Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’m craving something sweet” or “I’m craving something salty,” even after you’ve just eaten? You’re not alone. Food cravings are common and often triggered by emotions, and usually not when we’re truly hungry.
What causes food cravings?
With food cravings, we end up creating habit loops, or repetitive cycles, where we overeat due to emotional or mental triggers, such as boredom, stress, frustration, or worry. A habit loop around cravings may look like:
- Trigger: stressful day at work
- Behavior: eat an entire bag of chips
- Result: feeling bloated, feeling guilt
How to break the food craving habit loop
To step out of the food craving habit loop, we can use mindfulness to become aware of the food craving habit, become disenchanted with the habit, then lean into more rewarding behaviors over time.
Instead of forcing ourselves not to eat a certain food and relying on willpower, we can practice this simple mindfulness tool: Eat Right Now’s Craving Tool.
What is the Craving Tool?
The Craving Tool is a two-part mindfulness exercise to help you manage food cravings.
The first part of the Craving Tool teaches what the food craving feels like in your body and mind, either when the craving arises or remembering the last craving you had.
If the craving is still there, we move onto part two: eat the food (mindfully)! Pay attention to what the food you are about to eat looks and smells like, then pay attention as you eat each bite. Notice how your body feels and any emotions or thoughts that come up as you eat.
Research shows that 10-15 times of using the Craving Tool in the Eat Right Now app leads to the reward value of overeating to drop to nearly zero – this means by practicing mindfulness and becoming aware of how overeating truly feels, we can become disenchanted with the food craving and no longer want to overeat.
Practice mindful eating with Eat Right Now’s Craving Tool
By practicing mindful eating, even with a “bad” food (and remember, there’s no such thing as good or bad foods), you can learn from your experience by paying attention to each bite and becoming aware of how the food makes us feel physically and mentally.
Try it for yourself! Download the free Craving Tool to work with food cravings and sign up for Eat Right Now to build a mindful and healthy relationship with food – no willpower required.
