How Your Food Cravings Can Help You

Often people eat when they have food cravings. And that makes sense on the surface level. The problem is, that you then miss the message that the food cravings are giving you.When you have a craving to eat an unhealthy food, overeat, eat when you’re not hungry, or you find yourself in other situations when you eat for a reason besides nourishing the body – just consider it a message from within. If you were emotionally balanced, the craving would not come up.The food cravings are telling you that something is off. Often an emotion is coming up that you don’t want to experience. It may be fear, anger, jealousy, insecurity, sadness, or any other negative emotion or feeling. The funny thing about emotions is that they come and go. The same emotion doesn’t stay with you 24/7.

Emotional eating can’t be satisfied with food. When you eat you might momentarily feel better. But then the original feelings will resurface. In addition, you have the additional feelings of remorse, regret, guilt, disappointment, frustration, etc. to deal with from your eating binge.

According to Health Guide, “Compounding the problem, you stop learning healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a harder and harder time controlling your weight, and you feel increasingly powerless over both food and your feelings. But no matter how powerless you feel over food and your feelings, it is possible to make a positive change. You can learn healthier ways to deal with your emotions, avoid triggers, conquer cravings, and finally put a stop to emotional eating.”

The key to getting benefits from these emotions is to train yourself to sit with them and find out what they’re saying and how you can come back to balance. First, allow yourself to feel. Often there’s a voice in your head telling you it’s not okay to feel what’s coming up. Negative emotions are taboo.

I find in working with clients that when they give themselves permission to sit with emotions, they are in a position to learn and make deeper changes. Then weight loss happens naturally. In sitting with emotions, you learn which emotions are coming up for you, which situations trigger which emotions, and which emotions go with which kind of food choices. Often this knowledge can take the charge out of the food cravings. It also leaves you in a position to understand yourself better and plan how you will use non-food rewards to deal with emotional hunger when the insights by themselves aren’t enough to dispel the craving.

Some possibilities that I have gleaned from clients, when looking for non-food options to channeling strong emotions, include: listening to music, taking a walk, journaling, breathing, tapping, relaxation, art work, reading, making a cup of tea, and doing yoga. You can come up with your own list and then refer to it for ideas on what to do besides eat when you have studied the emotions but still want to eat.

The sooner you identify the emotional hunger you are experiencing, the easier it will be to bring yourself back to balance. So watch carefully for clues that a craving is starting and emotions are stirring. The earlier you catch the craving, the better. Once you identify it, sit with it and see what’s going on. Then choose your alternate activity, if needed. If the urge goes away by just identifying the emotion and what triggered it, then you’re good.

Summary: Follow These Steps In Sequence

1. Sit and identify the emotions that are coming up.
2. See what correlations you can find between the emotions that have been triggered and the situation you are in / what someone said to you / what you said to yourself / what the emotions remind you of from earlier in your life
3. Choose a wholesome activity to channel the emotion (from the list above you’re your own list), or get on with what you were doing if the craving went away.