Episode 10: How do I control my cravings?

In this week’s episode, Jessica is discussing the question: “How do I control my cravings?”  The word “craving” can be associated with many different emotions, feelings, and senses. It is important to remember that we are taking care of our bodies' needs while learning to honor those cravings! 

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Intro

Welcome to the Art and Science of eating. I'm Jessica Begg, registered dietician and clinical counsellor. I worked for fifteen years and programs for the treatment of eating disorders. I now help those that struggle with emotional eating and their relationship with their body. This podcast is where I answer questions to help people along this bumpy journey to creating peace with both food and their body.

Podcast

Hey all I hope you're doing well I am doing well too as well as it can be I guess I've been able to do a bit more things outside safely actually got out to do a hike with a friend and then my husband and I met up with some other friends at a beach for dinner and it was really nice. Still a little bit weird though cuz we would know normally share our dinner together share drinks but we had to do it the old 6 feet away from each other and we brought our own meals which made me think about how important it is to share meals together and to be together and how difficult right it is now cuz we can't be together as much as we would like to I hope that you are getting together and with the people that are important to you as safely as possible whether be online or what not but I'm happy that you're here with me. I think that's also the thing is that I'm really happy to be chatting with you all and that hopefully we can create this space where we come together and at the moment I am still recruiting people to have questions so if you've never talked to me and you have an or if you have talked to me and you know me but if you have an any kind of an inkling of like hey I love to hash this question out that I have with Jessica please do reach out to me this is your sign to reach out to me you can do so on my website ShiftNutrition.com, and if you go to the podcast page it's right on there that you can submit your question right onto the website page or you can email me at support@shiftnutrition.com and we can set a time that we can chit chat. I would love to hear from you. So this week's question and it's week 10 episode 10 which is amazing I can't believe we've done 10 here we go and we're kind of right in it so this week's episode 10 is how do I control my cravings. First off we need to define what we mean as a craving because people will use the same word and mean different things different senses that they feel in their body so one scenario could be that cravings are that we feel like just a certain type of food so for instance since it's a bit drizzly out today so I had a hot bowl of ramen for lunch it was something that was kinda nice and that was craving of mine or that in the afternoon perhaps i feel like a cookie with my afternoon tea rather than the dietitian prescribed nuts and a piece of fruit I packed a cookie it wasn't I knew that I would always want a cookie more than I don't know if I live maybe had a piece of fruit and nuts for as a snack maybe once but  is that problematic right is it problematic to have choices that we might choose one thing over another but what we need to maybe unpack is do we have these ideas that we need to have foods that we eat that are only quote on quote healthy all the time and I think that that’s the question there is should I knowing that a piece of fruit and nuts is the healthy quote on quote choice that I should be choosing that all the time and I don't think that's the case that I think that if I am generally getting in fruits and vegetables in over the course of my day or over the course of my week or month I should have some variants where there's food that I'm eating because I feel like it and that's my craving that I want to eat something that's the cookie so by that we need to make sure that I am taking care of my body's needs so if I was eating cookies for all of my meals and all of my snack I know cognitively that that's not going to be good for my body that I need some variants just like how eating having nuts and a piece of fruit for all meals and all snacks would also not be healthy for my body and because it's very monotone but also for my mind because there's really nothing exciting there there is just too much of the same so we need variation and we also need to have fun but I also need to care for my body so assuming that there's that kind of a balance and place cravings to me are just a normal part of living that we should have things that we want a second scenario though where somebody might call a craving is what I would say is initial or first signs of hunger so as we move away from fullness so if I have a meal and I’m starting to feel you know not full neutral to  going towards hunger is that some of those initial thoughts about food are going to be thinking about food and sometimes people will call that a craving so that as I'm approaching my next meal I might be thinking like what am I going to eat and I kind of feel like this and I kinda feel like that you know that could be craving I'm just thinking about food and that is very normal and so as they intensify as they get more and more hungry sometimes I find that I kind of get more elaborate with my cravings that I might get like I'm going to have this and more kind of anticipation cuz I'm getting actually maybe even beyond the point of fullness I've really waited too long and so that's where cravings or craving type thoughts intensifies so an early step of cravings it might be that hey you know what I think I'm hungry maybe I should just eat like I don't necessarily want cookies for lunch but I actually probably should eat what I packed and maybe I can evaluate that whether or not I have cookies after I address that really intense hunger that I'm feeling right now so that could be part of it is it just like the initial phases of hunger can be a scenario another kind of offshoot of that could be still hunger but it's not right, right in that moment so an example of that might be that somebody hasn't eaten enough for for lunch and/or hasn't eaten enough for breakfast or maybe they skipped breakfast and they had a proper lunch and then proper as in like size lunch and you know proper size dinner and then they say that they have these unexpected cravings for food at night time but upon reflection we could maybe if they had a half breakfast half lunch and then dinner. After dinner eating might actually constitute a third meal so that the the half breakfast half lunch is one meal dinner is meal two and then after dinner is actually meal three so the issue there is that often because that after dinner eating meal wasn't planned that it feels out of control because or maybe you could just kind of randomly gathering foods and it feels somewhat bingy but actually when we reflect upon it actually was probably just filling up from not eating enough earlier on in the day and so I actually encourage people to think about what is it that I had for lunch and one of the classic is maybe a really light lunch just because we can distract ourselves throughout the day with