episode 236: you’re dealing with cravings all wrong
Ever wish you could just not have cravings? That you could flip a switch and never think about chocolate, chips, or cookies again?
I used to think that too. (I even ran a workshop called Conquer Cravings, no joke.) But here’s the thing: cravings aren’t a problem you need to fix. So if they’re not a problem, then what are they?
In this episode, I’m sharing:
Why cravings are actually information about your body and mind
A simple way to “work backwards” to uncover what your cravings are trying to tell you
When cravings move from normal to something that needs more attention
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236
[00:00:00] What up friends? Welcome back to the Diet Diaries. Today's episode is airing on Monday, July 14th, recording on Monday, July 7th. Between now and when this airs, I'll have turned 45, which is crazy. Um, that feels like a bit of a weird number to me. Only 'cause I don't know. It just feels weird. Um, I think when I turn 50, it's going to be very weird.
Um, I don't look at myself and think of myself as being in my mid forties. Um, in my head I'm like, I don't know, 28, 29, 30 maybe, which is kind of cool. And I guess I don't care that much. I think it's one of those things when you start to think about it too hard, it's like starts to like, really fuck with you.
So I'm just going to like, not spend too much time thinking about it because like, what does it really mean? Right. It means what we are told to [00:01:00] make it mean. It means what society has told us. Being 50 looks like. Like I always think about if you guys know the movie Father of the Bride. Um, Steve Martin and Diane Keaton in that movie were supposed to be in like their early to mid forties, like basically my age.
And if you look at them now, they have them dressed in this very like conservative sort of like fuddy duddy way that gave off a very old. Vibe feeling, and that's like what I grew up with. Thinking like, oh, that's what it means to be like in your forties or fifties. And now I'm here, like I dress the same as I did.
I have like, I think a better and more confident sense of style, but I wear cutoff shorts and I wear things that are considered like quote, like young and I don't. Dress the way I was always told growing up that like a 45-year-old woman would dress, and I think that's the part that gets really interesting is like, well, what does it mean?
It means what we've been told that it means, which is arbitrary and actually kind of meaningless. Like we get to decide what it means. So anyway, I. It's not what this episode is about [00:02:00] that really just kind of came out of nowhere. Um, what I wanted to talk about today was cravings. Um, I've been talking about this a little bit on social media and wanted to do kind of a dedicated podcast episode, but I'm gonna keep it short, right?
Cravings is kind of like a really big topic, and I'm not gonna talk about everything related to cravings. I'm gonna talk about kind of a specific, I think, kind of point of view that I have around cravings that is not a point of view that a lot of people have or that you will hear very often. And I'm not saying this for the sake of.
Just being different, to be different, to make a splash. I'm saying this because I think that there is a very important and different way in to dealing with cravings, and I did a post about this recently and I'll try to link it in the show notes, but that is around this idea that cravings are not a problem to be fixed.
Cravings are information that are telling us something. And if we can start to see them as information, then we can start to work backwards and figure out what is this trying to tell me? Right? Because typically what we do when we get a craving is we wanna get rid of it. Or [00:03:00] there's this like conquer cravings.
And I did a workshop several years ago called Conquer cravings, right? So if I'm not evolving as a coach, then like I have no business doing this work. So I'm happy to admit full disclosure that I did that. Um, but we wanna like confront cravings. We wanna get rid of cravings, we want to like. Basically get rid of them.
Cravings are bad. They are a problem. They need to be dealt with, they need to be gotten rid of. We want to live in a world where we don't have cravings because cravings are a problem that need to be fixed. And again, like that I think is a very misguided approach that actually completely contradicts what it means to like live and exist in a human body.
And so if we start to give ourselves a little bit of space, notice the urge to say, oh my God, I'm having a craving for chocolate every day. And wanting to get rid of that and wanting to fix it by just saying, okay, well, I'm not gonna keep chocolate in the house. I'm just never gonna eat chocolate, and then I won't crave it.
Look at it is, what is that trying to tell me? What can I learn from this? Right? And so a really simple way to do that is to start to work backwards, right? If you were getting a craving for [00:04:00] chocolate every day at three o'clock. Let's start to work backwards. What was the last thing you ate before you got that craving?
What were you doing? What was happening? What were the circumstances in which you ate that food and continue to work backwards again? Right? So let's say if you get, if that's three o'clock, did you eat something at one o'clock? Did you eat something at noon? What was it? Where was it? What did you eat? How did you feel?
What were the circumstances? Were you sitting quietly at your kitchen table with no distractions, eating a meal with lots of protein and veggies and a carb and fully enjoying it? Or were you scarfing down half of a sandwich in between, um, like a zoom call, finishing an email and getting a phone call from your kids' camp that they're sick and you have to come pick them up early?
Probably more like the latter, right? Those were a little bit of like the two extremes. And so if we start to pay attention to what happens when we work backwards, then we start to see, well, what is kind of driving that craving? What's creating it? And then it can start to address it. And sometimes I hate this language, but like what's like the root cause of the craving?
Right. [00:05:00] And again, not that the craving is a problem. The craving is telling us something. It's giving us information. It's giving me information that I maybe didn't enjoy my lunch, that I didn't eat enough for lunch, that I didn't even eat enough of the, of filling foods, right? That I ate something, but I rushed through it.
And so it totally wasn't enjoyable. And now I'm like looking for something that like feels good. Maybe it's telling me that I'm really stressed out and overwhelmed. Right. And. Eating that food that I'm craving would make me feel better in the moment. So I think this is a really, really helpful tactic to start to use.
