describe the sensation of having or experiencing an urge is muscle

tension or stomach sensations or some kind of restlessness, even dizziness or sweating.

Really, it feels so uncomfortable that some people even describe it as something that

feel almost like a panic attack.

And that can also explain why to so many people, not complying with an urge can feel so daunting

and so hard and so impossible.

But when you put that into that perspective, that it is just a discomfort that will come

and go within just a matter of minutes, I think it really helps to put it into perspective

and to make it feel a lot more doable to not comply with all these urges.

I know that it is a lot to take in, but this is so important and I want you to pay attention

to this.

It is completely normal to feel overwhelmed by urges, especially if you're someone who

is struggling with what feels like nonstop cravings.

They can seem big, scary, and really consume all of you, making you feel a bit powerless.

So this is what I want you to remind yourself.

They're just emotions.

Cravings are just emotions.

They are temporary, they're manageable, and they are definitely not in control of you.

They actually can't make you do anything.

For me, this was such a big one.

Understanding that a craving cannot actually make me do anything.

They can't make you act.

It's just the sensation that when you feel that discomfort, you act on.

And because this is so important, I want to give you an analogy just to kind of help you

understand this concept.

Imagine holding a snow globe.

An urge is like the flurry that's inside.

Think of yourself holding one snow globe and shaking it.

It might storm for a bit, but if you just hold it steady, everything settles down on

its own.

You're holding the globe, not the other way around.

For me, again, this was like discovering that I've had the key to managing cravings all

alone.

And just like building a muscle, the more you learn to dismiss cravings or let them

pass without doing anything, actually, the easier that it gets.

So how understanding, maybe you were asking yourself that question, how understanding

all this can actually help me or you?

I want you to think about the last time that you craved something.

Maybe it was something sweet or salty or just that specific, I don't know, comfort food

that maybe your mom used to make.

Most of us have been taught to see these cravings as weaknesses.

For example, if only we had more willpower, we wouldn't want that chocolate cake at midnight.

These are kind of like the typical thoughts that come along cravings.

Now you know that cravings or urges are not a sign of weakness.

There are just emotions that come and go, and there's no problem with having them.

Think about it again, like a wave.

It builds, it peaks, and then it rolls back to the sea.

And just like a wave, it passes.

The key here is knowing that just like you don't have to, I don't know, maybe it's not

a good example, but let's just bear with me here.

Just like you don't have to swim in every wave that comes your way, you don't have to

act on every craving.

It's really like a game changer once you realize how much power you have over those sensations.

And it's also important to mention here that, of course, there are ways to help make not

complying with urges easier.

It doesn't have to feel like a terrible experience.

It doesn't have to feel like a panic attack or have all this discomfort in your body.

But what I want you to know today is that it is not the scary monster, again, that you

think it is right now.

Cravings are just body sensations.

It's not an emergency.

Nothing has gone wrong and you don't have a personality flaw.

It is just you being a human being.

This is all that's happening.

We tend to build a whole narrative in our head around our urges, this white knuckling.

We white knuckle them, we get frustrated and we blame food and we blame ourselves, we blame

other people, we judge ourselves, and we create a whole mountain of sad stories.

So I want you to know that it is not a problem.

You are not a problem.

Next time an urge comes knocking, I want you to remember that it is just a wave.

It rises, it falls, and you remain standing.

You're strong and you're more confident with each wave.

You're not alone in this and you're more powerful than you realize.

I really hope that this is giving you that beginning, at least, of confidence to know

that you have all the power in you to not be a victim of your cravings.

I will speak to you next time.

I'm sending you lots and lots of love and courage.

Until then, take care.

Bye.

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