🧠 A Smarter Take on Cravings
🔍 The Three Elements Driving a Craving
☀️ Sol Bites: 2 Ways to Deal with Cravings
✨ Words of Wisdom
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A Smarter Take on Cravings
So many of us have had complicated relationships with cravings. You may have the best intentions when it comes to eating healthy, cutting down on alcohol, avoiding doomscrolling right before bedtime, and resisting temptation during late-night shopping, but you end up failing miserably. As a result, you blame yourself for not having enough discipline.
If you’ve ever asked other people for tips on how to not indulge, you’ve probably heard, “Have more self-control” (a natural—and helpful—suggestion) or “Be kind to yourself and let it slide” (helpful, but does nothing to stop your behavior from happening again). Neither option, however, addresses the real issue causing the problem: It’s not that you lack self-control or have some character flaw that prevents you from being more disciplined. It’s that you don’t understand the nature of a craving itself.
The Three Elements Driving a Craving
A craving may feel like a single, simple urge, but it’s really made of three parts. The moment you recognize each one, the options for how you can deal with them increase.
The Caveman Brain
Human brains developed under conditions where access to food was inconsistent, and there was a possibility that an individual wouldn’t eat for quite some time. The brain’s response to seeing food was, “Ooh, calories! I have to consume them now because I might need them later.” What makes this problematic in the current day is that the modern brain hasn’t evolved to automatically know that DoorDash exists or there’s a Trader Joe’s around the corner.
Pavlovian Response
Ever heard about the dogs who learned to salivate at the sound of a bell? You’re dealing with the same principle, just in a human setting. Over the years, your brain has made loads of connections that involve cues and desire. A movie theater makes you hungry for popcorn and candy. Three o'clock makes you crave caffeine. Sitting down at the computer means snack time. And getting a stressful message from a family member? Well, that has you reaching for wine.
Underlying Emotions
No one ever mentions this, but it’s the one thing that’s really pushing you. Many cravings, in fact, perform emotional work on your behalf: Snacking while working could be a reflection of an intense fear about an upcoming meeting. Drinking at a party could be managing your social phobia. Late-night ice cream could be a way of soothing feelings of loneliness, exhaustion, or day filled with stress. In those cases, the cravings are not actually about the food items, but something you’re feeling underneath that needs attention.
Most cravings are driven by all three of the categories above. For example, if you always crave a doughnut or another treat while waiting for a flight at an airport, that craving is actually a result of old wiring in your brain, plus your associations with hunger and travel and, finally, a feeling like, "I'm a bit tired, a little lonely, and I'd like this to happen."
Sol Bites: 2 Ways to Deal with Cravings
If you look at cravings with this new perspective, two practical approaches for how to handle them become clear. Both are realistic, and you don’t need to change who you are to implement them.
1. Give Yourself a Moment
Impulsive behavior runs without any conscious deliberation—the quicker you jump from “I want that” to “I’m getting that,” the less control you have over your choices. Inserting even just a slight pause can change your trajectory.
If you find yourself suddenly overcome with the urge to indulge in something, give yourself 30 seconds before you do anything, and label the situation by saying to yourself, “Okay, I’m experiencing a craving for _______.”
Labeling it will automatically put some space between you and the urge. Get curious rather than judgmental. Figuring out what lies beneath the urge, what brought it up, and how it’s related to other events happening in your life will give you an advantage: There is no way you can spiral and be curious at the same time.
There is always a possibility that you’ll give in to a temptation, but by going through that thought process, you’ll significantly increase your chances of making decisions that make you feel good.
2. Make your cravings redundant
If part of your craving is emotional, then dealing with the emotion means taking the pressure off of the craving. This is seriously underrated.
The strategy is pretty simple: When you have a craving, check in with yourself and ask what you're actually feeling—not what you think you should be feeling, but what's actually there, underneath everything. You could be tired, lonely, anxious, frustrated, bored, overstimulated, understimulated, or a combination of many feelings. Then just acknowledge them without trying to fix or argue with what’s going on. You might say something like, "Yeah, I'm pretty drained right now and that tracks."
From there, take an action that addresses the emotion directly. Are you lonely? Send a text message to a loved one, or go through some pictures from a night out with friends. Stressed? Go for a walk, breathe slowly, or stand outside for five minutes. Bored? Do something that requires effort instead of something that makes you numb. After your action, observe how or if your craving changes. It may not disappear, but more often than not, the desire loses much of its power.
Keep doing that, and you will cultivate real emotional intelligence, which will help reduce the intensity and frequency of your cravings. You’re not forcing yourself to endure anything, you’re simply making the craving unnecessary.
Cravings are tough. Nobody is perfect, everybody caves now and then, and it isn’t some flaw—it’s simply human nature, and adding shame to the equation only makes things worse.
Subtle changes in your attitude toward your cravings can make a meaningful difference. Get curious about your cravings rather than thinking of them as something disgraceful, and remind yourself that they almost always come with an emotional burden that has little to do with the food, the alcohol, the scrolling, or the buying. Take a moment to think about what you’re really doing, and if possible, address what’s really going on inside your mind and body.
Discipline is a real thing, but it's a much smaller part of the equation than most of us were taught. The bigger lever is understanding what's driving your urges in the first place. And with that knowledge, you can quietly change everything.
I thought my cravings meant I had no willpower—turns out, they meant I had feelings
Words of Wisdom
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
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