Here’s How to Eliminate Food Cravings in Three Steps.

Purpose of the Article

This post introduces three practical tips to address food cravings and hunger urges sustainably using a holistic approach based on my experience, observations, and literature reviews.I only focus on the key points and link to my previous articles for details to make this post digestible and helpful.

A Holistic Approach to Food Cravings for Metabolic Flexibility and Healthy Weight Management
Food cravings and the irresistible urge to eat unhealthy food are significant causes of weight gain leading to metabolic disorders.

For example, as pointed out in this review paper in MDPI, “previous studies indicate that eating behaviors and food cravings are associated with increased BMI and obesity”.

As the body and mind are connected, our thoughts and emotions play a critical role in creating our behavior and habits for physical manifestation. For example, we might have a better hormonal profile when we balance the body and mind’s needs.

We need to keep the brain young and active. Thus, a holistic approach to our food cravings is essential for metabolic flexibility, weight management, and happy life.

Therefore, mindful awareness of our thoughts and feelings can put us in a better position to control our urges. For example, if we can observe, analyze, and find ways to reduce our cravings, we can improve our mood and manage our weight more effectively.

A holistic approach to our food cravings can be helpful for our metabolic flexibility, managing weight, and having a joyful life.

The body and mind are inseparable. They work better when we create a good balance of our biochemistry. I believe that health is all about homeostasis.

1 — Acting Mindfully by Leveraging Meta-Cognitive Skills

I start with the mind as the most critical point of our thoughts and emotions. Emotional eating is one of the known root causes of obesity. Our survival system triggers emotions when it is under pressure.

Unless we regulate our emotions, our emotional stress manifests as physical disturbances. However, fortunately, we have a cognitive system to tame the primitive part of our brain. In a previous article, I provided practical tips to cope with amygdala hijacks.

Impulsivity is the main culprit for cravings. Therefore, awareness of our impulses is critical. One practical approach is acting deliberately. Thoughts and emotions have a significant impact on our behavior.

Thus, mindfully observing our thoughts and feelings is crucial to changing our actions. Improving our cognitive flexibility allows us to control our impulsive behavior.

Mindful awareness of our thoughts and emotions can put us in a better position to create empowering behavior and develop helpful habits. Overthinking can cause impulsivity leading to food cravings. Urges might come and go. They are ephemeral.

We can delay urges minute by minute deliberately. Delaying gratification is a known psychological coping mechanism for urges and controlling appetite.

When we feel an urge to eat, we can stop and understand the root cause of the sensation. When we stop and think, our meta-cognition takes place. It allows us to analyze and plan our actions.

In addition to internal feedback through our observations, getting external input from trusted people can be helpful.

Thus, getting advice from partners, mentors, coaches, friends, reliable colleagues, and therapists is part of improving our meta-cognition as they observe us from outside and give us valuable perspectives.

Mindfulness with improved meta-cognition can contribute to increasing neuroplasticity and reducing unnecessary stress. Excessive stress can cause cravings for food.

For example, when we are sleep-deprived, the cortisol hormone significantly increases to cope with stress. Quality sleep is critical because it affects our cortisol levels.

Thus, having quality sleep and rest is essential to reduce food cravings. In addition, wiring our brains to stay calm and composed can be helpful.

2 — Eating Essential Nutrients, Regulating Blood Glucose, and Staying Insulin Sensitive

The body needs specific nutrients to function. Therefore, a lack of essential nutrients in our diet might cause severe cravings.

Furthermore, excessive calorie reduction is one of the causes of food cravings. Thus, restricted diets lacking nutrients and essential calories can trigger intricate hunger hormones and cause impulsive eating.

I explained the missing essential nutrients in some diets in this article.

Some nutrients, such as essential amino acids, healthy fats, minerals, and vitamins, are required for the body to create and maintain our cells.

While calories from food give us the energy to survive, too many calories can be problematic, raising insulin and denting our metabolism.

I discussed the effects of insulin resistance in this article titled Why Insulin Resistance is the Elephant in the Room.

Some people are relatively more tolerant of digesting and utilizing carbs as an energy source. However, refined carbs are known to increase blood sugar rapidly. Excessive sugar in the bloodstream can cause insulin spikes.

When insulin swiftly removes glucose from the bloodstream, we crave food even though our body has enough energy to utilize.

When insulin hormone is high, and when we are over-stressed, the body cannot use the stored fat as energy. So we continue eating and getting more calories, we cannot also burn visceral fat.

To reduce cravings, we need to address the problem of insulin resistance and find ways to become insulin sensitive. I provided practical tips to become insulin sensitive in this article titled Three Tips to Eliminate Insulin Resistance and Shrink Waistline.

From my experience, a viable approach to reducing insulin resistance and gaining insulin sensitivity is going into a fat-adapted state using various methods such as time-restricted eating and customized exercise.

When we consume our calories in a specific window, we can better control our blood glucose and insulin profile.

Food intolerance can increase stress in the body. Therefore, we need to remove offending food from our eating regime using an elimination diet. Creating a customized diet can help eliminate harmful food from our diet.

I provided practical tips in this article titled: Five Game-Changing Tips to Design a Customized Diet to Thrive.

3 — Boosting Mood with Joyful Movement, Music, and Laughter

Hormones and neurotransmitters determine our mood. When they are in good balance, we have a better mood. Conversely, when we are in a bad mood, we might have more cravings, causing us to binge eat emotionally.

Music, rhythmic movements such as dancing, and other joyful exercises can activate several brain regions producing mood-boosting neurochemicals. For example, we can add music to our workouts to create the good feel for hormones and neurotransmitters.

Besides, some movements, such as aerobic exercise, might increase BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor). BDNF can strengthen our prefrontal cortex, enabling us to better understand our cravings and cope more effectively.

Exercise and music might reduce unnecessary stress by distracting us from worry and anxiety. When we do our workouts with joy, our mood enhances.

For example, in a good mood, we have fewer food cravings. In addition, adding laughter as a therapeutic tool while exercising the brain can create more mood-boosting neurochemicals reducing our physical and emotional stress.

Conclusions and Takeaways

Food cravings and binge eating are the primary cause of gaining unnecessary weight and accumulating fat, causing several metabolic disorders.

In addition, frequent and excessive food consumption can imbalance our hormones and neurotransmitters making us feel miserable and needy.

More importantly, consistent thoughts and emotions can be critical in creating our behavior and habits. Therefore, mindful awareness of our thoughts and feelings can put us in a better position to control our urges.

For example, if we can observe, analyze, and find ways to reduce our cravings, we can improve our mood and manage our weight more effectively.

A holistic approach to food cravings can be helpful for our metabolic flexibility, weight management, and joyful life. The body and mind are inseparable. They work better when we create a good balance of our biochemistry. Health is all about homeostasis.

Thank you for reading my perspectives. I wish you a healthy and happy life.

The links to the references of articles are provided in the original version of this story published on Medium.