Right? Notice your instant gut reaction that labeling, this is a problem. This is bad. If I eat this thing, I'm not gonna be able to stop and I need to just like willpower my way through it. Notice that happen. That's normal. That's okay. And then instead of reacting or following through on that, can you pause and say, okay, hold on a second.
What happens if I work backwards? What has led up to this? It'll just take you two minutes to do that. Not even what has led up to this today. And if I'm [00:06:00] noticing the same craving happening on repeats around the same time or for the same food, what are the patterns? Can I kind of work backwards each day that that happens?
And can I start to see are there similarities? Are there overlaps? Are there, um, kinda actions or behaviors or circumstances? That are causing this, and can I start to address things from there and see if that impacts the craving? Right? Having cravings, wanting to have something for dessert, wanting to have a piece of cake, or your favorite ice cream or a piece of chocolate after a meal is a normal part of living in a human body.
It is not a problem. It's not something that needs to be fixed. It's not something you need to get rid of. It is as normal as feeling tired, as feeling hungry, as feeling thirsty, um, as feeling stressed out as as any of the feelings that we get in a body. Having a craving for a food is as normal as those, but kind of with [00:07:00] any sort of human experience, when it starts to move into a more extreme place.
That's when it becomes a problem, right? When this craving is happening with a tremendous amount of frequency or tremendous amount of intensity, or both frequency and intensity, right? Then it's like, okay, well this is taking something that feels normal and it's really ramping it up to a place where now it's not really enjoyable.
It's not really feeling normal, it's feeling problematic, it's feeling stressful. It's taking up a lot of brain space. It's creating a lot of noise in my head. Um, it's feeling really stressful. Um, and so it's like normalizing and acknowledging and letting a craving exist as part of being in a human body, and maybe even like a cool part of being in a human body, like, oh, I get to have a desire for something that tastes really good, that I love, and then I get to eat it and fulfill that.
It's actually a really cool part of being human. Like other, um, [00:08:00] living creatures speak broadly, don't really do that. Don't really eat for pleasure, from what I understand, in the way that humans do, right? Eating for pleasure and for joy is a very unique part of being human. Um, and it's a wonderful part of being human.
Um, I think that some of us think, oh, it'd be so great if I could just eat like for fuel and then not enjoy food because then you think, oh, I'd never gain weight and I'd always be thin, and all these thoughts that we have, um. Except we've evolved this way for a reason to enjoy food and to get pleasure out of being food.
And it would be a pretty kind of miserable life if we didn't get pleasure out of these things. Um, so like, think about like the smells and the sight. And not just the taste, the sound of food and the associations you have with food and the memories and the experiences, right? I'm a little bit going off on a bit of a tangent, but there's so many wonderful things that go along with the joy of eating food and having a craving for a food and eating it and fulfilling that kind of desire with this thing you really want, and love is a really wonderful [00:09:00] experience.
Now again, if you're getting that all the time and you find yourself fulfilling that urge with foods you don't actually like, or you feel really out of control around them, or it's happening all the time and taking up a lot of space in your brain, again, I'm repeating myself, right? That's when it becomes too much too far.
No different than if you feel this compulsion to only ever eat healthy foods all the time. Right? Or you will only feel like I can only have like grilled chicken and, and rice and broccoli. Right? That's the only thing that I feel comfortable eating, right? That becomes a problem that takes a very nutritious food and it, it becomes an issue.
And how do I work backwards from that? Right? Separate thing. But all I'm saying is that when things become extremes, that's when they become problems. And so a craving in and of itself is not a problem. When it becomes all the time, frequent in terms of frequency and consistent and not consistency, frequency and intensity, that's when it becomes something that we need to address.
And again, we can start to address that by working backwards. What's the last thing I did or ate? What was my experience? [00:10:00] Why did I eat it? How did I eat it? How did I feel? Then can I work backwards from that? And start to put together the pieces of the puzzle. This is kind of what we do in the Food Behavior blueprint, right?
You start to journal your food, not just what you ate. What, why, when, where, how, and why. I think I said why? And you start to create the storyline. You start to connect the dots. So if you're having a craving every day at four o'clock, it's gonna be pretty clear why that's happening, because you're gonna be able to see the pieces of that coming together over the course of the day or over the course of several days.
Um, this is something that you can start to kind of pay attention and do on your own, but really the idea of this is starting to introduce this concept of noticing the gut reaction or the instant reaction to wanna problematize cravings and get rid of them. And can we start to look at them with a little bit more curiosity, um, start to work backwards, start to see that cravings maybe are actually can be a good experience.
Um. Because the more we problematize things, the harder we make it for ourselves. We create a lot more urgency around things and more [00:11:00] panic, and that never leads to long-term effective solutions. It leads us to short-term quick fixes. So that's what I got for you today. And I, short episode, love short episodes all the time.
If you've got a request for an episode or you're looking for support with something, send me an email or dm. I'm happy to do an episode on that. Um, love hearing from you guys. Appreciate you listening. Appreciate you being here. And, um. Actually, I should mention I'm a little unsure of the podcast schedule for the next couple of weeks because I'm gonna be traveling.
So there are probably gonna be definitely one, maybe two Mondays where there is not a new episode and then it'll pick back up like mid-August. I don't know exactly what that's gonna look like, but just giving you a heads up that that is coming at the time of this recording. I haven't fully figured it out, but if you don't see a new episode for one or two Mondays in the next few weeks, that's why all good, I'll be back.
Um, regular schedule, you know, by mid August. So, um, that's all. See you soon.