being busy but by end of day we're now tired and so our hunger starts coming up and creeping up and hitting us on the back of the head like hey I'm here so maybe you don't necessarily feel hungry earlier on in the day but it's coming at it later on in the day where it doesn't feel as controlled sol actually eating more even though you don't necessarily feel like it at that moment actually helps to repair that and so that could be something. The last scenario could be that you're not actually physically hungry so we've looked at all these scenarios where a craving could be around physical hunger and the distinction between physical hunger and an emotional hunger type craving is sometimes really hard to discern so what is it that I'm feeling and I encourage my clients to actually eat cuz that helps us discern what's going on without actually trying that it can be almost impossible so I encourage my client to say if they are unsure am I physically hungry or some emotional hunger to actually eat so pull something out like something like a legitimate snack-size not just like i'm going to have a you know a cracker and see what I what I think about that like pull out a handful of crackers and some cheese and sit and have some of it and see if I eat a little bit of this does it actually target that physical hunger phase or feeling in my body that if you're eating and it's a physical hunger that food should feel like it addresses that it calms down it should have that sense of like oh okay yeah this is fixing it if it's an emotional hunger sometimes it's actually feels like it's amplifying, that the intensity gets a little bit higher or it just feels different so by playing around with eating you can distinguish between two so of course if it's physical hunger continue on eating until you feel like you've addressed that if it's emotional hunger then we start looking at what is actually going on for you at that moment do you feel restless or anxious and in which case may be getting up and moving and this is what the great thing about food and why it works is because it's somewhat active right we go into the kitchen and we physically move our body into a kitchen and then we, you know start around in the kitchen and come out and eat and then there's actually a physical movement with the mouth and general senses activity moving the body helps discharge this restlessness and that's why walking is so good or movement in general is so good for anxiety is because it's discharging that restlessness but often we don't really have that type of an energy to do that at night time but we're still feeling the restlessness what do we do and that's where food often fits wonderfully. How can we use other tools in our toolbox and it might be as little as because again just that movement into the kitchen and back isn’t tons we don't need to do tons that it could be okay well I'm just going to get up and swing my arms and take some deep breaths and I'm just going to move a little bit to just discharge and breathe to get rid of that restlessness you can notice if that just breaks up a little bit then we're going to get in somewhere and at that point if you got to this point really honestly if you've gotten to the point where you can decide between hunger and fullness that if you can distinguish between physical hunger and emotional hunger you should congratulate yourself on that because that's the first magical Milestone if you can figure that out and then this scenario of how do we address it, that’s stage two after you’re like whoo you’re like I figured it out okay and I still might be using food great you check you got in first step and then once you kind of get that kind of home then we can start looking at trying to figure out these new things and that's where you might be able to distinguish ok is this restlessness? let me move my body maybe it's a sense of loss or sadness or just grieve like all of these kinds of more inward we need some sort of soothing stuff cuz food can also really be soothing to the body and that might be where you go and have a hot shower or my favourite is a hot water bottle actually cuz I get a sore stomach often when I'm stressed and so I just use a hot water bottle for that so that my brains made that connection that I feel better when I have a hot water bottle so even if I'm just feeling sad or whatever I can use a hot water bottle to just kind of snuggle on the couch and so that kind of thing might be really good for you or calling a friend and reaching out to them when you're feeling that way and so if you can figure out where the sense in your body what you feel like so sometimes people will say you know what I'm nervous I get this tightness in my chest or maybe this this feeling in the back of my neck and then I know it's this sense of restlessness and then we can start using those other more movement type things or maybe when I'm feeling sad I just feel it more on my stomach like lower down and and then I know that then I need to do something else a little bit more quiet and even still even as we use and hone these other skills it is really important to still keep food because we should use food to soothe but if we're only using food that's where it can be kind of problematic because we’re using food all the time or we're trying to use food a lot to try to fix things when we probably need a few different items or few different strategies even as you're trying to build that new skill I really like using food still because it can help like with that water bottle for instance I just made that connection in my brain that the heat from the water bottle makes me feel better even if I don't have a stomach ache so we can do that with food by sometimes keeping food in with a way that you might be soothing yourself or historically been using it as you build new skills so that those new skills can actually be successful because you've used food to make it successful and as you broaden out those skills then you don't have to use food as much and not to say never should we not use food to help us we need food it’s such an integral part of our lives that we use food for everything and when we should we use food to celebrate to soothe to, when were angry with all sorts of things like that ramen noodle soup that I had for lunch that it was really soothing cuz it was so warm and so tasty, and the saltiness like all of it is so wonderful that actually made me feel better if I was going to just say like okay well I'm going to call a friend and that's going to make me feel better and I'm going to have that nuts and fruit for lunch like that's just not helping me in my life so we need a whole bunch of things at depths of different skills and different skills that we're going to use it any one time to help us through this way I hope that helps to understand cravings a little bit more I'm curious to what you have to say because these are just some possible scenarios you might have more if you have a specific way were you think that you're using cravings or you're confused about your cravings let me know I'd love to dig in a little bit deeper into this topic but that's it for now and I will chat with you all next week. 

Disclaimer

This podcast is for education and information purposes only please consult your own health care team to discuss what is right for you and your care.